Halo of Being Rejected: Every Journey To YES Starts With A Nasty NO

My entire life is a product of rejection.

Hmm…

Would it be too much to say that my spin of rejections began at early age and had been dragging my subconscious through all these years with a pompous disdain?

Possibly yes!

Fortunately, I survived, became stronger and created this tiny nook of mine to rant all about my experience and share a survival guide I have developed for all these years that helps me keep going through the spin of rejections unharmed.

Well, almost unharmed.

I mean, not that I am an expert on it but I have developed a quite working scheme that helps me to come back from the burning aches of rejections in a matter of few hours.

Fine, sometimes it takes longer than that but listen, I know some individuals that keep losing parts of themselves on this battlefield, so better this than nothing.

Rejections sting

The specter of rejections is quite diverse.

It can be a direct rejection: ‘we’re sorry to say that this submission is not right for our magazine.’ I am sure all writers have gotten this kind of direct rejections at least once in life.

And indirect kind of rejections: for example, when you are offered something less than you expected to get. It was not a complete rejection but it was a full acceptance either.

As a freelancer and writer I receive tons of rejections monthly.

And honestly, I am truly grateful for each and every rejection I have received in my life because even with my sporadic tendencies to self-critique and perfectionism, I figured to give too much shit to every rejection is boring and is not worthy of my time.

The more rejections I get the less sensitive I become to them

The reason you take rejections so painfully is because you prefer to avoid them in your life.

Sometimes it reaches the master level of absurdity: I better stay in a bad place than risk and be rejected by trying to put myself in a better place.

It is when self-preservation theory does not work.

There is even a worse scenario to this: using rejections a form of confirmation of the lies you tell yourself about yourself and the world.

Why am I being rejected?

There are so many reasons for rejections and ironically, most of them have little to do with what kind of person you are.

I will never forget the interview I had 6 months ago with a client from Norway who right in the middle of our conversation about translation asked me a political question that had nothing to do with the purpose of the interview at all.

Taken off guard, I gave a terse answer implying that politics was not something I felt qualified to talk about.

My client grew silent and from that moment on I knew that our future work was just not going to happen.

That rejection had nothing to do with my professional skills but rather had a human factor.

I think about rejection as a life building mechanism that helps people to choose between many and find the right fit not only for work but for life as well.

Here are a few mind tricks that I use when rejection gets too deep under my skin

If the world was a big YES banner all over your head, what value would it have then?

I mean, seriously, just think about.

If all the doors were wide opened in front of you, would you even move?

I doubt it.

Or even if you did, do you think you would be special on the other side of that door?

I doubt it.

What is easy to get has little if any value. You would not be willing to grow or work harder. Why? All the doors are already opened.

Besides, do you think, among hundreds of opened doors, you would choose the right one?

Doubtfully so.

More likely, your life would be endless jumps in and out of those doors.

Rejections solve this problem for you.

Rejection is not a NO for life but a YES for more opportunities

I treat rejections as experience and a small win because even though I, like many others, chicken out at the mere thought of rejection, I still took a step and did something for my life.

With each rejection it gets easier to put your services, ideas, dreams out into the world which increases your chances to get noticed and as a result accepted.

NO is the road to YES

To save yourself from the pain of rejection, you have to go and hunt for a new one

This is the most powerful tool I know when it comes to rejections.

When you get a rejection what do you do?

Stop for a few days? Sounds reasonable, you need time to get over it, right?

But in reality, what you do is you give too much attention to that rejection by which you make your experience with rejection painful.

Instead, try to get right back to the business and take action even though it potentially might end in another rejection.

This way you will grow a second skin that is so need in this world of high competitive nature and literally become unstoppable.

That is all I have to say for today. Keep your thoughts clean and your mind sharp. From now on, rejection is your ticket to getting to a big, life-changing YES kind of situation.

Remember, rejection is not a bad thing, it is a stage everyone goes through in order to win better things for their lives.