Do you have trouble with rejection? Do you have trouble accepting rejection, whether it’s dating, whether it’s in the workplace, whether it’s playing a team sport, whether it’s friendships? That’s what we’re tackling today.
The thing is, it’s how you view rejection that is the key. How do you turn around? How do you use it? How do you leverage it? The truth is, you may have been rejected cause you’re just not good enough skill-wise. Or perhaps it’s your attitude that let you down, or maybe it’s your personality or maybe it’s your habits.
Now, you might be sitting there going, okay, that’s really good, Scott, but how do I actually deal with rejection? How do I handle it so it doesn’t hurt so much inside?
Well, I’ve got four tips for you. So let’s just dive into the first one.
Change how you view rejection. So what do I mean by that? Well, don’t view rejection as a bad thing. See it as an opportunity to grow. Now stick with me with this. See it as a stepping stone. Remember, life happens for you, not to you. So every person, everything, every circumstance, every situation, it happens for you. So let’s say you have a goal in place and maybe it’s a business success. Maybe it’s career success. Don’t get deterred when you get your first rejection at the first step or worse, avoid taking the first step altogether from fear of failure. Set your goals and go into each step knowing that rejection and failure is part of the success. In fact, it should be seen as it’s part of the whole process. See it as a signal or a trigger to make changes to improve. Take that emotion out of it. Don’t take it personally. Relish in that feedback, relish in that constructive criticism, use it. Use it and then push forward. Use it and move forward. Leverage it and just keep going.
Number two is to have awareness as to why you were rejected. So whatever the situation is, maybe you weren’t welcomed into a group, maybe you were rejected by a certain person, maybe it was at work. But whatever it is, you need to ask yourself, what can I learn from this? What can I use here to grow and to develop? Why were you rejected? Understand this part. Write it out. Ask the person for feedback, look more internally and look at why yourself. Whichever way you do it, just understand the why. Because once you know that, then you can look at, Okay, what can I change? How can I improve? What can I do differently next time when I’m going taking my next step?
And once you’ve done this, you can then move on to number three, which is to identify what you need to level up. So do you need new skills? Is it your experience? Is it the way you communicate? Is that the way you act? Is it your qualifications or the lack of qualifications? You don’t get the grade that you’re like? Okay, so you’ve identified that it’s the way you’re formatting your writing. So you need to now know that you need a skill up your writing. Or maybe it’s the examples that you’re using. So you know now that you need to skill up in that area. Or maybe you weren’t researched well enough, so you know you need a skill up in that area. We need to put more effort into that area.
Let’s just say you got rejected by a boy or a girl and it’s the way that you are actually communicating. Okay? So you now know that you need to get better at communicating. You don’t just sit there and sulk and just get… stop with the rejection. You need to look into it and you look into to the why, you need to assess what areas, what gaps need to be filled. Now, without going into the whole process of how to better yourself, I just recommend you watch this video here I did. It got very good feedback. That’ll go through the whole process of how you can actually look at bettering yourself.
Number four is to actually go out there and acquire the skills that you need. Actually take the action. And you do this through practice. You do this to studying. You do this through mental health, through guidance, through failing, through learning, through failing, through learning and failing again and learning again. If you’re a bench player but you want to make the first team, then put in the extra work, put in the extra work to fill the gaps versus falling into your shell and going into a shell and then just complaining to other people and talking negatively to yourself, and playing the victim and all these other negative behaviours.
If you’re constantly struggling on dates and always getting dumped and you’ve identified that it’s your eye contact, well go to work on your eye contact. You’ve identified it, you know the skill that you need to, now actually put it into action and work on your eye contact. Maybe you need a makeover. Okay, great. You’ve identified that it’s a makeover. Go out and do the makeover. Okay? Don’t talk about it. Don’t complain about it. Identify why. Understand what you need, what gaps need to be filled. Look at what skills you need, and then actually take the action.