4 Tips for Dealing with Rejection NOW

Have you ever been laid low by a rejection?

Maybe a work product that you worked really hard on wasn't well received. Or an interview that you thought you nailed didn't land you the job. Or that crush you had didn't return your affection.

It definitely sucks when we don't get the reaction that we want from the world.

But there can be a second arrow when we take that rejection and make it mean that there's something wrong with us or that we weren't good enough.

Personalizing an external event leads to additional suffering.

This might take the form of ruminating over the situation, trying to crack the code of what you could have done better. You re-play the scenes over and over. You look for those micro-places where you might have messed up. You wonder what's wrong with you. You think if you could have just been better then things would have gone better and you would have gotten the outcome that you wanted.

You feel discouraged, disheartened, and down.

If this has ever happened to you, here are four tips I'd like to offer to reduce this second arrow of suffering.

1) "There's Something Wrong with Me if I Experience Rejection" is Incorrect

There's a thought fallacy in rejection woes that goes something like, "If I'm amazing, then I will get everything I want and never be rejected."

Or the reverse, "When I am rejected it means that I am not amazing."

Nope! Rejection is a part of life. We all experience it. There's no avoiding it. It really doesn't have anything to do with your level of amazingness. It's sort of like getting scrapes and bruises. Getting banged up now and again is just a part of life.

When you experience rejection it doesn't meant that you're a failure.

It just means that you're a human living your life and trying things. This is something to celebrate!

If you polled every single human and asked if they had ever been rejected you would likely get a 100% Yes response rate. If you're experiencing rejection, you're in great company.


2) You Are Separate from Your Work Products and Your Skill Level

One of my friend groups contains some newer entrepreneurs who look at my ability to roll with poor results with big eyes.

Recently one of them articulated what I was doing beautifully when she noted that a problematic podcast interview that she'd done was not a reflection of who she was as a person. Yes!

This is what I am always doing that lets me move through things more easily. I separate myself from my output and my skill level.

If you do a podcast interview from the perspective of "This Is Me", then the reception of the podcast will feel very scary. But if you do a podcast interview from the perspective of "this is my best effort at this point in time and I can learn from the experience and improve over time", it's much, much lighter.

You could be a great person and still be getting the hang of something. Like if you are learning to play the guitar and you're bad at it, it doesn't mean that you're a bad person. It just means that you're learning.

Similarly, early on in business I was taught that most things are marketing problems. It's not that the thing your selling is bad. It's that you haven't marketed it appropriately. So if it's a marketing problem, then you can look at your marketing, fiddle with it, and improve it over time.

When you separate yourself from your work products and skill level, then you can look at what's happening and make improvements with much less drama.


3) Don't Hand Over Your Self Worth

Imagine that we all have a box of self worth that is ours to tend. If we keep it inside of ourselves and care for it with encouragement and compassion and kindness, then we can go through our days feeling pretty good about ourselves. This is part of our job as adults.

Contrast that with repeatedly holding out that box of self worth to other people and saying, hey could you take care of this for me? Could you let me know if I'm alright? They are going to inevitably let you down because it's not actually their job to take care of your box of self worth.

Handing over our box of self worth looks like being crushed when you aren't invited forward in an interview process after someone has spent thirty minutes with you.

How could a thirty minute conversation represent all of you? How could one conversation mean you're not a good person? There's just no way.

If you're handing over your self worth box to this stranger's care, then you're going to make this rejection mean that you aren't worthy.

But if you hold onto your box of self worth, then you can take the interview more neutrally. You win some. You lose some. Let's move forward.

Where, if anywhere, are you handing over your box of self worth to other people? Where are you asking people, am I ok?

How could you do a better job of keeping your box and tending to it?

You get to define who you are and you get to decide if you like who you are.


4) You Aren't That Powerful

Ok, so as a coach I'm constantly reminding people of their power to create cool things in life. So fun!

But in one area we aren't powerful at all, which is being able to control other people.

Other people have their own issues. Other people make choices that we may not agree with. And other people have limitations and blind spots.

You aren't in charge of any of this.

So when someone rejects you for a relationship, it may be off to think that if you had just been different or better that this wouldn't have happened.

What happened may be a reflection of the other person's ability to do relationships.

While there's definitely a time for receiving feedback and improving, it's important to realize that the person you were in a relationship with is a completely separate entity from you with their own agency, misconceptions, and faults. And you aren't responsible for any of that.


Story Time

Here's a quick story about how all of these lenses apply.

I've been dating for about a year now, and I accept that rejection is part of the process. I get rejected regularly. It stings a little bit, but it actually passes pretty quickly.

As I date I'm aware that someone's impression of me from my dating profile, a text exchange, or even a date is incomplete and not a true reflection of who I am.

I hold a distance between my dating profile and who I am. If the profile isn't getting the results I'm wanting, then I can work on that. It's just marketing. But I don't confuse that with who I actually am.

I hold on to my box of self worth and am kind to myself vs. handing it over to every stranger I meet.

I'm confident from my relationships with friends and family that I'm a really good person to be in a relationship with - that I'm kind, consistent, thoughtful, loyal, and supportive.

So when someone who has gotten to know me better turns down continuing a relationship with me, I view it as having to do with their readiness and maturity to be in a healthy relationship (or it just didn't feel like a match for what they were wanting in life) vs. any issue with me.

That said, I have gotten specific feedback as I was learning to date and I did incorporate that. But again, I saw my dating capability as a separate thing from the core of who I am. It's just a skill that I can improve.

All of this means that I'm pretty nimble when I'm dating and I don't get very bogged down in what's happening because I keep my self worth separate from the experiences I'm having. When things don't work out I look at my system and try to figure out where I can improve it. And then I move forward, all the while knowing that I'm basically alright.


Overall, being able to roll with rejection and not take it as personally has to do with expectations and boundaries.

Expect rejection. It's normal. Keep your self worth separate from your output. Keep your self worth in your court. And don't let other people's poor behavior mean anything other than that they have behaved poorly.