Being rejected does not mean you are worthless!

When the world closes its doors on you, keep the faith, be patient.

A young man, who we have been coaching (through our ‘Let’s Talk Happyness’ Program), called up yesterday. He was excited. His boss had awarded him a spot bonus. And had felicitated him at a town hall with the whole team. The young chap, an engineer in his late 20s, said, “I am amazed. Just four months ago nobody wanted to even look at my resume. For months on end interviewer after interviewer kept on rejecting me. They made me feel worthless. And now, suddenly, my talent is recognized and I am being celebrated. I don’t get this. Even when I was going through a trial by fire, through that spate of rejections, I was still talented. Then why does my talent get recognized only now. Why was it not valued then, when I so badly needed a break?”

 

Well, such is Life. Vaani and I have learnt from own experience (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal.) that we are put through a trying phase in Life only so that we evolve through it. Clearly, Life’s experiences do not erode our talent. Even when one department, one door, in Life shuts on us, another opens. Always. The truth also is that talent and trial are totally unrelated. Being talented does not guarantee you a Life free of challenges. Talent is what you are endowed with. And trial is what you have to face, what you must go through, per your Life’s inscrutable, and unique, design. It is important to remember that just because you are being rejected by the world, just because people don’t recognize your talent, it does not mean you are worthless. This is when you must keep the faith – in yourself, your abilities and what you have to offer the world – and be patient. This is when you must trust the process of Life. Life is very compassionate, very beautiful. Every experience you go through unfailingly enriches you from within – making you stronger, wiser and happy!

Learning to take a ‘no’ in your stride

What you are going through is no reflection of who you are or of your ability

Never allow yourself to think that you are worthless just because you have been rejected.

We met a gentleman the other day. A seasoned IT professional and a very sensitive human being. In his early 50s now, he has been asked to leave an organization that he had barely joined a few months ago. This was the third job that he was having to quit in the last three years. We were informally counseling him on how he could cope with this phase of his Life. Although his age and experience had imbued in him the maturity to know that such phases do happen to all of us in Life, he broke down a few times during his conversation with us. He confessed that he was deeply hurt by the manner in which some people were treating him. He was suddenly finding that all his experience and professional abilities were being viewed warily. He had been repeatedly rejected by his last three bosses and employers. All this was hurting him and he was finding it difficult to hold himself together.

I can relate to and empathize with this person’s situation. I too have struggled with being rejected. It really, really hurts; especially when you have put in your best, when you are being pushed to a corner and are told – without logic or reason – that you are not good enough. But over the years, through severaI experiences, I have learnt to deal with the grief that follows rejection. I have realized that grief is a very self-serving emotion. All it does is that it makes you depressive. Yes, it is natural that when you are rejected by someone, you will feel sad. And depressive. But wallowing in that depression is of no use. It will pin you down. It is like being locked up in a coffin that’s dumped into the sea. Now, you – and I – are no Houdini to stage a great escape. So we sulk, pine and suffer.

There’s a way to deal with rejection though. That way is to never take the act of rejection or the person rejecting you personally. Let’s understand, accept and appreciate that everyone is entitled to their opinion, their choices and their decisions. If someone exercises their prerogative with reference to you, they have only done what they are entitled to. Their choice need not necessarily be viewed as a judgment of your ability or character. Well, it may be possible that you can learn from the experience of being rejected and you may want to improve yourself. But in any case, don’t let the experience of getting rejected get to you. It is just another situation in Life where you have the opportunity to develop and demonstrate strength of spirit and character. Don’t get obsessed with rejection and use it as a benchmark to measure yourself. What can help you is your moving on and trying again. Chances are you may get rejected again. Then you move on again and try one more time.

All our lives have fragmented phases when things don’t go according to our plans. Unfortunately, there’s no Life Defragmenter that you can run to fix such phases. You have to endure such phases patiently. Feeling frustrated, humiliated and sorry is of no use. Instead remember that what you are going through, whatever is happening to you, is no reflection of who you are or of your ability. With time, every phase passes, everything changes and nothing lasts – not even tough times! 

 

Life coaches us through each experience – making us stronger, wiser and happier

You have to go through what you have to go through.

I addressed young folks at the Under 25 Lit Fest at IIT – M on Sunday. Most of the audience comprised of budding writers. One of them caught up with me after my Talk. He told me that his work had been rejected by 20 publishers over five years now. “I feel defeated. I believe in my work. I know I have something very valuable to share with the world. I don’t mind if I am rejected because my work is bad. But almost everyone has told me that my manuscript is very good. Yet they don’t want to publish my book…I fail to understand what Life is trying to tell me,” he exclaimed. He wanted to know if I had some perspectives to share.

I sure do.

I see Life as the greatest teacher. Everything that is happening in our Life is only making us stronger, wiser and, interestingly, happier. So, Life is coaching us through each experience – constantly giving us the test first and the lesson later. In our academic education system the lesson is taught first and then we are tested whether we have learnt it well. But Life doesn’t operate that way. In Life, every step you take is a test and every moment lived carries a lesson. Which is why, unable to transition from our academic conditioning to Life’s free-flowing nature, we struggle with Life. But over time you get better and better at dealing with Life’s ways. Surely, you are never going to be perfect at cracking all of Life’s situations. But yes, you will no longer be shaken, shocked or depressed when a new challenge arrives. This is what I mean when I say that over time Life makes you stronger, wiser and happier.

I asked the young man how was he able to handle rejections now compared to when he was rejected the first few times. “Oh! I just chuckle to myself and say, ‘So, what’s new?’” he replied.

I pointed out to him that he was doing just great dealing with Life. That indeed must be the spirit. I am not well-versed with the scriptures nor have I read all the 18 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. But from what I have learnt of the Gita’s message, I realize no matter what we wish or how we want things to be, we only are entitled to our efforts, to our actions. We cannot ever claim to control the outcomes. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we may not get what we want. And at other times, without much effort we may be extraordinarily rewarded by Life. So, a string of rejections is just Life’s way of teaching you, of reminding you, that you are not in control. Life is telling you that there’s a higher intelligence, a Higher Energy, which is in control. Even a “brilliant stroke of luck” reiterates precisely the same point.

The young man then asked me one more question: “While I can understand that Life’s upheavals make you stronger and wiser, I am not sure they make you happier. Do they, really?”

I like that question. To understand the answer to that question, let’s first understand here what makes us unhappy. We are unhappy when we don’t get what we want. Simple. So, through surviving Life’s upheavals, if we learn to be accepting of the Life we have, than pine for the Life that we want, won’t we be happier? In the young man’s case, he’s learnt, unwittingly perhaps, to be detached from the outcome of his efforts; he has learnt to drop all his expectations. Whenever you have no expectation from Life, you will only be happy.

What I have also understood about Life is that everything happens at its own pace, in its own time. Just as you cannot argue with Life, you cannot rewind or fast forward time. You have to go through what you have to go through. There is no escape. And so, the best way to live peacefully, happily, is to put in your best efforts each time and leave the results to Life. This means, don’t fight, don’t resist Life. Just accept what comes your way and keep moving on!

 

Don’t take a rejection personally

In this Vlog, I share an important learning – that a rejection is really Life’s way of teaching you to focus on your efforts and not on the rewards. So take it easy and don’t let a rejection debilitate you or crush you.

View time: 3:32 minutes

 

It is not worth taking rejection personally!

If you consider the other person’s point of view, you will always find your being rejected justified.

A reader asked me how I cope with rejection. “Isn’t it downright humiliating,” she asked, adding, “Don’t you feel unwanted and worthless?”

The questions the reader poses are pertinent. Feeling hurt when rejected by someone is a very normal human response. But the truth is that neither can you prevent someone from rejecting what you offer nor is there any value in your feeling hurt or let down. Dealing with rejection requires you to understand Life better.

When someone says no to you or what you are offering, please know that it is possible they are looking for someone or something else. People’s choices are always a function of their emotional state. When you are tired and exhausted after a run, you may perhaps prefer a cold lemonade than a hot coffee. When you are coming out of a messy relationship, chances are you may prefer a casual, one night stand than a long-term commitment. When you are embroiled in a long-drawn legal dispute, you may be very wary of business deals where there is ambiguity. Your choices are always driven by what you have been through, what you are experiencing and what you want from Life going forward. So, when someone rejects your proposition, they are often rejecting it for their own reasons. Of course, when you are peddling a product or a service, people also compare and choose. Which again is a function of how they feel about quality or pricing or features and such.

So, as I have understood it, rejection is a non-issue if you consider the other person’s point of view. But most often you don’t. And so you take rejection personally. You think you are being singled out. You imagine the world and all its people are conspiring against you. And because you imagine all this, you feel depressed and you suffer.

Vaani and I have been facing rejection for over 10 years now. (Read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal) Most of the time, our emails or messages offering or introducing our services to prospective clients go un-responded. In 2007 we got no revenue for a whole calendar year despite meeting 500 CEOs. Between June 2012 and December 2014, for 30 months, we again got no income, despite meeting so many hundred prospective clients and presenting our offerings to them. Even now we struggle each month for covering even a part of our living expenses. Not that we don’t try. Just yesterday I wrote to a CEO, a personal friend, requesting him for help in referring us to his circle of influence. Again, no reply. But Vaani and I have learnt the art of being detached from the results – of doing our bit, making our effort, and remaining unfrustrated with the outcomes. Because that’s the only way to inner peace. If you imagine that you are being conspired against, you will not sleep. Clearly, it is important to realize that what others have to say or think about you does not define your worth. Also, when you appreciate that people have other things to do than just listen to you, your story and pick up whatever you have to offer, then you are never frustrated.

When you see a pattern of rejection over a period of time, despite your best efforts, don’t rush to conclude that you are wrong or are worthless or unwanted. It just means that you are going through phase in Life when what you offer is not what people around you want. A simpler word here is relevance – you are perhaps, or what you offer is, not relevant. Now, you can either work on being relevant by tweaking your offerings or if you believe in yourself and what you are proposing to your world, just bide your time.

Bottom-line: don’t take rejection personally. It is not worth it. Nothing’s permanent in Life. So, a rash of rejections too, like everything else, will pass.

You are not worthless just because you have been rejected

Grieving is of no use; it only makes you depressive.

We met a young man the other day. He’s a good sales and marketing professional and a very sensitive human being. In his early 30s now, he has been asked to leave an organization that he had barely joined a few months ago. This was the third job that he was having to quit in the last three years. We were sharing perspectives with him on how he could cope with this phase of his Life. Although he could reason that such phases do happen to all of us in Life, his eyes kept welling up every time he talked about the manner in which some people were treating him. He was suddenly finding that his professional abilities were being viewed warily. He had been repeatedly rejected by his last three bosses and employers. All this was hurting him and he was finding it difficult to hold himself together.

I can relate to and empathize with this person’s situation. I too have struggled with being rejected. It really, really hurts; especially when you have put in your best, when you are being pushed to a corner and are told – without logic or reason – that you are not good enough. But over the years, through severaI experiences, I have learnt to deal with the grief that follows rejection. I have realized that grief is a very self-serving emotion. All it does is that it makes you depressive. Yes, it is natural that when you are rejected by someone, you will feel sad. And depressive. But wallowing in that depression is of no use. It will pin you down. It is like being locked up in a coffin that’s dumped into the sea. Now, you – and I – are no Houdini to stage a great escape. So we sulk, pine and suffer.

There’s a way to deal with rejection though. That way is to never take the act of rejection or the person rejecting you personally. Let’s understand, accept and appreciate that everyone is entitled to their opinion, their choices and their decisions. If someone exercises their prerogative with reference to you, they have only done what they are entitled to. Their choice need not necessarily be viewed as a judgment of your ability or character. Well, it may be possible that you can learn from the experience of being rejected and you may want to improve yourself. But in any case, don’t let the experience of getting rejected get to you. It is just another situation in Life where you have the opportunity to develop and demonstrate strength of spirit and character. Don’t get obsessed with rejection and use it as a benchmark to measure yourself. “Oh! I have been rejected by 100 employers. This is the third job I am losing in as many years. I am a failure because so many people have told me so.” – all these are self-demeaning perspectives. Feeling sorry for yourself and grieving is not going to make you feel any better or even get people to accept you. Only your moving on and trying again can help you. Chances are you may get rejected again. Then you move on again and try one more time. It is as simple as that!

You have to endure tough phases in Life with patience. Feeling frustrated, humiliated and sorry is of no use. Instead remember that what you are going through, whatever is happening to you, is no reflection of who you are or your ability.

Spike your ambitions with detachment and you will never be unhappy!

Rejections and delays can’t debilitate your spirit if you are aware!

“Can you stay detached while having wants, desires and ambitions,” asked a reader after reading my blogpost yesterday.

I replied: “Of course you can. That is what the whole point of understanding detachment and its practice is all about!”

Detachment is not trying to rid yourself of your wants, dreams, ambitions, aspirations or desires. The truth is you can never be in a desire-less state. What is a desire? It is a thought. You see an ice cream hoarding and a thought arises in you reminding you of how it tastes. If you dwell on that thought a trifle longer you may even start salivating – wanting the ice cream now! So it is with every thought. You cannot reach a state of thoughtlessness. As long as you are alive thoughts will arise. The key is to learn to aware of your thoughts and to train your mind so that your thoughts don’t hold you to ransom!

Thoughts on ambitions and dreams are perfectly normal. Whatever be your career goal or your deepest aspiration you must nurture it. There can be no progress without thoughts relating to your ambitions. So detachment is not about suppression. It is also not about running scared of wants and desires. Detachment is about being aware – that, in any context, in any situation, in Life, you are entitled only to your actions and not to the results or outcomes. Which is why detachment is not about inaction. You must act, you must strive, but you must also learn to remain detached from the results.

I used to imagine that detachment was impractical. For the longest time I believed that it was a Utopian state that could not be attained by ordinary mortals. But this past decade has been an awakening experience. In this time, Vaani and I have been making every possible effort to get our business back on track (read more here: Fall Like A Rose Petal). We have been discovering, repeatedly, that no matter how good we are or how hard we try, doors to a steady income don’t just open. Initially, we ended up being frustrated and dejected. After all, rejection and delays can debilitate your spirit. But when we examined the pattern closely, we found that there was nothing lacking in our efforts. Just that the results were not happening. So, we concluded that a. we must not blame ourselves if the results were not happening despite our best efforts and b. we are not the problem that we are dealing with. This awareness helped restore our self-esteem and self-confidence. This, in turn, has helped us plough on, no matter what is happening to us. This is how we learnt that detached determination is crucial to enduring inscrutable, inexplicable phases in Life. To be sure, we both are very ambitious – we want to repay all our debt, with full interest due, to the people we owe money to; we want to travel the world and live our Purpose of Inspiring Happiness among whoever cares to pause and reflect. Yes, we too have wants. And we have clear and lofty goals. But we are not frustrated, not any more, when our efforts don’t yield results. We have, if I may say so, spiked our ambitions with detachment! Which is why I call it detached determination. This is the secret of our happiness!

The truth about Life is that we must all wake up each morning and work enthusiastically doing whatever we can do best in any given situation. Beyond that, we must simply trust the process of Life. Not to try, not to work, that would be resignation, that means inaction. But to keep dreaming, to keep stoking your ambition constructively, to try and to keep trying, without getting depressed or frustrated, even when the results don’t add up, that is detachment.

Never allow the ‘fear of rejection’ to pin you down

When what you have to say or offer or ask for is rejected, remember, you are not being rejected!

An interesting conversation with an acquaintance brought up the subject of ‘fear of rejection’. She said that deep within her she was having trouble with reaching out for help or perspective or opportunity because she was never sure how she can handle a ‘no’. Now, she isn’t alone in feeling this way. A lot of the people, a lot of the times, struggle with the ‘fear of rejection’.

I too have feared, and disliked, being rejected.

I have come to understand ‘fear of rejection’ as the sum of two things – ‘fear’ and ‘dislike for rejection’. Clearly fear is a feeling within you. You fear something. Darkness. Uncertainty. Or even a pet – like I feel extremely uncomfortable in the presence of dogs. But fear can be overcome by facing it, by looking it in the eye. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is what fear delivers when you look what scares you, your fear, in the eye. So, in every sense, when you fear something, you do have the power within you to face the fear too. Try this: whatever you fear most in your Life, turn around, instead of running away from it or brushing the issue under the carpet, and face it – and believe me, your fear will dissolve. The situation may not change, but you will not fear it any more. Whether it is breaking off in a relationship or asking for a raise from your boss or whatever. ‘Rejection’, on the other hand, is not in your control. Someone else is rejecting you. What can you do about it? It is their prerogative to accept you or reject you. You only have a choice to influence their decision. You can’t enforce their decision – ever. So, ‘rejection’, to me, is a way to learn to accept Life for what it is. And it is always what it is. Yes, when you are rejected, you do dislike it – who doesn’t? But if you understand that your disliking it is not going to change any reality, you will let the dislike go and instead focus on what more can you do, what can you do next to be accepted.

Among the most difficult things to ask for in Life, according to me, is money. And unfortunately, for almost 5 years of my Life between 2002~2007, and on some occasions in the past decade, I have had to ask people for money. It was extremely humiliating in the beginning and the ‘fear of rejection’ gnawed at me so, so many times. But when I realized that I had to do what I had to in the given situation, of having to survive, and keep our family afloat, I faced my fear and asked people. I was humbled by many who came forth and have supported me and Vaani. But my requests have also been rejected by people. In fact, even as I asked people for money, I gave them the option to say ‘no’ saying that I will never misunderstand if they said they can’t support me or Vaani at that time. This is how I learnt to be non-judgmental about being rejected. To say ‘no’ is anyone’s prerogative – including yours – in a given context. And I learnt that we should never hold it against anyone for choosing to say ‘no’. This experience, humbling and awakening at the same time, has helped me deal with many other contexts with equanimity – rejection when a prospective client either does not award an engagement or does not even respond to emails/messages despite showing a keen interest upfront, rejection by a creditor of the evidence we place before them of our enduring bankrupt situation, rejection by a judicial authority of our pleas for more time to honor our commitments and several other instances. So, over the past 10 years, I have learnt to deal with ‘fear of rejection’ as follows:

1. Stop running away from whatever you fear. Face what you fear, look it in the eye!
2. When someone rejects you or says ‘no’ or implies that they are not interested, don’t be judgmental. Respect their choice to reject you, your offering or proposition. Remember: they are saying no to your proposition, your idea, your pitch, they are not saying no to you!
3. Don’t dislike the situation when you are rejected. Instead ask yourself what you can do to be accepted. Try again. And again. And stay willing to keep trying.

Both ‘fear’ and ‘dislike for rejection’ are debilitating. Don’t let them pin you down. Face what you fear and accept the situation every time your proposition is rejected. You too can then experience equanimity and be happy despite the circumstances!  

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