Rejection
Why does rejection hurt so much. Why is it that avoiding rejection is what everybody aims for, whether this be social rejection, work- space rejection, sexual rejection and so on. Humans are social animals. Humans developed communities through thousands of years. Societies that live, eat and grow off each other. Societies in which rejection means isolation. Societies in which isolation means death. Societies with clear hierarchical structures… leaders and innovators at the top, sheep/followers in the middle and social rejects at the bottom. Lately in society social rejects or misfits have been looked at in a better light, often romanticized in movies and tv shows as the misunderstood badass or loner hero that walks away from the burning building after saving everyone from it. The antihero. The anti hero is both good and bad. (s)he has no place and so (s)he is forever trying to find its purpose.
““This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, and excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression – and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax. . . What kind of deity would create such complex and fancy worm food?”
– (the denial of death, Ernest Becker)
Finding the root problem
If you really dissect rejection, the pain isn’t necessarily the rejection itself. The pain lies within what you experience after. The thoughts. The anxieties. The tears. The reminder that you’re still a loser. The feeling of not being good enough. When I get asked about how to get over rejection, whether it be from a ivy league school or a crush or a job application, they often expect me to give them some little technique to immediately forget that it ever happened and that everything becomes better again. This does not exist. When I get asked this question, I cringe. Hard. There is no little routine that you can follow or a little exercise that you can to let go of that feeling or fear of rejection. Instead I will teach you how handle the root feeling of actually caring to the extent that your self view deteriorates. HSE (High Self Esteem) individuals have rooted themselves so deeply in their self esteem that when there is something such as rejection that goes against the way that the HSE individual sees themselves, they would shrug it off because it doesn’t benefit them in anyway at all. Stop chasing for little external quick fixes to stop feeling sad after. Stop reading sappy quotes to feel better after not getting the call back from that job interview. Stop over-texting your crush after (s)he said no. stop looking externally for you self view to change, instead look internally. Stop looking at the effect and start looking at the cause. Stop asking yourself “why am I not good enough?” and start asking yourself “why do I feel like I’m not enough” Julien blanc says, “The internal always colours the external.” If you can start looking at the root of the issue rather than the aftereffects, a lot of your problems would be solved by now. Hell, a lot of the world’s problems would be stopped by now. Promise me that you will stop looking for small mantras, affirmations or exercises without dealing with the root problem. Maybe it’s a desperate need for approval. Maybe it’s nice syndrome. Maybe it’s low self esteem, but stop letting your thoughts beat you up over something as ultimately insignificant as a no. because that’s all rejection is. A no. you’ve been to scared to live your life to the fullest because of those tiny, irrelevant, inconsequential letters.
Another point about rejection is that it isn’t the end of the world. Rejection at best is a marker that shows that you’re on the right track. We would’ve never heard of the riveting tales of harry potter, if J.K. Rowling was scared of rejection. In fact, the lady was so ballsy that her pitch to publishers for the book got rejected 12 times. They said that it was too conventional, too long for kids, too weird or too old fashioned. Yet without that lady’s persistence and sheer belief in her work, the lives of so many children around the world would have never been illuminated. For that Mrs J.K. Rowling, I thank you. Understand this: the second you let go of that fear of what might happen or what someone might say, that, my friend, is the moment success will come.
I want you to do something. I know I told you not to do any exercises, but literally on the first chapter… I haven’t started writing about the root issues as I said above. The exercise is simple but weird. In fact I, being the logical person I naturally am, couldn’t even do it the first time, but I didn’t stop trying. It’s pretty straight forward. When ever you get rejected… laugh at yourself. Because when you think about it, it’s really funny. I actually want you to visualise yourself outside of your body, as if you were a person outside of your body watching the whole rejection ordeal go down. The reason I want you to laugh is that I want to sear into your brain, that rejection is not the end of the world. Stop trying to maintain this world view of you’re a god and when you get rejected your power goes away. Stop caring so much. Just do it. Just snap. 20,30,40,50 years from now, you’ll sit back and ask yourself, “ why was I so uptight?” and even on your deathbed, you won’t be worried about the opportunities that you took and got rejected by. You regret the opportunities that you were too scared to take because of your petty fear of rejection. With that being said, my friend, I will leave you with one of the most famous quote from one of the most depraved villains.
“Why so serious?”
– the Joker
(p.s. any DC comics fan would know the disturbing back story behind this quote)
Now I’m going to lightly dissect each of these root problems that you might be facing that makes you feel like when you get rejected, that you are less of a human being. Remember that I will go into depth about these issues later on in the book so read on you social butterflies.
- Need for approval. The desperate need for someone to like you. The aching need for someone to reaffirm that you are a good person. The bursting need for someone to say that you are actually good enough. This is wrong. When you are approval seeking, you are looking externally for that reconfirmation that you are enough. You do not trust yourself. You need others to show you your own self worth. When you find yourself going out of your way to try and meet someone else’s standards, you are looking for their approval. For their acceptance. This is bad. Rather focus on how you could give yourself acceptance and approval. As a child as your parents raised you, you were praised for certain actions and rebuked for incorrect actions. Your subconscious, as you grow older will try to stop you from ever feeling those negative emotions. We may carry this into adulthood, especially when we are around people of perceived superior status, a boss, a crush, a group of new people. Thus we try not to make them upset or weirded-out and so we act in a way that we perceive that they might like or approve of. I will speak about this in subsequent chapters as this is a huge issue for most people.
- Fear of rejection. These are the “what if” people. You aren’t necessarily scared of making them upset, although that is a factor, you are really scared of what happens after. As said before, the rejection itself isn’t the problem, it is the after thoughts. The thoughts of not being good enough and so on. In fact sometimes you are so siked- out by this that you don’t try at all. you try to spare yourself the pain altogether. You’d rather not feel the rush. The adrenaline. The passion. You may not want to start your business, because you’re scared that investor won’t be interested or that it’ll fail. Maybe you are scared to even talk to that one girl/guy that has your attention, because you are scared of what they might think of you. So you don’t. Tony Robbins, the author, coach, motivational speaker, philanthropist and all round cool guy once said in his best seller, MONEY Master The Game, when talking about entrepreneurs that don’t put their ideas into action because of that fear of failure/rejection. :
“information without execution is poverty.”- Tony Robbins
Ego and low self esteem (LSE): I can comfortably say that after going through the ego, you’ve gained a fuller understanding of it. Now this is ego applied into the real world. Ego 2.0 . when you see a beautiful girl walking down the street and you work up the nerves and decide to meet her, and she immediately blows you out. This…this is when your ego is tested. If you find yourself saying that she doesn‘t know better or you start insulting her for it, you are trying to reaffirm your ego. You are trying to reaffirm that “ I’m James Bond” front. Stop. Breathe. Laugh. Laugh at yourself. Laugh at your ego. Laugh at your front. Remember the exercise above. Laugh. Laugh. Laugh. Maybe you haven’t received a phone call from that job that you are clearly overqualified for. Instead of letting your ego and fake thoughts consume you. Stop. Breathe. Laugh. And try again somewhere else. Aim higher and higher at each go. Maybe your university application to Harvard, your dream school, has been rejected. I give you permission to cry. I give you permission to be sad, but I do not give you permission to be depressed about it. I do not give you permission to let your ego kick in. to let your ego tell you that your aren’t good enough. That you aren’t intelligent enough. In the grand scheme of things, it’s about how hard you work in life, not about which school you went to. Nevertheless, stop. Breathe. Laugh. And try again to a different school. Apply to multiple. List doing 5-10 schools, and rate them from most difficult to enter to least difficult. Have a real, ego free talk with yourself, put on some chill lofi beats and start calling them.
- Outcome dependency: when you enter a situation with a pre-set or already determined set of results. now, sometimes it’s ok to enter a working environment with certain set of goals, this mostly applies to social situations. This is when one sets one’s goal of happiness or acceptance on the actions of another person. This is most prevalent in the cesspit of hormones called high-school. Have you ever had to move to a new school and meet new friends. It is literally the hardest thing. For all you old people out there that haven’t been in high-school for years, there is a hierarchy, with popular kids at the top and social rejects at the bottom. Obviously we wouldn’t like to be the social reject so we have to make friends with the popular kids. This kids have a perceived high status or high value than us in this specific social environment, so we aim to impress. When we converse with the popular kids, we want them to laugh at our jokes, or immediately be drawn to what we have to say. This is when we are basing our outcomes on their actions. This is bad because you cannot control this. When we come into social situations expecting something of someone, it comes across as untrustworthy and immediately conveys to the person that you are not completely rooted in your own self confidence. That you need something from them in order to feel like you’ve achieved some happiness. This is like trying to get a vampire to eat garlic, it’s never going to happen. When you turn your focus from wanting their actions to make you feel good, into doing actions to make yourself feel good, you become outcome independent. This means that you stop asking questions like, “ What should I say to him/her to make her laugh” and rather, “What will make me laugh right now” or “what do I find funny.” I will go into greater depth about this in the subsequent articles.