How To Handle Rejection

By Sarah-Len

One of the negative emotions we encounter almost daily is the feeling of rejection from the surrounding people.

We face rejection in so many forms and shapes. If you look closely at your daily events, you realize that it is almost impossible to go through the day without facing some kind of rejection.

These little rejections we face are why we are afraid of the bigger forms of rejections such as rejection from family members, friends, workmates, and spouses.

10 Ways to deal with rejection

You cannot completely eradicate feelings of rejection when you experience them but you can change your mindset and how you view rejection.

This ensures that your self-esteem, confidence, and sense of worth is not diminished by experiencing rejection. Some things that you can practice are:

1.         Self-love.

Self-love is the umbrella term for different acts and beliefs towards oneself.

It consists of self-care, self-confidence, self- respect, self-esteem, self-reliance, self-acceptance, and self-worth.

Self-love is the essence of happiness. When you have a strong sense of self-love, rejection will not hurt as badly as compared to someone who lacks it.

Self-love may also reduce your chances of facing rejection because when you love yourself you are also careful what you expose yourself to.

This does not mean you should not take chances and put yourself out there. It only means that self-love will help you choose wisely what chances to take and what chances aren’t worth taking the risk.

2. Accept you are not everyone’s cup of tea.

Just like how you are not a big fan of some people and how you also don’t like certain people, other people are most likely to feel that way about you too.

Do not attach any meaning to your self-worth using this. People like what they like and that might not be you. It doesn’t undermine you as a person, neither does it mean anything.

Even the greatest men and women in history had critics and enemies too.

3. Do not generalize situations

When you experience rejection, do not say things like ‘this always happens to me’ or ‘I will never be good enough’ etc.

This is not true at all, you may have encountered similar situations several times but this doesn’t mean that it is always happening to you.

Generalizing situations will cause cognitive distortion where you will always associate a certain experience with negative emotion.

4.         People reject actions and not ‘you’

People usually reject our actions or our thoughts, but these things do not define us as we consist of a million other things physically and non-physically.

It is impossible that everyone you encounter will get the full experience of ‘you’; hence, sometimes they do not get the chance to experience the good things about you that make you a wonderful being.

5.         Understand no one owes you anything.

This involves managing your expectations. One way to handle rejection is to understand that no one owes you anything and nothing is guaranteed.

When you go through life expecting people to treat you a certain way or accept you no matter what, you have an attitude of self-entitlement which is also unfair to other people.

When someone rejects you, do not take it personally, they just have their own preferences on personal attributes that you may not possess and this does not depict your worth.

6.         Look at rejection as an opportunity.

Rejection sometimes is an opportunity for us to review ourselves. Sometimes the surrounding environment has ways of reminding us to occasionally self-evaluate ourselves and usually, this happens through rejection.

Rejection can be an opportunity for us to try out things and approach situations differently.

7.         Don’t obsess over why it happened.

There is that voice that lives inside our head that is always waiting to shine the light on our insecurities.

This voice is always lurking in the back of our heads waiting for the perfect opportunity to make us question the meaning of our existence.

It is essential that after facing rejection you; spend no time thinking about why it has happened. Don’t obsess over rejection. You will only feel worse about yourself.

8.         Stay gracious.

No matter what life throws at you, always try to stay gracious. I know this is hard to do when you are dealing with negative emotions but, when you stay gracious the people that rejected you may admire you for your positive attitude towards life.

Not only that; practicing graciousness even during tough times builds a strong character and helps to minimize the effects of negative emotions and experiences. It is hard, but it is a good challenge to take on

9.         Be around people and circumstances that bring out the best in you.

You are what you consume! You become the people and situations you spend most of your time with.

If you are around people and circumstances where you face rejection often, you can imagine what this will do to your psyche.

Be around people that bring out the best in you and people that love you.

10.       Keep positive visual stimulus around you.

Most people undermine the impact of positive visual stimulus. Just like how the body is nourished through ingesting food, we nourish the mind through the five senses.

The mind is ALWAYS absorbing, use this to your own advantage and absorb positive things as often as you can.

Rejection is not the end of the world.

Author Bio:

Sarah-Len Mutiwasekwa is a mental health advocate who works in conjunction with the Global Institute of Emotional Health and Wellness. The organization is situated in the humble location of Zimbabwe where it is invested in bringing mental health services at an affordable cost to no cost for all citizens. Currently they work with University students and you can see more of their work on www.giehw.com.

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