How to deal with rejection

Being rejected is one of the common problems that individuals deal with in society. Rejection can be of any form, could be unreturned love, an unpublished book, an idea being rejected at work, being not appreciated for your efforts or perhaps even being stood up on a date. Whatever the situation is, these events do let us down and can bring in a sense of rejection in an individual.

It is but natural to feel depressed or sad when one faces rejection in life. If you think about it carefully, you may notice that an individual feels good, or happy when they find acceptance in society or by someone whom they consider important in their life. Hence, feeling the opposite is but a natural process during rejection. However, the most important problem to deal with is how to cope up with rejection. Rejection can make you feel depressed, but it shouldn’t be something which permits you to take happiness out of your life. Some of the common symptoms of depression are not being able to eat properly, disinterest in regular day to day work, anxiety etc. These things eventually take a toll on you, if not dealt with at proper time.

The best way to deal with rejection is to accept the fact that you have been rejected. It can be a case of unreturned love, where you find that the person to whom you are attracted to, or perhaps in love with, doesn’t wish to love you back. It is very common that people tend to go an extra mile to prove their love or affection to someone who is not available to them. A common reason of doing such thing is hope of acceptance from someone whom you consider important in your life. In cases of love failures, people are affected the worst. In order to deal with such situations, it is important that you accept the fact that the person of interest (rather love object) is not available to you, and might want to be with someone else or perhaps with no one at all. People tend of linger over hope of being accepted at a later point in time, and thus hurt themselves even more. It is very important to come out of this cycle, and let go of those feelings. It is very common to grieve at such issues, but don’t overdo it. It must be understood that it is not your fault that the love object has rejected you. What needs to accepted is that you have put your best efforts to be emotionally available to someone, so it is not your fault. The person in grief should stop blaming himself or herself over the rejection. One might even think that one needs to change certain aspects of oneself so that he or she can be more acceptable to the love object. This is a positive thought, but never do this for just one person. Infact, if there is any quality, which you think is generally not acceptable then try to change that for self-improvement. Other immediate ways to get over a love rejection is to give yourself some time to accept and heal. Time heals everything. Accept the fact that your happiness is the most important, and that other people should not be a pre-condition for it. Try to take nature-walks, read books, or perhaps travel to an unknown destination to take your mind off things. It might also open up the possibility to meet new people and share different experiences. Taking a challenging task can help you take off your mind over the feeling of depression and also help you in self-development. In cases of continuous love rejections, don’t get to the idea that you are unlovable. Ask yourself one question, how many people have you met with? Is it 3, 5, 10 or 20? When you count the number, and compare with world population, it will be an overwhelmingly small percentage. This is easier said than done, but belief in one-self is the most important way to deal with these kinds of situations. Ask yourself, have you travelled enough to meet different kinds of people in this world? Are you being rejected over and over again, because you are meeting similar kind of people who might not be able to accept you for what you are? Asking these important questions can help you in analyzing your situation and make you feel better about yourself, rather than being depressed and anxious. Always remember, that you are responsible for your own happiness, and no one else.

For other types of rejection, like a job application rejection, or being turned down by a publisher for a book you have written, or perhaps an idea you consider important to be turned down by colleagues or perhaps at a larger forum; it is important to accept rejection in a positive way. Always try to ask for feedback in such cases. It is not important whether you incorporate those feedback to the goal or not, however it gives you an idea about what other people think of it. If too many people turn down your idea, it doesn’t mean that the idea is useless, it might mean that the idea is perhaps a little ahead of its time, or maybe it might need more work to be ready and more acceptable. Whatever the case is, take rejection in a positive way. It is important to be rejected and get the essence of failure in life. If you haven’t been rejected enough or haven’t failed enough, perhaps you are not doing anything new in life. Always remember that only new ideas and changes get rejected, and sometimes, they also become pivots of very important change which society needs from time to time. If your job application has been rejected, or perhaps you have failed an important test or exam, try to ask yourself, how can I improve myself to achieve the goal. Take rejection or failure in a positive way and deal with it. This will only help you in self-improvement and make you a better individual.

It is very important that you believe in yourself. Self-belief is the single most important factor in moving ahead in life without relying on anyone for support. If you are one hundred percent convinced that your idea or perhaps a book you have written is something which is important, then don’t give up on it. Let’s take an example of a case where a young budding author writes something fantastic on fantasy-fiction which doesn’t get immediate recognition on a public forum. This doesn’t mean that the content of the literature is bad or not classy enough. What it means is that perhaps it not being forwarded to the right audience or perhaps the world doesn’t have enough audience to understand the literature at that point in time. That is completely acceptable, if you truly believe that what you have written is out of the box and something new. Even legendary poets like John Keats didn’t get enough audience for their literary works during their time. Such things happen all the time. But, it doesn’t mean that you should feel rejected and deprive the world of your talent. If you really like and believe in what you do, try it do it without a feeling of recognition. This not only helps in self-development and building a better personality, but also helps you to focus more on the work, rather than worrying about it being accepted by society. Always remember that most of the great ideas and works in the world weren’t accepted at a go. Infact, it takes several years of patience and hard work to gain recognition and acceptance for what you do, even if the audience you cater to is small. Albert Einstein had to wait for several years before he could find a perfect solar eclipse which could prove his theory of general relativity to the scientific community. It’s an irony that he never received a Nobel for such important a discovery in the scientific world.

To sum up, believe in yourself, give yourself time to heal, and try to be the reason for your own happiness to get over rejection. If nothing else works, a persian phrase says, “this too shall pass”; for nothing in the world is permanent, neither love, nor grief, nor us.