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How to deal with rejection
Friday, 8 September 2006
During your life you're likely to experience a large number of rejections. People you're attracted to won't like you, jobs you want will be denied to you, invitations you make will be declined, and things you produce will be snubbed. Whether you like it or not, it's inevitable, so the best thing to do is form a strategy to deal with such rebuffs.
Why is rejection so painful?
We're hard-wired to hate it. When other people disapprove of, disrespect or ignore us, it feels horrible. Anger, depression, and deep hurt can be the result. The reason is simple, in times past being rejected by our peers most likely meant death.
It's always worth remembering that our bodies don't realize we're living in the environment we are. Most of human history has been spent in hunter and gatherer communities. At most, you're a few thousand years from an ancestor who lived like a caveman. Our conscious minds may have caught up with the fact that we're living in the computer age, but our bodies and instincts still think we're hunting animals, collecting seeds, and sleeping under the stars in tribal societies.
The most obvious sign of this is in the trouble many people have keeping their weight under control. Their bodies don't realize that they're living in an age of easy access to food. They still believe lean times and starvation are strong possibilities. If you think you're living in a tribal society, stocking up on as much food as you possibly can when it's available makes a lot of sense.
Our morbid fear of rejection is another hangover from the tribal days. In hunter and gatherer societies, people were completely dependent on their tribe for survival. Tribes of less than fifty people shared food, heat, water and protection. If the tribe rejected you, there was no option to go and join another one somewhere else. If you weren't murdered by your peers, you were left to fend on your own with starvation the likely result.
As a consequence, the thought of being rejected by anyone we interact with can seem terrifying. If you're going to be relying on the same few people for the rest of your life, losing the confidence of any one of them is a major blow.
Of course, these days, having someone not like you isn't such a big deal. If your workmates reject you, you can simply find another job. If your neighbors hate you, you can move house.
While it's worthwhile trying to get along with those around you, the consequences of rejection are usually nowhere near as big as they would have been for our ancestors. Of course, rejection can still cause problems - such as when you're a kid at school or a prisoner in maximum security - but generally, our morbid fear of it is an over-reaction.
In fact, in many cases, those who've experienced more rejection are the successful in today's world. Life today is a numbers game. You get ahead by exploring all sorts of different opportunities.
Generally, the more you explore, the more likely you are to hit on something successful. But it's rare that an opportunity comes with no chance of rejection attached. Often, the best opportunities carry a high chance of being turned down.
For example, someone who applies for as many jobs as they can out of school is more likely to be successful than someone who applies for only one. The first person will almost certainly experience a lot of rejection, but they need only one acceptance to start working. The second person has only one chance of rejection, but also only one chance for success. In job-hunting, rejection carries virtually no cost past the emotional one, while success brings a lot of benefits.
What's true in job-hunting is also true in many other arenas - dating, business, sales, friendships. Paradoxically, those who experience more rejection are also those most likely to find success, as they explore the most opportunities.
So it makes sense to train your hard-wired fear of rejection out of your system. And there's only one way to do this - experience it. You can never completely remove the pain of being rebuffed, but with each experience of it, it becomes less sharp. Before long, the word "no" will bounce off you like bullets off Superman's chest.
It helps to take a philosophical approach. One way to view a rejection is as a path to success. As you explore each bad option, you become closer to hitting a good one.
Another way is to view rejection as a learning experience. Even if you don't get what you were after, you still get something out of the encounter - tolerance. You're toughening yourself up against rejection, so you won't let the fear of it hold you back.
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