Craving Rejection
“A boo is a lot louder than a cheer. If you have 10 people cheering and one person booing, all you hear is the booing.” -Lance Armstrong
I have this friend who is always there, especially during my worst moments. He’s there when I’m about to nod off. He’s there when I wake up. He always talks to me when I’m at work and even follows me to interviews and dates. I have a love/hate relationship with him because I know he just wants to help, but he constantly frustrates me. His name is rejection.
“What the hell did I do wrong? I met all of the requirements, I showed up early, and we seemed to get along really well.”
It’s more than just a slap in the face; it’s a forceful blow that can do more than just knock you down. Unfortunately, this is more than just a metaphor. A study in 2011 showed that physical pain is a symptom of rejection.
One of the trials involved pouring a scolding hot cup of coffee on subjects’ forearms, examining the effects of physical pain. Another trial in the same study asked subjects to look at pictures of their ex-partners, which stirred up feelings concerning unwanted break-ups.
The results of these trials showed that the effects of social rejection and physical pain “are similar not only in that they are both distressing, they share a common representation in somatosensory brain systems (the part of your brain that involves sensations like pressure, pain, or warmth) as well.”
If you let it, rejection can destroy your life faster than Paula Deen lost her cooking show for spouting racial slurs.
Deep down, we know we just want approval anywhere we can find it and sometimes a small taste will satisfy us, but most of the time we become addicted to the need for validation.
Embracing failure
Most of us are well-acquainted with the feeling that accompanies rejection: failure. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of talk about the upsides of failure, and yet many of us struggle with re-positioning failure as a positive event in our lives.
When I was in grade school, my grades ranged from utterly abysmal to f***ing fantastic. Throughout middle school and high school, I received a slew of failing grades throughout those seven years and there was even a point when I stopped working towards an A and accepted defeat.
As I grew older, though, I began understanding why that failure was necessary and why I had become so much better for it. In college, I’ve rarely failed in any class I’ve taken and I’m certain it has to do with how much failure I’ve experienced in the past.
Regardless of what you fail in, what matters is how well you learn from your mistakes and adapt to your flaws.
Do your best to remember that you’re not alone. There exists plenty of evidence that those who have failed the most have become the most successful. That is no coincidence.
My obsession with approval
About a year ago, I started shifting my focus to enhancing my professional image as a business student and working hard to polish all of my imperfections to ready myself for the most intense competition I’ve ever participated in during my 21 years on this Earth: the job search.
Pumping through a dozen applications before going to bed only to wake up the next morning to read a lengthy e-mail thanking you for your consideration, then kindly declining your application because another candidate has proved more “worthy” is not the best feeling, but it’s definitely not the worst.
A worse feeling is going through the process of:
1. Uploading a resume and cover letter
2. Being interviewed remotely through a webcam for 10 minutes
3. Driving 30 minutes to an hour to arrive, then having to drive home
4. Sitting down for the scariest 20 minutes of your life to answer a verbal questionnaire that’s more stressful than taking an SAT in high school
All of this effort just to receive a rejection letter the following day that makes you wonder why you wasted over an hour and a half of your time on seeking the approval of another group of people.
Those pesky left swipes
I don’t care how gorgeous you are. I know you’ve had multiple, if not thousands of people swipe left on your pretty face. Now that you know rejection can create a sort of physical pain, imagine that pain multiplied by however many times you’ve had someone respectfully (or disrespectfully) decline to meet you, or even talk to you.
Ouch.
When I first started using dating apps, I was hooked. I was fresh meat and felt like the world was mine and its inhabitants were suddenly my lab rats to experiment with. Things changed faster than Usain Bolt can run the 100-meter sprint (27.8 mph, in case you were wondering).
I rapidly learned the ins and outs of rejection and my confidence shot down to near-zero levels. Everywhere I looked I saw disappointment and I was all too eager for the approval of others.
Please don’t misinterpret me. The importance of approval, at times, is fundamental to any relationship. However, expectations are important, too. Specifically, lowering your expectations or raising the bar can be incredibly beneficial.
When I mention lowering your expectations, I definitely don’t mean that you shouldn’t pursue people that you think are “out of your league,” because your perception of yourself is inherently going to be different than anyone else’s.
Instead, try not to expect everyone in the universe to come running at you all at once, because it’s not going to happen unless you’re Kim Kardashian (in her case, they could be running at her with pitchforks).
Your self-esteem will greatly thank you if you limit your expectations in this way. Additionally, try to remind yourself that you would prefer if the cute girl or guy in your class asked you out, but you’re not going to internally combust if things don’t go your way.
Similarly, tell yourself over and over that you would prefer it if you were hired for your desired position at that Fortune 500 company you applied for last week. If that place doesn’t hire you, look elsewhere.
Any spiritual leader will tell you that reminding ourselves of the differences between our wants and needs is key to achieving happiness.
Comparisons aren’t doing you any favors
In fact, they’re hurting you significantly. Stop drooling over the shiny, new Tesla in your neighbor’s driveway. That car belongs to someone else and somehow they earned it. Maybe they didn’t acquire it legally, but they still earned it.
Your life is separate from others’ lives. You earned the car you do have and you should be proud of yourself for having it. If you want to keep comparing, let’s do a 180:
· The number of cars in the world has surpassed 1.4 billion and there are more than 7.6 billion people on the planet.
· If there’s one car per person, then 6.2 billion people are without cars. Billions of people around the world don’t even have a car, so statistically you’re doing pretty well.
Incidentally, the same concept can be applied to job interviews:
· Out of the 328.1 million people in the United States, 6.5 million are unemployed. At first, this may seem negligible, but that number is in the millions.
· Of those that are employed, 1.8 million are paid the federal minimum ($7.25) or lower.
If you didn’t land that job you wanted in the first round of interviews, it’s okay. You probably still have some source of income and the only way to go is up from there.
And the same goes for dating:
· About 45% of men and 49% of women in the United States are single as of 2018. That’s almost half the country’s population, which is either inspiring or depressing, depending on how you look at it.
· About 35% of men and 30% of women in the United States have never even been married
· About 9% of men and 11% of women are divorced
Regardless of which half of the glass you focus on, though, the evidence is plain and clear that you’re not the only one having trouble getting hitched or remaining hitched.
Cynics like myself will convince themselves that the rest of the population is not necessarily married but still in relationships. Although it’s practically impossible to prove this isn’t true, I assure you there’s a large portion of the country stuck in the same situation as you.
Think about the long-run
Personally, I have to continuously remind myself that all of this disappointment will pass and the best is yet to come. That’s exactly why I want to remind you of what I tend to forget: you’re going to become a bona fide bad**s once this tsunami wave of rejection passes.
Right now, you might not feel your best, but I promise you that feeling is temporary, like the length of time a balloon remains inflated or the amount of time Donald Trump will remain in office.
Knowing all of this will hopefully make you realize all of your best qualities, instead of fixating on your least favorite. One day far in the future you may grow to love rejection and eventually crave it.
