How to be rejected every day.

Rejection is a choice. You can choose to be rejected once in a while, or to be rejected all day, every day.

Let me explain.

Rejection is tough.
As humans, we are wired to seek the acceptance of our peer group.
Back in the day, it was either stay within the group and share dinner in the cave, or leave the group and be someone else’s dinner.
Which means that only the ones that fitted in with the group survived and were able to pass their genes onto us. We come from a very long line of ancestors that were afraid of not being liked by their tribe.

The incredible luxury.

Fear of rejection is normal. I feel it every day. Every one does.

What separates us from our hairy ancestors is an incredible luxury: we don’t need to constantly worry about survival.
For the vast majority of human history, every individual had to work every day to survive. At first, it was a group hunt. Then, foraging for food. Then, basic agriculture. That was the turning point. Since then, only some people within the group were responsible for providing food to survive. This freed up lots of time and brainpower, which brought technological advancements that allowed a very small minority of the population to provide for the rest of us. In the US, only 15% of the population work in agriculture and farming. Yet we all eat every day.

This degree of freedom is unique in the history of humanity.

And it doesn’t even stop here. The internet, global communities, and the degree of individual freedom that most places across the “developed” world offer, have made it a lot easier to share and be exposed to new ideas, and to find people that share your worldview. You can pick and choose.

Now, that’s a rare luxury.

If you go up your family tree 500 years, each one of us has about 1,000,000 direct ancestors. That goes up from your parents, to your grandparents, to their parents, and so on. Go back 1,000 years, and that number becomes 1 trillion. And so on.
Most of them didn’t get any these luxuries.

This is a unique moment in the history in time when you’re free to do one thing: be yourself.

But when you listen to that fear of rejection, you say no to your privileges.
The only way to avoid rejection is to be average, almost transparent.
Hold that opinion: keep it to yourself, until you hate it.
Don’t get that t-shirt you like: resist that silly idea, until you hate it.
Do not help others: stop those good but risky thoughts until you hate yourself.
Just fit in and smooth out those things that make you, you.

Do this, and no one will ever reject you for one simple reason: no one will notice you.

The only way to avoid rejection, is to follow an imaginary protocol. To never be yourself — but isn’t that the ultimate rejection?

When you start to take risks and show your self, a wonderful thing happens. You attract your own kind.
By sharing your thoughts, your story, your vulnerabilities, you will provoke a reaction.
Some people won’t like it, and they will reject you. And that’s fine. That’s great actually, because they will probably not be the kind of people you enjoy to be around.
But other people will notice. And they will like what you show. It will resonate with their view of their world and how they want to live their life. They will want to know more about you, and you’ll want to know more about them. The will accept you for who you really are, because of who you really are.

Rejection is just the other side of acceptance.

– Matt