How I Developed a Growth Mindset in the Face of Rejection
Lessons from the HackerNoon Writing Contest
Imagine you’ve written a contest. You wrote to just one place because it was where you had your heart set on.
And you were confident you’d be accepted since many people considered your work in your field to be original and exciting.
But you were rejected.
Your intuition reaction at first tells you that it was extremely competitive, so it doesn’t reflect on you.
They probably had more first-rate writers than they could accept.
Then the voice in your head starts in. It tells you that you’re fooling yourself, rationalizing.
It tells you that the editorial found your work mediocre. After a while, you tell yourself it’s probably true.
The work is probably ordinary, pedestrian, and they’d seen that.
They were experts. The verdict is in and you’re not worthy.
With some effort, you talk yourself back into your first, reasonable, and more flattering conclusion, and you feel better.
In fixed intuition (and in most cognitive therapies), that’s the end of it. You’ve regained your self-esteem, so the contest is finished.
