How do YOU handle Rejection?
Do you feel like rejection is robbing you of joy?
In this world, no matter what profession we choose our largest obstacle is always going to be rejection.
Anything we do, be it business, or some other goal you are pursuing, get used to getting knocked back on your heels over and over again. Seriously, get used to it.
In the Harvard Business Review article titled “To Recover Faster from Rejection, Shift Your Mindset”, Nicole Torres researches and discusses five studies completed by Psychologist Carol Dweck and Lauren Howe, which as the title suggests, those who are able to change their mindset are able to recover more quickly from rejection.
Those who are able to change their mindset are able to recover more quickly from rejection .
Studying Rejection
The study demonstrates that people who endorse an entity theory of personality (i.e., personality cannot be changed) report alterations in their self-definitions when reflecting on past rejections or imagining novel rejection experiences . Furthermore, the emphasis of the study is that these “changes in self-definition hinder post-rejection recovery, causing individuals to feel haunted by their past”, fearing the recurrence of rejection and to experience lingering negative affect from the rejection. It becomes a snowball effect and every rejection adds to the last making the person experiencing rejections feel worse and worse as they go on.
Handling Rejection is the Difference between Winning and Losing
How you face rejection is one of the biggest differences between winning and not winning. How you face rejection, and if you do all the stuff that the others just wont do by continuing forward through rejection is the difference between winning and losing. If you tell the successful person it takes 100 rejections to get to just one single Win, they ask themselves how they can get 300 rejections a day. On the other hand, the person who is unable to re-frame rejection get stuck in place and probably doesn’t even try to get more people to tell them no.
While the winners get hit and keep moving forward, the others either get hit once and turn off their engine, never really trying again, or they don’t give nearly the effort that it takes because they are unwilling to take the hits of rejection. Rejection causes them to shut down, unable to do the things that others wont, and unable to move forward towards their goals.
Framing Rejection is the key
The biggest differentiator, as we learned from the study above, is being able to re-define “rejection” and turn “No” into “Not Yet” is special. The person who re-frames rejection into a learning process understand failure is really not failure, but a chance to grow. As many of you can attest, it takes a LOT of learning to get to the top of your profession. That rejection gives motivation and puts a fire in the stomach of winners. Michael Jordan was a master of this. Maybe his most famous TV commercial has to do with turning rejection into motivation.
Thomas Edison was one who learned about re-framing rejection first hand, early and often. He faced “failure” and rejection and he never stopped moving forward.
Here are some of Edison’s famous quotes on the matter:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
“I start where the last man left off.”
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Thomas A. Edison
Sorry, 80% Just won’t make it. Rejection will stop them.
Unfortunately most don’t have the drive to actually fight forward to make it happen, and they will make up the best excuses you’ve ever heard as to why they are unable to accomplish their goals. It’s their kids, they can’t “find the time”, It’s the President’s fault, It’s Russia, fill in the blank _______. The law of the vital few, or Pareto’s Law says that 80% of results come from 20% of causes, and that applies apples to apples to those who do what it takes to find success.
To truly find success, the other 80% of people who are getting stopped by rejection need to find a way to change their state of mind. Maybe most of them will never do that, but maybe just a few of those folks actually do want to experience change in their life and will put in the extra effort to accomplish their goals. They will recognize that they are telling themselves a BS story, and that the only way they can get to the top is get used to getting knocked back on their heels over and over again.
The great life coach Tony Robbins said “Remember: we all get what we tolerate. So stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or half-assed or fearful states.”
How do you handle rejection, and how does that help you to differentiate and excel at what YOU do?
Got any good tips?
You can email me at brandonjonseck@g.harvard.edu, Tweet to me @luckilyinfamous, or leave a comment below. Reject my rejection article, I want you to…
