“True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” -Brene Brown
Rejection hurts in the same way that physical pain hurts. It’s a proven fact.
Research studies using fMRI technology to look at the brain have actually shown that the same areas that get activated by physical pain also get activated by rejection.
I’m not surprised. I can still recall the wave of shock and pain that washed over me when my closest friend and roommate abruptly stopped talking to me in the fall of our sophomore year of college. I tried to talk with her and ask her what had changed and she refused to answer me except to say that she was moving out. What made it harder to accept was that she hadn’t planned on telling me beforehand. I only got the heads up because a mutual friend had warned my other roommate beforehand.
When we confronted her by asking to have a meeting in our living room, my friend was icy and shut off. She acted hostile and moved her chair to the farthest corner to create as much distance between us as possible. She refused to talk except to answer our questions with single word answers and short sentences. I was in shock. I was literally grasping to understand what was happening.
Our friendship only lasted a year, and yet over twenty years later I still feel the physical pain in my chest and abdomen when I think about how it ended and that I am no longer a part of her life.
For many years afterwards when my thoughts meandered back to the abrupt ending of this friendship, I felt feelings of confusion. It felt as though I had been cast off without explanation, and that I wasn’t worthy of an explanation. I felt rejected, but I didn’t properly understand what I had done, and I wasn’t given an opportunity to make amends.
It’s taken me twenty plus years to shift my thinking so that I can heal.
I am now able to recognize that the way that she ended our friendship wasn’t so much about me and whether or not I was a bad person, but more about her desire to avoid confrontation and difficult emotions. She wasn’t comfortable verbalizing her anger or hurt towards me, so she shut me out completely.
This shift in perspective has allowed me to be kinder to myself. The rejection still hurts, but the original thoughts connected to it (I am a horrible person, I did something irreversibly wrong) aren’t nearly as powerful.
I also no longer beat myself up about taking the loss so hard. I recognize that this friendship impacted me so greatly because it occurred during a very vulnerable and impressionable time in my life (starting college, living a thousand miles away from home, becoming an adult), and that it makes sense given how abruptly it ended that I might struggle.
The truth is that we all have experienced rejection at various points in our lives, and that the ways that we’ve interpreted and coped with our past rejections influence how we experience them currently.
Not all of the rejections that we experience are as painful or long lasting as the one that I just described, but all rejections sting.
Maybe you feel it as a heaviness in your chest. Maybe you start to wonder what you did wrong or think that you’re not good enough. It could be a momentary feeling of shame or a desire to give up and stop what you’re doing. You may know rationally that you’ll get over the sting. Nevertheless, it still hurts more than you’d like to admit.
As entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to be resilient around rejection, because ultimately we need to take action and put ourselves out there.
We need to be vulnerable, and yet we can’t be if we’re worried about rejection.
How do we stay authentic to ourselves, be willing to show up and still deal with the pain of rejection? It’s hard enough to cope with it in our personal lives, let alone have to deal with it in our business.
Six Tips for Handling Rejection Resiliently:
My mantra for focusing on taking action and bouncing back from rejection.
- 1. Have a mantra that you can tell yourself to keep moving forward and take action. One I use is: I am one “No” closer to a “Yes.” I release expectations and timelines and focus on actions. My business coach shared this with me, and it’s helped me to focus on taking action and putting myself out there rather than focusing on rejection. I’ve created a visual of that mantra that I’ve placed on the wall just beyond my computer. Seeing it everyday keeps it in the forefront of my mind.
- 2. Allow yourself to feel the feelings without spinning a story around it. We often create a story that goes along with the feelings. If this story makes you feel worse, let go of it. Being rejected doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be rejected. It doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you. Stop making things worse for yourself by telling yourself a story that isn’t true or helpful.
- 3. Be kind to yourself. If you’re hurting or in emotional pain, you’re not going to improve the situation and expand your perspective by beating yourself up. You will feel better faster by being kind to yourself. You can do this telling yourself: “This is hard. I am in pain. It will pass. I can be gentle to myself.”
- 4. Remind yourself that it isn’t personal. It might feel personal, but it’s often more about the other person. They might just not need your services or products. You might not be the right fit. This doesn’t have to do with you as a person, it has to do with them, what they need, and what’s a fit.
- 5. Recognize that you can’t be all things to all people. Not everyone will like us or want to work with us. That’s okay. The more that we show up and put ourselves out there as our unique selves, the more that some people or groups of people will be indifferent to us or even actively dislike us. Focus on being true to yourself rather than sacrificing part of who you are to be liked by more people.
- 6. Talk to friends, family and colleagues who can support you and empathize. Talking and sharing your feelings with someone who can empathize and relate can ease the pain and put things into perspective. When I was rejected by that friend in college, talking to my other roommate and close friend (someone who continues to be one of my closest friends to this day) really helped. It continues to help. You’re not alone in your feelings. What you feel, others have felt too.
How do you handle rejection? What helps you move through it and continue to show up and take action?
Feel free to comment below or to send me an email.
