Some things in life teach you a lesson, and one of these things is learning to take rejection and better yourself from it. Rejection is something that I used to take to heart, and it could be any form of rejection which would affect me deeply.
From a very young age and for as long as I can remember, the thought of rejection hindered me from many things. It would stop me from asking for help if I got anything wrong – or thinking it would be a dumb question. I would stop myself from asking out of fear of rejection.
My fear of rejection developed into my professional life as I got older, from when I first started applying for part-time jobs in college – even in my IT career. The rejection I got when I applied for jobs was disheartening. There was a time when everyone around me was getting part-time retail jobs, and I kept getting rejection after rejection – it got to me so much.
Thinking back on it, I think I took it way too personally and was childish in how I reacted to the rejections from jobs – to the point that I even created a pic collage of all the rejections I got. Man, I was stupid. I found the collage picture the other day and laughed out loud at how childish I was. I remember sending it to my cousin and having him cry out real tears from laughing so much about it. I can laugh about it now, but I would have argued with them if anyone had said anything about it back then.
The fear of rejection has also hindered me in my professional career. I would doubt myself in applying for roles that I felt I could not do – even though I am qualified and have the experience to do it. That is how bad my rejection of fear would get.
I have learnt to love rejection. The feeling of being disheartened has turned into motivation for me to persevere and push through life. You see, rejection is something that we all need as humans to learn from any situation we are in, in life. In life, you will be rejected, whether by a loved one, a job or an idea. Whatever it may be, use it to keep going and achieve the goals that you have set for yourself.
In order to move forward and develop in life, we must learn to accept rejection. We’re all humans, and as humans’ rejection is something we are not going to like. As much as I have learned to love it, I still don’t like rejection at all – it is natural not to like it. The trick is to overcome the fear of rejection. Once you overcome that fear, then you have nothing to be afraid of. Rejection is human nature, we need it to learn, we need it to process, and we need it to develop n life. Everything in life is a lesson – and rejection is just that – a life lesson.