Rejection is something we all fear. We fear being rejected by our peers, we fear being rejected by our bosses and we fear being rejected by the people we love. We may feel that we are inadequate for others and that we just blew are chances. No one in the right mind would say, "I just got rejected, I'm so damn happy!" However, rejection does not have to be as terrible as it seems. We only need to reform our perceptions and interpretations about rejection.
We often get rejected by the single two letter word "NO". You may walk up to that attractive person in the bar and ask for their number. You try to charm them and say all sorts of things that make yourself appear interesting and finally they say, "Sorry, but no." It may be the end of the world for you at the moment. But you should be glad they said no and here's why.
The paradigm at which we put ourselves in puts rejection in an unpleasant category. We try to avoid it at all cost and fail to see how rejection is actually a good thing. Some may say rejection toughens you up and makes you less sensitive to harsher rejections in the future. We may refer to this paradigm of thinking as the "Hard Boiled Egg" paradigm where the egg becomes harder than its initial state after torturing it with hot water. There's nothing wrong with this mode of thinking, it's just that there are alternative paradigms to rejection than just this.
Instead of being a "Hard Boiled Egg", we can view rejection as a means of positive diversion. Positive diversion in this context refers to the idea that you are given bigger and better opportunities after being rejected. It is a fact that we can never please everyone that comes our way. We really only need a fraction of the population to succeed in the things we do (The 80/20 principle). Oprah Winfrey does not need the global population to watch her show for the show to be a success, she only needed a fraction of that population that are interested in her show's content to keep the show alive.
So what does not having to need everyone's approval of us relate to rejection? It shows that people who may reject us now are just not the people we are looking for. When the attractive person earlier declined you, it just meant that they don't like who you are and that's totally fine. You wouldn't want to spend your time and effort to show love and compassion to someone that does not appreciate it anyway.
You may be a salesperson trying to sell a washing machine to people of homes and you call them up and tell them all about the benefits and the low price of your product. In the end, they say "NO, I'm not interested". Again, that's totally fine. There's no point in selling a product to prospects that don't require it. Who knows they might be those customers that nag that your product is not of good quality and phones your customer service team like mad and gives you all sorts of headaches. After all, they were never really emotionally invested in the product in the first place and probably never took good care of it.
The main message is that the people who reject us even after a significant amount of effort that we have invested in them are just people that don't appreciate our intentions. This rejection is what diverts us to people who do notice and appreciate our efforts, may it be to love someone or sell someone a product. Rejection helps us to filter the negative people and bring us closer and faster to the people who do care about us. So the next time you get rejected, you're one step closer to someone who accepts you.
Now that's strong. Great read. Keep it up!