Rejection: can we make it less brutal?

I went to a presentation gig thing for graphic designers a couple of weeks back. My talented mate Dan goes by this title and told me to come along. He’s knows me well enough to know design isn’t my forte (I leave that to him), it was the topic he knew I’d love –  How to deal with Failure and Rejection.

For those of you who see me in session, for those of you who follow these words, you’d know I’m passionate about changing the perspective on what we make failing mean. I’m passionate about manning up to life, which means being ok to every now and then be rejected or royally f things up.

As one of the speakers said, “if you haven’t experienced rejection, then you really haven’t experienced life”.

It’s true.

At the end of the evening an audience member asked the speaker if she believes we’re born with this ability to man up and move on or if it could be learnt?

Good question.

I believe there are a tonne of us that are born with an innate ability to shake ourselves off and keep on ploughing through. To understand it’s not personal. That the ego gets bruised, needs to be acknowledged but not indulged.

I also believe for those of us where this doesn’t comes so easy – it is something that can be learnt.  Or rather re-program into our subconscious minds. Create a new set of rules for failure.

At the end of the day, a rejection, a failure, it’s our interpretation that life isn’t working out the way we think it should.

Us humans, god love us, like to get attached to expectations. We like things to work out the way we think is best. (When they’re on about us getting in our own way, this is what they mean).

So how do we get over rejection and failure? Cause simply put, it does hurt. It can be brutal.

The answer lies in the power and beauty of hindsight.

As one of the other speaker’s said, “often we’re unable to see how this failure will affect us positively at a later point”.  Cause here’s the thing… 

“Every rejection is a cosmic redirection”.

It’s through this belief in the cosmic redirection that we’re better able to deal with perceived set backs. It’s a belief in this that reminds us, the universe always has our back.

Now I want to be clear – we are going to forget this. We are going to feel alone and abandoned by that higher power. We’re going to think, what did I do wrong? Why is this happening to me again?

But, because we’re on the spiritual path, we’re going to invite ourselves to see things from a different perspective. We’re not going jump to worthlessness, victim, powerlessness. Cause it’s not our deal. We’re going to reframe it and remember, it’s just a cosmic redirection.

Easy right?

Not always. If you feel like you’re running a program that’s sensitive to failure, that’s finding it hard to bounce back from rejection, consider a session.

Sometimes it’s enough to have perspective, to logically and rationally understand failure. Other times it’s an ingrained belief or sabotage program. Either way, don’t suffer through it. Get in touch if you need x