Rejected? So What?

Even in the face of possible rejection, ask.

Rejection is more valuable than inaction. All that I have learned until now has been because of rejections. Inaction didn’t teach me a thing.

— Neeraj Agnihotri

This is the second bane of our fear as humans. We hate being rejected. We believe rejections say a lot about our identity than anything else. We feel like if we are rejected, then we are not good enough.

Well, that's one way to look at it. But there's another way to look at rejections that will help us live a full life, and this is the light that I bring to you this week.

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I'm sure you have heard time and again how people say "I hate being rejected, so I prefer to respect myself and not ask anything." Heck, you must have even said it at some point too, and that's fine, your feelings are valid, it's okay to feel the way you do after something as unpleasant as a rejection.

However, do you understand that the reason you fear rejection so much is that you have attached it to who you are, just like you did with failure.

You believe that when what you ask for is rejected, then you have been rejected. You confuse your desires, the doors you knock on and the things you seek for with your personality. That is where you get it all wrong. That is why rejections affect you so much.

What you don't know is this; our desires and our identities are two different things, in as much as our desires are a factor of our identities, they are not our identities. So when that which you ask for is rejected, it doesn't mean that you have been rejected. We are not our desires and ideas. We are the identities that we have established for ourselves.

Many of us refuse to ask simply because we don't want to be rejected. I'm using the we/us pronoun now because I'm also involved. As I write this, many things come to mind that I left because of fear of rejection. Why was I so afraid of rejection? How much different would my life have been now if I didn’t chicken out because of fear?

We don't send in the scholarship applications because we fear we'll be rejected. We don't apply for jobs because we fear we'll be rejected. We don't ask for the raise because we fear we will be rejected. We don't ask for the girl's hand because we fear we'll make a fool of ourselves We don't approach the mentor because we don't want to be embarrassed. We don't pitch the idea because we think it'd be rejected and the investors will think we are ridiculous, and the list goes on and on and on.

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We protect ourselves so much from potential rejection that we never explore the chance at success, and then we keep ourselves locked in a life so mundane. We never take risks and so we never reap fruits. We fear the soil will reject our seed, so we decide never to plant. How stupid.

You know for every chance that your desire might be rejected, there's a chance that it might be applauded and accepted, right? But you'll never know if you don't ask. You'll never know if the door will open if you don't knock. And your life will be filled with What Ifs.

And if you were rejected, so what? It is not about you. You should be thankful for rejections, take them gracefully, and do better next time. If you go through life without being rejected, it's either you haven't been asking, or your desires have not been big enough to effect tangible change.

Let rejections, like failure, be a driving force for you to improve your proposition, or change your focus. There are three reasons why a door won't open for you. One, you are not knocking. Two, you are not knocking well enough. Three, the door is not yours to open, move on.

Start knocking if you haven't started. If the door doesn't open, if you're rejected, try again. Intensify your knocks. Improve your proposition. If you have done all you can and it still doesn't open, explore option three. Move on to another door.

If you want to make anything of this life, you'll experience rejection. Expect it, never personalise it. Use it to help yourself grow.

So this week, and every other day of your life, send in the application, ask for the raise, ask the permission, ask the question, risk the embarrassment, ask her to go out with you, send in the pitch, take action even though you know you might be rejected. Who knows? The coin might flip to its other end, and you might get into the door.

To your growth,

Abiola Okunsanya

Handzinspired ✨