Rejection Is Protection

Do you ever let the fear of failure hold you back? It could take the form of worrying what other people might think if you don’t succeed, not wanting to look stupid by going for something out of your league, or wasting precious time by putting so much effort into something that didn’t come to fruition. If so, here’s a new way to think about it.

What if every time you were rejected it was actually protecting you from something? 

Just consider the possibility - I know it’s not easy to do in the moment but imagine how empowered and resilient you’d feel if you could, as Winston Churchill puts it, “move from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.”

That would mean that every time you got rejected you would be grateful for the way that your path is being reserved for the people and things that are in complete alignment with your mission.

The reason this all came to mind is it was the central theme of a podcast conversation between Ed Mylett and Jamie Kern Lima. In particular, Jamie had a brilliant elaboration on what this protection actually means. She said that sometimes the value you have to offer is hidden to others because it doesn’t serve you for them to see it. 

The people who reject you because they don’t believe in you, they don’t see the vision, they don’t want to work with you - It’s just a matter of them not having the awareness to know what you have to offer. And while it might feel insulting or like a missed opportunity in the moment, ultimately it’s protecting you from something you can’t see yet.

In order to get consistent with this new way of thinking, so that it becomes a genuine belief and thought you have in the face of rejection, you’ll need to do some work. 

The best way I’ve learned how to cultivate a new mindset like this is to intentionally and consistently induce the thought process. Tactically, this means that if you reflect every night on the moments in the day when you were rejected, and specifically assign the meaning you want to take from the experience, you can teach your mind how you relate with those kinds of experiences moving forward.

At the end of the day, if you manage to change the way you think about rejection so that you cultivate more resilience through it, you will be empowered to take action in remarkable ways with full faith that the right things are happening for the right reasons.

To circle back on this podcast episode I listened to - Ed Mylett’s show is one of my go-tos and this conversation in particular with Jamie Kern Lima was really good. They’ve got a cool special announcement in it too, give the episode a listen by clicking here!