Handle Rejection with Class

Handling rejection is not a natural strength for everyone. Although professional organizations have various orientation courses to help professionals understand the underlying reasons and not perceive rejection as the end of road, the realization followed by acceptance is still not an easy task for most of us.

Not surprisingly the process of dealing with rejection follows the same five stages as dealing with grief.

I have often found myself muttering the following statements in each phase:

Denial - "No, he can't mean that! He might have not paid attention to my viewpoint/my work product. I know I am amazing and this means that anything I propose can never be rejected!"

Anger - “How dare they reject me! They don’t know what they’re talking about”.

Bargaining - "What if I do this? Will that fix it?"

Depression - "Maybe I am not good enough. Maybe I’ll never be good enough. Maybe I was never meant to do this. "

Acceptance / Rebound - “This is not the end of the world. There are ways to improve.”

Almost all of us might have faced rejection at some point in our lives – whether at an interview or while trying to get new clients. Be mature about it, learn from it, and then come back the next time with a stronger value proposition. My first reaction to rejection as stated above has always been denial and anger but with time I have learned to mold these emotions into positive reinforcements to avoid making the same mistake twice.

There would be situations where you find yourself oscillating between the bargaining and depression stages without making progress. In times such as these, we should take a step back and re-evaluate the situation to understand what is/was at stake. You would be surprised to see that the size of your problems is much smaller in retrospect.

Never burn any bridges in your anger stage – just like in a job, just like in relationships, just like in life. Never ever sit down and pen that angry diatribe that tells the other person exactly what you think of them. It never works out well.

“A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.” – Bo Bennett, author, motivational speaker, black belt Karate master and businessman

If you like this article, please consider reading some of my other recent posts