It is not personal!

Not taking rejection personally is a skill you can learn, just like any other coping skill. Here are some tips, abridged from my conversations with the late Nigel Nicholson OBE, who was Professor emeritus of Organisational behaviour at the London Business School

Do not catastrophise criticism. If you get rejected, it does not mean that you are never going to be successful. If you get negative feedback on a piece of work, it does not mean that you cannot be better or that you’re not talented. If you find yourself personalising rejection or negative feedback, ask yourself whether you are making it into a far bigger deal than it is

Be gentle on yourself; about your imperfections, mistakes, and times when you’re not as good at something as you’d like to be. If you can learn to be nicer to yourself about your imperfections, you won’t automatically jump to feeling attacked when other people make negative comments

Frame it as a positive goal. For example, frame refusing to personalize at work as part of being professional and robust. Recognize that demonstrating your ability to accept negative feedback likely will bring you accurate feedback. When people worry about hurting your feelings, they are more likely to provide confusing feedback

Learn to label your emotions accurately. Emotions drive thoughts as much as thoughts drive emotions. What emotions trigger personalising for you? Some common ones include anxiety, embarrassment, disappointment and anger. If you can recognise your emotional reactions accurately, you can then focus on doing the correct things to deal with that emotion. Once the emotion subsides, so will the personalising. Often, it just involves accepting that you’re having the emotion and patiently waiting for it to pass. If you try to “get rid of” the emotion, it will usually end up causing more harm than good. It is a balancing act

Put yourself in situations in which rejection is likely (but doesn’t have any major negative consequences) Doing things such as making requests when you expect you might be told “no” will help you learn that rejection often isn’t personal

Don’t be eager to please because you’re afraid of being disliked. People who personalise often have attachment anxiety. If you act overly eager to please, you’ll just end up believing that it’s the only way to be accepted

Believe in your capacity to become someone who doesn’t excessively personalize things. I see a lot of people who seem to believe that they’re doomed to a lifetime of being the way they’ve always been. You can change your cognitive style