Rejection Selection
Rejection Selection
Source: Four selected resources below.
Contributor: Selena Garcia
“Nobody can make you feel bad about yourself unless you let them.” - Marisa Peer
Ok, I understand the above quote by Marisa, but feelings are broadly out of our control. And, rejection can suuuuck! Aside from being painful, it challenges one of our most deeply rooted basic human needs—connection. So while we cannot always control the feelings that come and go, we can always control how we act in response to these feelings.
If you’re struggling with rejection, here are four selected pieces to help you get through the day:
1) Marisa Peer: “How to avoid rejection and get connection.” (in life in general)
2) Mark Groves: “Why you should invite rejection into your life.” (in relationship)
3) Matthew Hussey: “One mindset to conquer rejection.” (in relationship)
4) Greater Good Magazine: “Can Mindfulness Help Your Brain Cope with Rejection?” (in life in general)
As Mark Groves says, let’s “make rejection your b*tch.”
“What usually gets us lost in a relationship is we make other people more important than us. That’s when we start to get lost.” - Mark Groves
In this TedTalk, Marissa shares five techniques to help you avoid rejection in your life.
(4:13) “We come on to the planet with this really intense need to be connected and to avoid being rejected, and these bonds of connection are very, very fragile, and they must not be broken. What damages them is the fear of rejection.”
From bullying to relationships to rejection at work, there are many ways in which we work hard to avoid rejection.
(6:17) “In my years as a therapist, I’ve learned five techniques that will really help you—really help you, I guarantee it—to not let in rejection. You can’t stop people rejecting you, but you can change the way it affects you. So, let me teach you these five techniques.”
(14:03) “Nobody can make you feel bad about yourself unless you let them.”
Start listening at 2:00. Mark shoots the shit for the first two minutes before sharing candidly about rejection, including switching what it means for us.
(6:03) “What usually gets us lost in a relationship is we make other people more important than us, and that’s when we start to get lost.”
(8:14) “Really feeling our pain is important. So, it’s really important that we actually sit with it, in what’s happening.”
(9:38) “No matter what it is, there’s a lesson in there for us. There’s an opportunity for us to learn how to move forward.”
(10:24) “We have to look for the things in our past that allow us to grow. We need to look at ‘how did we show up? What can we do better?’ Because we trade valuable time for a relationship. So, if we’re not learning from those, then you’re wasting your time. You can’t just look back and go ‘I just want to forget about that.’ Forgetting about stuff is different than forgiving it. And forgiveness comes in taking the experience and making it valuable to you… There are so many lessons, there are so many gifts to look at how you can be better. Because at the end of the day, relationships lasting or not lasting is not the outcome we’re looking for. The outcome is, ‘did I honor myself, and was I doing the best I could?’
Here, Matthew talks with a caller about how to move forward after rejection. He notes there is something worse than rejection, and that is regret.
(2:21) “The truth is there are many, many, many people out there that aren’t going to want us.”
(3:47) “What are you more fearful of—getting rejected again or living your life in a cave? Isn’t that worse if you picture the rest of your life cowering and being afraid and being this person who can’t go out and talk to people or can’t put themselves out there or can’t go out and give people compliments in case she doesn’t get one back? Is that an image that excites you in your life? It sounds worse than boring. It’s a gross image of your life, isn’t it?”
(5:43) “When people are about to die, they don’t suddenly freak out about possible rejection. That’s not what’s on their mind. What’s on their mind is, ‘I wish I was around to be rejected. I wish I was around to have the possibility of someone rejecting me. To have the possibility of feeling something, and I’m not going to be here. What a tragic, unbearable thought that is.”
(6:11) “The reality is, A) none of us know how much time we have, and B) even if we have as much time as we think we have, it’s not nearly as long as we think it is. And it goes so incredibly quickly. And that being the case, make no mistake, you will ten years from now be saying ‘I wasted ten years avoiding situations because of a guy I made so important that I threw away a decade of my potential on him.’ What can be more tragic and frightening than that thought?”
Greater Good Magazine (2 mins)
A nerdy bit of food for thought.
“How long do you usually stay upset after these events? An hour? A day? A week? We constantly face rejections big and small in our everyday lives, but some people regain their calm more quickly than others. A new study provides preliminary evidence that the way we respond could be determined by how mindful we are and traced to a specific part of the brain.”
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