Learning To Live With Rejection Is About Learning Who You Are

Rejection of any kind isn't fun. Whether it be from a person, a job, or an invitation, I can't remember a time where rejection has ever felt good or welcomed. At least not in that moment.

I can think of two big moments where I felt absolute rejection like I had nowhere else to go from there. I thought this is it, I have nothing left. I thought I'm a failure, what did I do wrong?

The thing with rejection is that it's tied to the feeling of failure. Almost instantly as soon as we realize that we're rejected and we're not going to continue on what we're doing, we feel like we failed ourselves.

The other thing about rejection is that it's needed for growth. For every decision that I've made an obstacle that I've conquered, I've felt growth and appreciation. In all of the times that I've ever felt rejected, something good has come out of it later on.

In the moment, it feels like the end of the world and as though everything has gone wrong. And it's hard. It's so hard to try to look at the positive spectrum of what could and is about to come.

Learning to live with rejection is learning who you are.

I often find that we defend our weaknesses instead of going with them and encouraging them. When we feel like rejection has happened or that we failed, we get defensive and scared and afraid of what's to come. All we feel is scared and cold and just afraid to move on after that.

I think one of our biggest defeats of rejection and getting rejected steams from fear. As much as we want this one certain thing to happen or for our plans to go this way, there's always that little voice in the back of our heads nagging us and reminding us about what could go wrong or what could happen if we fail.

I'm really trying to keep in mind with myself that there really is no such thing as failure. I've had it built into my being that there are things that go right and there are things that go wrong.

But I'm trying so hard to learn that it isn't just right and wrong, there's not just black and white. I'm learning (slowly but surely) that rejection isn't bad.

I'm not saying to pine for rejection and hope for failure, no, who would ever want that. But I'm trying to learn to live with the fact that rejection teaches you things that you never would've learned otherwise. There is no one in life who has ever gone through all their years without failing at least one thing whether it be big or small.

The greatest people you know who you think are invincible, who carry the world atop their shoulders, who literally cannot be stopped, have been rejected. They've felt like they have failed, multiple times.

We are going to go through days where we feel like we failed and we did wrong and that nothing's going to go right. But that is how life goes. I hate that I am this person sometimes (but also, I don't), but I'd like to believe that I am a believer of the fact that (almost) everything happens for a reason.

There are things that I've gone through, that my friends have gone through, that people I'm acquainted with have gone through that I do not understand. For the life of me, I can't understand why people die young before they ever get to see the world or why physical or mental abuse happens to the brightest people I know or why the person who is the kindest to everyone gets nothing in return.

These are things I will never understand but I try so hard in me to believe there was a reason. That doesn't make it right.

But with that, I try to think of all the times I've ever felt rejected and ever felt like I failed and tried to find a positive to that. Sometimes it takes days or weeks, sometimes it takes a few minutes. Learning to live with rejection and failure is not an easy thing. But we all do it.

Failure is the flame that causes the fire to keep on burning in our life. Without failure, we wouldn't know what it is that has to change in order for us to move on. Without rejection, we wouldn't know where it is that we're supposed to go instead of where we had wanted to go.

Failure is never good. Rejection is never wanted. But as much as you can, learning to live with who you and what you're doing; and learning to live with where you're going instead of where you originally wanted to go is exactly what the game of life is.