Healing Space | How to make rejection work for you

When faced with rejection, remember that most likely, it isn't personal. Try to diversify your goal, and achieve it by other means. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods. 

It could be college admissions, on-campus placements, or the person you had your heart set on and finally found the courage to tell, who declined you. Or it could be a promotion you’ve been angling for or a risk you took on the markets, but it just wasn’t your day. We get rejected in a variety of ways. While it feels crushing, like defeat, rejection only has the power to become a real obstacle when you allow it to get in your way.

The first step is not taking rejection personally. We believe rejection is a denial of who we are because we throw ourselves into our work, careers and goals. The first thing to do when rejected is to separate yourself from your work, submission or goal. You are a person with a number of goals and identities, and yes, this one was important to you, but it’s good to remember that it isn’t your only identity. You are a daughter or son, brother or sister, friend, loved one to many. You may be the jokester of your group, or the one who gets everyone out for an evening, a movie, or the sporty one, the foodie. Consider your various identities, big and small. Now consider the one you have been rejected from. It’s only one among many.

Secondly, consider if the path you have been pursuing is the only path to attain that goal. Let’s say it’s a campus recruitment, and you didn’t get the job you wanted, or any at all. There are more jobs, other companies, and other routes to apply. You could ask professors to write you recommendations, or peers to help you out. Are there also allied industries or sectors, upcoming areas in which your talents can be useful? Are you putting too much pressure on what seems like the only path to your goal right now?

Third, diversify your goals. Let’s say you wanted a promotion, and you didn’t get it. Are there other ways to validate the goal you wanted to fulfil? Identify the goals underlying the need for the promotion. It could be you would like more money, better security, evidence of growth prospects, more interesting work, the ability to head a team, more field or desk work, a better peer group or boss, better work timings, and other aspects that you hoped would come to you with the promotion. We very rarely just want a promotion for its sake alone, we want the things it can give us, including bragging rights, status. Now consider other ways to meet these varied goal? Other companies, other industries, other applications of your talents? For instance, if you can’t change your job right away, would picking up an evening or weekend teaching job in your own field, give you some status and additional income? Would working with an NGO to teach underprivileged kids give you more satisfaction and use your skills in a way that you feel proud of? Could you hold a workshop for a local school or college? Consider the tangential ways in which you could expand your skills and gain what you need.

And finally, listen to the rejection. What is it telling you? Do you need to retrain? Practice more? Gain other skill sets such as networking, certification? Is your industry dying or moving in a direction you are not seeing? When you listen to what the rejection is saying, you realise it’s not always personal. Even in love, it could be you’re just not what the person envisioned for themselves and their life. It could be, but isn’t always something you need to change about yourself. It could be about what you need to understand or accommodate about others, their needs and environment.

Rejection is often telling us what we are not seeing about the gap between ourselves and our environment. Sometimes it could point to a gap we are not interested in bridging. Then we know to walk away. Other times, it could also let us know what to do to bridge that gap. Then we can work towards it. Either way, it’s important not to take rejection personally, but to use it to redirect ourselves effectively.