When I met Teresa while\u00a0running a leadership program at her company, she was miserable in her\u00a0job as a risk analyst and had been for over 12 months. A year earlier she had applied for more senior position in her firm. When it was given to a less experienced analyst, five year her junior, she took it to heart. Maybe she’d hit her career ceiling \u00a0(at 32!). Maybe she wasn\u2019t smart enough. Maybe she was just lousy at her job. The more\u00a0she ruminated, the more\u00a0rejected she felt.<\/p>\n
She asked for my advice and I encouraged her to \u2018get back on her horse\u2019 and keep applying for other positions that leveraged her strengths. In the meanwhile, I suggested she continue developing\u00a0her skill set and doing an outstanding job in her current role, even if she was past ready to move on.<\/p>\n
I totally understood how she felt.\u00a0 I recall feeling deflated by\u00a0a spate of rejections when, on returning home from\u00a0a year off travelling the world after graduating university, I was unable to land a \u2018good job\u2019 and ended up washing dishes in corporate cafeterias to make ends meet for a couple months. It was hard staying \u2018positive\u2019 (particularly when I had to clean the plates of some of my former classmates). Yet\u00a0as I’ve learnt from numerous rejections since, that\u2019s when it matters most.<\/p>\n
Unless you\u2019re made of psychological Teflon, it\u2019s hard not to feel the sting of being rejected. Yet many people cut themselves off from the possibility of getting what they want because of their fear of how they’ll feel if they are rejected in the process.<\/p>\n
Put another way:<\/p>\n
We\u00a0reject ourselves\u00a0before anyone else has a chance to do it!<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I remember finding myself standing beside\u00a0Oprah’s best friend Gayle Kelly while checking into\u00a0a hotel and thinking to myself, “This is my chance to connect to Oprah!” But my fear of Gayle fobbing me off as a crazy person invading her personal space was enough for me to say nothing. I kicked myself afterward because I was left wondering “But what if I’d tried?”<\/p>\n Last year, while doing a little self-reflection, I realised that\u00a0despite all my talk of being brave, I often hold back from saying or doing things for fear of people not responding how I’d like. So I decided to do a little experiment. I set myself up a “Risk Rejection Scorecard” and set a goal of risking 50 rejections over 10\u00a0weeks.\u00a0It wasn’t that I wanted to be rejected 50 times (I’m not masachistic) but that I wanted to build my ‘rejection resilience.’<\/p>\n It worked.<\/p>\n Every day for ten weeks I asked myself “What would I do today if I weren’t afraid of being rejected?”\u00a0As I was working on my next book Make Your Mark<\/em> (coming out in\u00a0April) at the time, a lot of the time the answer was to ask people I admired if they’d review my book and, if they felt it worthy, write an endorsement. I went for the big names.<\/p>\n I got tons of rejections. Or no reply at all (another form of rejection.) But while I did feel a little kick each time, with each email I sent (or resent) I gave myself a pat on the back for being brave. At least I was walking my talk. In the end, I got some wonderful endorsements. As\u00a0I say below, it’s simple maths:<\/p>\n The more you risk people saying no, the greater the odds you’ll have people say yes!<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n The truth is, you can never have what you want if you’re not willing to risk rejection. Not the job. Not the book deal. Not the love of your life. Not the client of your dreams.<\/p>\n So if you’ve been reading this thinking I’ve been spying on you, then I hope the following three tips will help you risk more rejection and bounce back from it faster.<\/p>\n 1. Don\u2019t take it personally!<\/strong> Sadly though, too many talented people, burnt by an early rejection, spend their lives avoiding the possibility of feeling it again! As I wrote in my latest book Brave<\/a><\/em>, \u201cIt\u2019s not the rejection itself that we fear, it\u2019s the negative meaning we attach to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Just like Teresa, people take it to mean that they are deficient in some way \u2013 not clever enough, good enough, worthy enough or attractive enough. It means none of that. It just means that someone \u2013 who may have no clue about who you are \u2013 has decided you aren\u2019t a fit for them. They may have incomplete information. They may be extremely biased. They may have a whole host of reasons. So whatever you do:<\/p>\n Don’t make rejection\u00a0mean something it doesn\u2019t.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nThe most successful people \u2013 whether corporate executives, politicians, artists or entrepreneurs – risk rejection time and time again throughout their working lives. When it happens, they know it\u2019s not personal. It\u2019s just life. Accordingly, they refuse misinterpret someone else\u2019s subjective assessment of them to mean anything about their own worthiness.<\/p>\n