Rejection. How do you cope with it?

How do you take rejection?

Perhaps you go for a job…and don’t get it.

Perhaps your boyfriend says he needs more space, that he doesn’t feel the same way anymore.

Perhaps you have a great idea for a book…but publisher after publisher turns you down.

People try and be helpful. They tell you ‘It’s not personal’.

But rejection does feel personal… and can leave us devastated.

We react in different ways.

Perhaps we turn in on ourselves and declare ourselves worthless.

Perhaps we turn our fire on the stupid idiots who interviewed us.

Perhaps we pretend we don’t care that much…when in truth, we do.

What’s more helpful is this: if – for a moment – we can honestly sit with our feelings as they are; if we can allow ourselves to feel whatever we feel…without edit.

Whatever we feel is OK.

It’s not helpful to become self-punishing and tell ourselves not to be so stupid, that we just need to toughen up.

That heals nothing.

Rather, we find a quiet place and sit with our feelings, allow them, speak with them… and when we feel ready – whether an hour later or a week later – we let go of them.

We are much more than this rejection, whatever form it has taken; and nothing in our deepest being is diminished by it.

This will pass like the clouds in the sky.

But before we can say goodbye to our feelings, we will need to say hello to them.

Rejection: feel it, speak with it…and then let it go.