Rejection

The One Day Rule

You never know when you'll break through.

When there’s something you want, making the decision to do it isn’t the hard part. It’s overcoming the fear of rejection. 

Whether it’s a new job, a date, a creative ambition, or even asking a friend to meet up last minute, the act of trying to make it happen has a potential outcome that makes it hard to get started. 

What if it doesn’t work? What if they say no, turn me away, laugh in my face? 

Sometimes it’s easier to live with the daydream, the what if, because that’s safe and comforting and far better than the alternative. 

Because in the daydream, you are successful. You got the thing you wanted. You know that you are capable, that it is yours, that you are worthy. 

But if you try it, and the rejection comes, not only is your comforting daydream shattered, but now you can’t escape the aftermath. 

The rejection comes through, and for a moment you might be fine, but then the storm of feelings will threaten to break through. Sure, there’s pain and shame and discomfort–all of those hurt. But there’s one that hides behind them, waiting to latch on for the long term to make you its victim. 

It starts out as pain, but morphs into fear. Fear that plants itself and tells you not to try again, to not put yourself out there, that if you failed once you will fail again, and why risk it? 

That fear places us in a straightjacket, telling us it’s safer to stay trapped than to try to escape. Because escaping means you might get hurt. You might be embarrassed. Or put in a lot of effort and see no results. It’s better to keep doing the same things with clear outcomes, even if you’re sick of those outcomes. 

The thing the fear keeps from you is truth: No one ever achieved anything by staying safe. The only way to change is to get hurt, to be rejected, to keep trying.

And yes, you likely will be rejected again. And it will hurt. A lot. 

A few weeks ago I entered a writing contest. I spent days tweaking just one page, perfecting it as much as possible, and sent it in, daydreaming about how I would use the prize (an introduction to an agent–aka a fiction writing career!). 

When the top ten were announced, I searched for my name, jumping to the bottom immediately just in case the list was alphabetical, certain that I’d claim my spot. 

But my name wasn’t there. 

My heart slipped, and I read it three more times, hoping it was wrong, that there was some mistake. But there was no mistake. I didn’t make the cut. 

The pain and fear reared its head then, telling me that I was never going to be good enough. This was yet another in a long string of failures because being an author is hard, very hard. 

The self doubt and shame should have stopped with just the contest, but of course, that’s not how our brains like to handle failure. 

It spread like a drop of ink on a fresh sheet of paper, oozing in all directions. 

I’ll never find an agent if I can’t even win a contest. 

My stories aren’t good enough. My writing isn’t good enough. I’m not good enough.

What if my clients learn that I keep losing fiction contests and can’t get published? Will they doubt my business skills too? 

My friends/family/network are all judging me thinking I should just give up. Maybe they’re right. 

Maybe I keep getting rejected because none of this is meant to be. Maybe my only successes are already behind me and I’ve peaked. 

When the negative thoughts come, they grow on each other, forming a ball that weighs me down, tells me to play small, that I tried to be more than I am, that I tried to be someone I’m not. 

And the hard part is, those thoughts aren’t wrong.

I was trying to be bigger than I am. I was trying to be someone I’m not. 

Because I don’t want to be the same person forever, living the same life, doing the same things, each year passing by in a blur because there’s no clear difference between today or yesterday or tomorrow. 

That’s what makes the rejection so powerful and hard to move on from. Because there is just a slight hint of truth in those thoughts. Failure will keep happening, and I’ll never know when the success will land. 

When I graduated college in the middle of the recession, facing rejection after rejection, I made a deal with myself: 

When I got a rejection for a job I really wanted, instead of brushing it off and saying “I didn’t want it anyway” or telling myself to stop feeling sad and that it’s a hard market–basically all of the logical explanations–I gave myself another option.

I get to feel sad for one day. That’s it. And then the next, I have to apply for a new job. 

I’ve expanded this rule to any type of rejection. 

When the sting of failure hits, now I lean into it. I let myself be grumpy. I turn on rainy background noise and sad songs, grab a pint of ice cream and/or fried cheese, and let myself wallow, just for the day. No questions asked. No shame. No rationalizing away the pain and the fear and the negative thoughts. 

And by the next morning, I wake up ready to go at it again, to find a new way to put myself out there, a path that maybe I hadn’t tried before. 

I roll up my sleeves, and prepare for another round. Because even if I was rejected by that one person or that one company or that one team, I know that just around the corner, there is someone waiting, wishing they could find exactly what I have to offer. 

The day after I let myself feel sad from losing the writing contest, I woke up to an email from a new customer, eager to dive into one of my courses. 

For years, I developed that pipeline and those trainings with little results. But slowly, over time, the successes have started to outnumber the failures, and it reminds me to keep going, even if it seems like nothing will work. 

Because someday it will. 

So next time you’re rejected, let it in. Grab a pint of ice cream (or whatever you prefer), turn on the sad music, and feel the failure. 

Then the next day, dust yourself off, and try again. 

Who knows, maybe that’s the final effort that will lead to your success. And you’ll never find out if you let the fear win. 

Happy dreaming,

Demi