For a week straight I got rejected, until I didn’t.
As a result of deliberately placing myself in a precarious position, I managed to get myself a hot date, but let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. To be entirely honest, I didn’t originally start my week with the mindset that I wanted to intentionally get rejected, it just so happened that there were a few things that resulted in me falling on my face. But once I shifted my attitude from wallowing in my own self-pity to riding the wave of these “failures,” treating them as the experiential learning that they are, things started to take a turn for the better. Rather than see this series of rejections as things that were happening to me, I reframed them as things that were occurring because of me.
I started my week on the low, having some poems rejected by a literary journal. Having spent the previous week dedicating time and effort to refining said poems at the expense of other things, this felt disheartening. As someone who believes that how their Monday goes either makes or breaks the rest of their week (a fatalistic mentality on my behalf), getting rejected right at the start meant that the wheels of my week were already falling off. I fell down a self-centered rabbit hole of second guessing myself; was the quality of my writing that I’d set my literary worth against not good? Did I have to rethink the entire trajectory of my future? Melodramatic, I know, but looking at things objectively has never been my forte — I tread a fine line between self-confidence and self-effacement. This rejection bruised my ego.
Piggybacking off of this was my rejection from the Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show as a model. Despite my initial objections, two of my friends had persuaded me to go to the casting with them — modelling is something outside of my comfort zone. As a result of my reluctance, I didn’t put any effort into my audition. Although I managed to find the humour in my inability to strut down a runway and pose (serving a bit too much pop in my hip), I failed to find the initial fun in preparing for the audition. I fell further down Monday’s rabbit hole, being too self-conscious. I entered the audition with the wrong mindset, anticipating my own failure, and receding into myself out of fear. I was again contradicting myself. I hadn’t intended to be there, so surely I shouldn’t have minded the outcome? But I did, I feared potential rejection. The bruise to my ego on Monday may have been healing, but it had only just started transitioning from purple to yellow.
After this second rejection, I started joking that I was trying rejection therapy on for size. But the more that I joked about this, the more I thought about the benefits from these rejections, rather than allow the bruises to linger. In being rejected from the literary journal, I had gained the opportunity to receive valuable feedback on my writing to improve it. The time that I had spent refining my poems was not time wasted; any time spent practicing what you love will always be a step in the right direction. For the modelling audition I had been too shortsighted to see how going outside of my comfort zone was an achievement in and of itself — the audition was the confidence builder and booster, not the outcome. I had been prioritising outcome over process and progress.
Upon redefining what these rejections meant to me, I decided to actively pursue potential rejection. This came in the form of me placing a note on a guy’s desk in the library that told him that I thought he was cute, and had my phone number written on. Because what was the worst that could happen, I get rejected? Two hours later I received a message thanking me for the note and an invitation to go out for drinks. I had placed myself in a vulnerable position, I was unbelievably nervous, but the effort had paid off. I had scored a fun date with the cute boy from Third Floor. The ways in which we frame the things that happen to us is always within the bounds of our own control. I personally needed to start viewing my outcomes with more intention, focusing on what I gained, not lost, as well the process it took to achieve them. My self-consciousness and self-pity were entirely my own. These could have easily been replaced by confidence and humility instead. Our rejections are entirely what we make of them. Ride the highs and the lows, each is equally important for the growth in your life.
Image by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
