How to Deal with Rejection as a Starting Personal Brand or Business
If you’re a business owner, you will deal with rejection. Pretty much every single day. But if you’re only starting out or haven’t been out there for a long time and you can’t deal with rejection, then listen up. Not being able to deal with rejection could be the pitfall that will kill your Personal Brand or business at a very early stage.
You Can’t Escape Rejection
Rejection has many forms. Whether you want to collaborate with someone or you want to win a customer or a client, rejection will come sooner or later. You can’t escape it but and you will get a “no” very often. From my personal experience, for every “yes” I get, I usually get at least 4-9 “no’s”. These stats are normal and healthy and most importantly, they don’t mean anything about you.
Adding the Meaning
You will only get in trouble if you add a meaning to rejection. So, the question is, what do you make rejection mean? If somebody says “no”, what do you think for yourself or say to yourself? When you deal with rejection next time, pause for a moment and see what comes through your mind. It’s important to be with the thought, don’t hush it away, or fight with it, or replace it. Instead, observe it. Then see how your mood and emotion changes. Do you get sad or angry? Anything that comes up is fine. Don’t judge it, just name it.
I’ve learn this from the meditation app Headspace that simply noting the thoughts and emotions can help you be less reactive. And the sooner you can get cool about the rejection, the sooner you can move on to do something useful. In the past I used to make rejection mean that nobody wants to work with me and that I’m not good enough in what I do. I would put myself down and I’d stop being productive. And the less productive I was, the more true it seemed to me. It was a vicious circle.
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Time to Move on
Once you see what rejection means to you, you see the thoughts that arise, the emotions and the mood you have, it really depends on you how quickly you can move on. And it only depends on how quickly you’re going to let go and focus on what’s next. If you see a new customer, a new opportunity, a new collaboration – focus on that. Anything that makes you feel inspired is what will keep you going.
You can’t beat the circumstances but you can work on your strengths.
– Hana Jay Klokner
The big point I’m making here is that rejection should mean nothing to you. When somebody says “no”, it just shows you a new direction and gets you closer to the place where you’re actually heading. Just like everything else, it has a positive side – it will only make you be more you than you were before.
What’s been the biggest rejection that you ever got? Share in the comments how you dealt with it!