Do you remember the last time you felt rejected?
Was it a guy that never returned a phone call or a father that never came around?
Was it a boss who overlooked you for promotion?
Or maybe it was someone in your life who never thought you were good enough
no matter what you did to try to impress them?
We all know rejection hurts, it stings.
It makes us feel like we're not good enough.
It causes us to question ourselves and doubt our future.
I submit to you that rejection isn't something we should be afraid of
and it sure isn’t something that should make us get discouraged, depressed
or work unhealthy amounts of hours just to prove to the world
that we are somebody worth loving and paying attention to.
Rather, rejection is our friend and not our enemy.
I'm going to share two ways that we can see rejection
in order to leverage those moments of pain to be the greatest catalyst to our success
and proof of our value and uniqueness.
The first way that we can view rejection is by seeing it as projection.
A psychological projection, a psychological projection is when someone
subconsciously employs undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone
else, rather than admitting to or dealing with their
own unwanted feelings.
When we can see how the rejections we face may have more to do
with another person's inward turmoil and not our own value,
our lives will change.
Rather than shrink back, get discouraged or play it safe,
we'll move forward in life with confidence and high esteem.
One of my most painful moments of rejection happened
when I was in the third grade.
I wanted to be popular, to be liked, to be loved and to be respected.
And thankfully, I was.
I was in an advanced learning class, which meant that I was
one of two black students in an all white class.
And this wasn't a bad thing, I was known as the cool big black kid.
I was one of the smartest kids in the class, people cheated of my test,
they laughed at my jokes, life was great.
Until one day, as I was returning back to class from a bathroom break,
I noticed a group of black students circled together, laughing hysterically.
Me being the confident, charismatic, outgoing guy that I was
I decided I was going to go over to them and get in on the jokes.
So I walked over to these students and I said, “hey, y'all, what's so funny?”
No one answered.
I spoke up, “men, what y’all over there laughing about?”
And just as I was finishing my sentence, one of the guys in the group turned towards
me and said, “you're what’s funny, white boy”.
The crowd erupted in laughter and I feeling embarrassed, ashamed and rejected,
returned to my class to soon learn that I was known in our school
as the black kid that talks and acts white.
I allowed that moment of rejection to diminish my confidence and my self-esteem.
Rather than celebrate my own uniqueness, I begin a long journey of changing who I was
to fit in with this black community.
I changed the way that I dress, the way that I talk, the music I listen to,
I even changed the way that I laughed.
You know what?
It worked.
They accepted me, they embraced me, I got street cred.
But deep down inside, I knew it wasn't me who they accepted,
it was who I was pretending to be.
And the more they adored this false version of me,
the more rejected the real me felt the entire time.
You see, I didn't understand that sometimes rejection is projection,
a projection of someone's own fears and insecurities onto another person.
Those students who made fun of me were deeply insecure,
they were unsure of themselves, they were afraid to do anything outside of
what their peers thought was acceptable
and because they didn't know how to be their unique selves,
they projected their fears and insecurities onto me
in the form of mockery and jokes.
Because sometimes talking bad about others makes people feel better about themselves.
Honestly, they have some right about me.
I was the black kid that talked and act white, and I still am.
Being the black kid that talks and acts white has enabled me to be versatile as a speaker
and work with people from all different walks of life.
I can speak to gang members in the street and I can speak to executives in the boardroom,
I can help addicts live free from addiction and I can coach elite athletes to discover
their purpose beyond sports.
The very thing that made them reject me has become a crucial component to my success
and has made me effective at helping others and it's all because I learned to see rejection
as projection and figured out how to use it for my good.
The second way that we can see rejection is by viewing it as protection.
Protection from something or someone that isn't meant to be in our lives anymore.
I learned this lesson after life rejected my dreams of playing in the NFL.
I went to Central Michigan University on a Fulbright scholarship
to play Division one football.
Sports was the way that I was going to become rich and famous so that
I can buy my parents a house and get all my family out of poverty.
Unfortunately, I ruptured a disc in my back in my freshman year
and this injury ended my college career.
Life had rejected all that hard work I put in.
Rather than view my sports injury as protection from a career path that wasn't
the best for me, I took it personal.
I felt like life hated me and spit in my face, I felt like the universe despised me
and that my value was pretty much nothing without the sport that I loved
or the recognition that I got from being an athlete.
Rather than let sports go, I did something terrible in an attempt to
keep my athlete dreams alive.
I put my body through two years of drug addiction, pain and sleepless nights,
because I couldn't face life on life's terms.
This belief that I was a failure drove me into one of the darkest depression
of my life.
I became suicidal because I thought it would be better to end
my life, than to deal with another painful moment of
rejection.
That's all because I didn't understand how to handle rejection.
All these attempts at suicide landed me in a psychiatric unit in
Detroit, Michigan.
And it was there that I had a life changing experience
that gave me hope and purpose and helped me to believe that maybe the rejection
I was experiencing was protection from a future
that wasn't the best for me and that maybe there was a career
and a life out there for me that was far better than what I had envisioned.
So I spent the next few years researching everything I could find on
purpose and meaning, I read books, I took online courses,
I interview people, I prayed, I meditated, I even watched a bunch of TEDx talks,
I started to develop new skills and explore new interests.
You know what?
Over time, I built a life that I love
and even enjoyed it more than my life as an athlete.
And I would have never been able to do that if it wasn't for life completely rejecting
or should I say protecting me from becoming a professional athlete.
I wonder if Martin Luther King Junior would have ever become a great leader
if it wasn't for the rejection he experienced from his message and his mission.
I wonder if Apple would be one of the largest tech companies in the world,
if it wasn't for Steve Jobs being rejected by his own company?
More importantly, though, I wonder what your life would look like
if you went back to your moments of rejection and rather than cry, get angry or bitter,
you analyze those moments and reframe them as protection or projection.