- What are healthy ways to deal with rejection?
I'll tell you what you don't wanna do:
hate yourself, feel like you're a loser,
feel like you're unlovable, and abandon all hope.
Don't do that.
Let's spend the rest of the video
talking about what to do.
Mended Light.
(light upbeat music)
All of us face rejection.
Maybe we wanted a job that we didn't get,
we're pursuing someone romantically
and they're just not interested,
friends turn away, family turns away,
loved ones turn away,
we're trying to get a position on a sports team,
like, there's so many different ways
that we could be rejected,
or we put ourselves out there publicly
expressing our views
and just get roasted and destroyed.
All of us face rejection.
The question is, how do you work past
the natural tendency to take that personally
or to let that get you down?
The first thing to recognize
is that your worth is not based on being accepted
or denied by another human being.
Why? 'Cause there's way too many factors.
If you're relying on the acceptance
of others to truly love yourself,
you're putting your eggs in a basket
that's gonna get thrown off a cliff
time and time again.
Why? 'Cause most people are as unstable as you are.
(laughs) Most people are as insecure or as afraid
or their judgment is as limited
or their needs are simply different, right?
There's a thousand things that can go on.
Oftentimes, being rejected says very little
about the person who has been rejected
and more about their rejector.
For example, I know somebody
who didn't want to be my friend
because I went into a social situation
where they were making people laugh
and I just jumped in, you know,
to be part of the conversation
and people laughed at some of the things I said.
And they said, "I don't like him."
"Well, why don't you like him?"
"Because he's funny, and that's my role.
If he's the funny guy, then what am I?"
(laughs) And I'm like, "Well, there's not a quota.
Like, more than one person can be funny.
And on different days, different people can be funny."
But he rejected me as a friend because of insecurity.
He rejected me, not because I was annoying,
oh well, maybe, (laughs)
but because he saw me as a threat.
And I know that feeling,
because I had the exact same experience in reverse
with somebody in college
where I'm like, "Oh, well, this guy's funnier than I am.
That's gonna be his role in the social circle.
I don't know where I belong," right?
I rejected him out of my own insecurity.
I was watching this movie recently, "Emma,"
based on the Jane Austen story.
This is the 2019 or 2020 version.
With the character of Emma,
there's a woman that she just doesn't like
and just scoffs anytime she's around
and finds the other woman to be stuck up,
to be a poser, to be wanting to win over
everyone with her talents.
And Emma's friend says,
"Well, maybe she's the accomplished young woman
that you wish others saw you as."
And it's very pointed
and she could say, "How very rude,"
but the thing is, he was right.
She saw this other young woman's successes
as a threat to her, right?
Like, "We can't both win.
There's not enough room for us both to win.
One has to be a winner and one has to be a loser."
A lot of times rejection
comes from a place of insecurity.
I have known countless,
countless people who come to therapy,
often, women come to therapy
'cause their partner cheated on them.
And they assume that, "Well,
my partner must have cheated on me
was someone who was more beautiful,
someone who was smarter,
someone who was more fun, more accomplished,
better in bed, this, that, or the other."
And then they see the other person
and they say, "Really, her?"
And they're surprised, because they thought,
"My partner must have traded up."
But in that case,
the partner didn't feel comfortable
with the woman in my office,
didn't feel comfortable with them
because the one in my office was beautiful,
had a lot of integrity, had a lot of intelligence,
and their partner didn't feel
like they were as attractive
or as intelligent or had as much integrity.
And so they didn't feel superior
to the woman they were with
and they wanted to be with a woman
with whom they could feel superior
and domineering and bossy.
And in that case,
rejection wasn't about the quality of the woman,
the rejection was about their own fear and insecurity.
So, a lot of times, a rejector
reveals everything about themselves through the rejection
and it has very little bearing
on the person who is rejected.
Sometimes, however, we are rejected for valid reasons.
There are character defects,
there are character flaws
that caused irreparable harm to the relationship.
There are things that we were unwilling to change
and unwilling to do differently,
or we get fired from a job because we're not performing,
we're not doing what we agreed to do.
In those cases, rather than hate yourself,
see yourself as irreparably bad and discardable,
rejection is a learning experience.
If I try out for the high school basketball team
and I didn't practice all summer,
I just assumed that I would get in,
or I practiced some but other people
practiced harder and longer, it's a sign to me,
"Okay, I either need to decide basketball's not for me
or I need to up my game
and come back stronger and better."
Sometimes rejection just teaches us
how to change our behavior
and how to shift our attitudes
to achieve the outcomes that we want.
But one thing that rejection is not
is an indicator of the worth
of the person who is being rejected.
Why? Because your worth is set.
Your worth is set by virtue of being a human being.
You have worth.
We all have strengths, we all have weaknesses.
We all have good parts to us and less good parts to us.
We all have things that we've accomplished
and things that we've failed at.
No one is more or less special than another.
The only thing that makes us more special maybe outwardly
is what we decide to do with our talents
and what we decide to do with our weaknesses.
But the fact is, my worth is no different now
than it was 20 years ago
just because I'm a human being
and I have that innate worth.
If you compare a person to a $100 bill,
that $100 bill is worth $100.
And maybe it just sits in your wallet
and nothing's ever done with it,
or maybe it's spent and wasted
on donuts and chocolate milk.
I don't know that that would be a a waste, actually.
Or it's spent to help the poor and the needy
or it's spent to invest in something,
either way, that $100 bill
is worth what it's worth
however it's put to use or not.
The reason why this is important
is because if I feel like my worth is behavior-based,
then if I haven't been behaving up to my best,
then I feel unworthy
and I can get trapped in that limiting thinking.
A lot of people behave poorly
because they believe that they are worthless.
"I'm worthless, I might as well act worthless.
I'm degenerate, I might as well act degenerate.
I'm a jerk, I might as well act a jerk,"
as opposed to, "Am I living up to my worth?
Am I living up to what I am valued,
my value being eternal as a human being?
And if I'm not walking up to it,
what can I change so that I live up
to what I'm actually worth, who I truly am?"
So I repeat, sometimes we're rejected
because we have things to work on:
we need to be a better listener,
we need to focus better,
we need to have integrity and act in that integrity.
Sometimes we're rejected because the other person
or the other situation isn't ready for us.
Sometimes we're not right for the job
and we can make changes to be right for the job,
or maybe we're not right for the job
because that's not where we're supposed to be.
Other times, the job isn't right for us.
Same thing with people.
I dated so many people before
that I hoped and prayed it would work out,
and they broke my heart and they broke up with me.
And later I said, "Thank heavens,"
not because they were bad people
or because they would've been a bad partner,
but because they weren't the right fit
or the right person for me.
And at the time, I thought it was personal.
I thought I was worthless.
I had a pattern of getting my heart broken
over and over and over again.
And what I saw is it was two things,
one, because I really wanted to be in love,
I tried too hard, right?
And I pushed people too hard
and I came on too strong.
And that is a behavior that I needed to change
to not get rejected.
But the other side of it was
none of those relationships was right for me
and I'm glad they didn't work out.
But whether I had things to work on and improve
or it just wasn't a fit,
it didn't have a bearing on my worth.
And, for years, I didn't see that.
Every rejection that I encountered,
every time someone broke my heart,
I thought, "I'm not lovable.
I'm not wanted.
People get to know me
and they don't truly want to be with me."
And I realized that I was lying to myself.
I was feeding into a narrative that wasn't true.
So what are healthy ways to handle rejection?
Make it a learning experience.
What can you do better? What can you do differently?
If the answer is something
and you truly want whatever you're pursuing,
then make the changes.
Or two, ask yourself, "Is this really right for me?"
I was gonna go into a career in film. I pursued that.
I applied to a film school, I got rejected.
I got rejected, and that was a moment
of course correction for me,
that, for me personally,
I needed to pursue a career in psychology.
And that's what that was for me.
That rejection was a blessing.
So look at can this be a blessing?
Should I be asking myself,
"Should I be going in a different direction
with a different career,
with a different field of study,
with a different person because of this rejection?
Is this the universe telling me,
'This isn't right for you?'
Or if I 100% know it's right for me,
what changes do I need to make to make it better?"
If you enjoy this video,
I invite you to check out, "That jackass cheated,
should you be done?"
How do you know if you should be done
with someone who cheated on you or not?
What would you like me to answer
in these "Ask A Therapist" segments?
Let me know in the comments below.
Do any of you feel
like you've dealt with rejection poorly?
What did you do about that?
Let me know in the comments below.
As always, folks, keep shining. We need your light.
And I'll see you next time.
(light upbeat music)