Rejection Is Just an Opinion
Don’t take it so seriously. Here’s how.
I used to take rejection incredibly seriously.
People who rejected me became my enemies. I made it my life goal to sabotage their dreams in return for rejecting mine. Damn, rejection pissed me off royally. I’d go to job interviews and be told “sorry you don’t have enough experience” or “sorry you don’t have industry expertise in digital marketing.”
As a wannabe business owner, I copped rejection. “We can’t invest in your business, sorry.” “Your business idea doesn’t have potential, sorry.”
Then a bright spark said this to me:
“Why do you keep taking rejection so seriously? Rejection is just an opinion. Rejection isn’t fact. Rejection doesn’t own you. Who are you to let rejection tell you how to live your life?”
It was as if rejection was a bad parent I should rebel against and tell to shut up. That advice on rejection forever changed me.
Rejection can be jealousy.
I thought doing well as a writer meant people would admire my work. Wrong. As soon as I had a little bit of success, I learned the hard way that random people were going to reject me. Writers blocked me on multiple platforms. Fellow entrepreneurs made up silly little lies in their heads that I’d intentionally copied their business idea.
It took me a while to understand people can reject you when you achieve a small amount of success in any field. Their rejection is nothing more than jealousy. Instead of working away at their dreams, they’d rather be pissed off and tear down your dreams.
Bottom line: It’s easier to be a critic than a creator. Choose to be a creator as it pays better than a critic who spreads hate, and earns zero in money, or in life fulfillment levels.
Rejection can be simply “I’m busy.”
I got rejected by “Choose yourself” author James Altucher. I reached out to him offering to help with a few challenges he was having which I had experience in. I got no response (a form of rejection).
I followed James up for years. To date, he has never responded to my emails or direct messages. Yet, about a year ago he followed me on Twitter and accepted my LinkedIn connection request. Did James reject me?
I don’t think so. The problem is James Altucher is too busy to answer any more requests of his time. Silent rejection is simply online overwhelm. I do it too. When my email inbox gets out of control, I stop replying to messages and auto-archive anything new. It’s not rejection; it’s a means of survival.
Time is limited. Silent rejection and ghosting is time protection, not intentional rejection designed to ruin your life.
When you look at rejection in this way you start communicating differently. You communicate with another person’s time in mind. When you do, your response rate to “asks” rapidly increases. There’s nothing better than when a person writes “If you’re too busy to respond then I completely understand.”
Being empathetic towards a human’s time is a superpower.
Rejection can be a lack of knowledge.
Let’s think about rejection in the hiring world. You want a job. You apply for it, or better, get referred to the job. You go through the hiring process and don’t get the job. What happened?
Well, in 2019 I learned the hard way after I got fired from my job in the wake of getting a big promotion to lead a large team at a tech company. I got thrown out onto the street with nothing more than my beloved Logitech keyboard my former bank boss bought for me. I felt like a total bum.
I reached out to my network looking for jobs. Most people ignored me because I was now unemployed. Networking with an unemployed person has a stigma about it for corporate types of people. The assumption is you’re unemployed because there’s something wrong with you — otherwise, why would you have no job, pal? In my case, it was rotten luck and a bad boss almost as terrible as the evil Hitler. Getting fired was better than running a dictatorship though.
After doing a lot of job interviews and getting mostly silent rejection, I began to investigate. I learned most recruiters and hiring managers knew very little about me. They made hiring decisions based on their best guess. They didn’t have time to analyze my 10+ year work history. They couldn’t ring every boss I’d ever worked for. They couldn’t ring the employees of my former startups and ask them what sort of entrepreneur I was.
Job rejection is a lack of knowledge.
The way for me to overcome the problem became simple: get better at educating those who might hire me about my career history. This meant taking hundreds of dot points and trying to distill them down to a heavily curated list full of zero corporate jargon.
My elevator pitch became succinct. I got good at telling my career history in a matter of minutes and tieing it back to the job in front of me. This approach eventually led me to an unlikely job in tech.
The person who helped get me the job did it (as I later learned) because I helped them get a job when we worked together in a bank. The resume didn’t do much for me. The kind act from 2015 is what got me the job, proving that it’s the actions you take and the people you influence who are most likely to help you overcome rejection.
Rejection can be favoring a friend over a stranger.
Maybe it’s not you. I’ve had career opportunities go to other people because they had a better relationship with the hiring manager than I did.
Remember this: people are more likely to give opportunities to their friends. It’s not personal. It’s human nature.
Rather than being angry, you can simply build relationships in areas where you wish to seek out opportunities. I build relationships with writers all the time. Many of them I have collaborated with and this is no accident. Don’t mistake this strategy for a transactional approach to life.
You don’t build relationships in order to “get” something from a person. You build relationships so your magnet mind is attracted to the right ideas and people to move your life forward in the direction you wish.
“Getting rejected by Harvard was the most pivotal moment of my life.” — Warren Buffett
Here’s How to Deal with Rejection Like a Pro
Reframe rejection into “It makes me stronger.”
Every rejection I’ve had in my life has taught me a lesson.
When I got rejected a lot in the dating scene, I realized I was too focused on my own wants and didn’t even listen to the other person on the date. Rejection taught me to listen while looking for love, rather than talk about myself and my silly accomplishments.
When I got rejected in my career, I realized I lacked patience. I wanted to get a yes to a new job in a brand new industry within a month. Patience taught me to keep trying for longer.
When I got rejected as a writer, I realized I simply hadn’t written enough. When you write a lot you hone your voice and discover what you like writing about. When you’ve written less than one hundred blog posts you don’t know who you are yet. That’s normal.
The more willing you are to get rejected, the stronger your psychology becomes when bad situations occur in your life.
Handle rejection with grace and optimism (like this).
Brian Acton got rejected by Facebook in 2009 for a job. Shortly after, he posted on Twitter, “Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life’s next adventure.”
The tweet shows his hidden pain. But the words he chose to frame this rejection showed humility, growth, and optimism. A few years later Brian sold his startup, WhatsApp, to Facebook and pocketed $4 billion. Rejection can set you on a brand new path and make dreams you haven’t set into motion yet start to align.
Use rejection as a form of optimism for the future. Rejection is a no with the potential for a much bigger future yes.
See rejection as untapped motivation.
Rejection motivates me to try harder. If rejection stops you from taking action then rejection wins. If rejection helps you be motivated then you have won.
I channel the energy of rejection into proving people wrong who doubt my dreams. I take the doubts and re-engineer them into reasons why I must keep trying to succeed as a lost soul in this world. If you never get rejected then you lack reasons why you should keep trying to achieve your goals.
Quietly proving critics wrong is glorious.
Remember, it’s a numbers game.
If twenty people rejected you don’t worry — there are a few billion others who haven’t rejected you yet. The numbers are on your side. You don’t need many people in your life to enable your dreams to achieve everything you want and more. There are always more people who can reject you.
String together a few yeses and you have a lot more momentum than you may realize.
Normalize rejection.
I assume a rejection will happen until proven wrong. When I send an email to James Altucher I assume he won’t read it. When I tweet Tim Ferriss I assume he is hiding in the jungle writing a book and won’t respond.
Expecting rejection lessens its power on you. You don’t care too much about rejection when you expect it to happen 99% of the time. Then when you don’t get rejected you’re genuinely surprised and inspired.
I pitched a publication called Forge for a long time. After about a year they finally accepted a piece from me. I was ecstatic because I never expected them to accept my work given they publish the likes of Ryan Holiday.
See rejection as normal and you won’t be let down.
I collect rejection. I’m framing the rejection letters.
My favorite response to rejection: “What else you got?
Screw rejection. There, I said it. I have an inbox full of rejection. I’ve been given every excuse as to why I will never succeed as a writer or be featured in Time Magazine. The rejection letters are going to be framed and put on my wall, when I one day own a home that replaces my rented student apartment.
Those who reject you are simply stating their opinion. You don’t have to accept it. You can simply say thank you and move on. Or you can use their rejection as the reason why you can’t let your dreams die.
Rejection is a decision, not an outcome.