Dealing with Rejection
Twice rejected in four weeks. Here's how I dealt with it, and what I learnt from staying with it instead of legging it.
“A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.” — Bo Bennett
Twice in the space of four weeks, I found myself on the wrong end of a decision I’d been hoping would go the other way. I’m not going to go into the specifics: that’s not the point. The point is what happened in the hours and days after.
I want to write this down. Partly as a permanent reminder to myself, partly because someone else might find it useful.
When the call came, I knew from the first few words. The full range hit at once: anger, upset, nausea, a heart rate that felt entirely disproportionate. I got off the phone and tried to carry on. Couldn’t. Those around me could tell something was wrong, and I pushed them away. I nearly made myself ill.
Then I did something that turned out to matter: I found somewhere quiet, sat down, and wrote everything out. Brain dump, no filter: what was said, what I felt, what I thought I might have done differently. It took an hour or two. By the end, the cloud had started to lift.
On the train home that night I turned those notes into something resembling a plan.
A month on
Things have settled. I still turn it over occasionally, still second-guess moments I can’t fully reconstruct. But I’m glad I forced myself through that extra hour of discomfort, because I came out the other side with something to work towards instead of self-pity.
The notes gave me things to act on, and a goal.
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