Why Rejection is Ultimately Our Key to Success
Rejection is just another form of constructive feedback, so take it as it comes, learn from it, and move on
Rejection comes in many forms for different people— whether it’s getting let go from a job or not getting a job that you interviewed for or getting dumped or failing a test, rejection can and will happen at some point in your life. And when it does, it can often cut deep. After all, who actually likes being rejected?
Everyone handles rejection differently, but how we handle rejection when it happens is essentially the make or break moment for whatever lies ahead for us.
Personally, I’m no stranger to rejection. In just the past few years, I’ve been rejected more times than I can remember and I’m sure it will happen again many times throughout the rest of my life.
And I’m completely fine with that.
Because the thing is, rejection is ultimately our key to success for the future. Even though it might not seem like it in the moment, rejection does happen for a reason. And this is why.
When one door closes, another one opens
Yes, I know that we’ve all probably heard this before. It’s just about as cliché as cliché can get. But, we should also know that clichés are more often true than not (They wouldn’t have become common phrases if they weren’t).
When it comes to being rejected, we can look at it two ways — as a door being shut or a door being flung wide open. In all honesty, it’s a little bit of both.
Opportunities come in many shapes and forms, so instead of looking at rejection a singular failure, look at it as an opportunity to try again. An opportunity to try something different. To try something new.
Maybe what you thought you wanted wasn’t really the right thing for you. Maybe that person wasn’t the right one for you. Maybe you weren’t supposed to get that job because there’s something greater on the horizon.
If you look at rejection purely as one closed door, then you could miss out on the many other opportunities that are waiting behind the curtain. You just have to be patient.
We have more chances than we think
When we assume that we only have one chance at making something happen, but it doesn’t happen right then and there, then we also assume that we blew our one and only opportunity. We think of one moment or one life event is the end-all-be-all of our success in life, but that’s not true.
For as long as we have breathe on this earth, we can keep trying again and again. It’s simply a matter of perseverance and dedicating the our time and effort towards making something happen.
We often think of milestones occurring only within a specific time frame — such as going to college immediately after graduating high school or having kids immediately after getting married. We’re so wrapped up in prefixed timelines that we don’t stop to think that maybe things don’t always happen in the exact order that we want them to.
Without rejection, we’ll never know what we might have done wrong
Life is just one big trial and error experiment. We try new things, we make mistakes, we get rejected, and we fail. And we go through that process over and over again throughout our lives.
Without rejection and failure, we’d never have a way of knowing our errors and learn what we can do to improve for the future.
Rejection is our key to success because that’s exactly how we learn. We learn from the trial and error. We learn from our mistakes. We learn, we adjust, and we adapt, and we grow.
When rejection happens, it’s easy to sulk in disappoint and indulge in our own self-pity. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, no one can or should tell us how to feel when rejection hits.
We should take the necessary time we need to feel what we need to feel…but don’t stay there forever.
Don’t stay down, don’t stay defeated. Don’t assume that your rejection is the worst thing that can possibly happen to you because it’s not. More opportunities still lie ahead.
Rejection is just another form of constructive feedback, so take it as it comes, learn from it, and move on.
