Still stuck? Into your thoughts, from where you get rejected? Still your heart feels heavy and burdened? Still your mind thinking that – Oo man! You are good for nothing? Then listen to me. It’s Normal! Yes, it’s completely normal to get broke by such rejections. Infact, rejections need to teach you my friend to handle them gently, to not get over sensitive when you feel rejected. Yes, that’s why how you are Dealing with Rejection, becomes a very important and underrated topic of our generation.

We are over attached to some of the things when we need to chill out– and push such rejections away from us when you have finally learned through them. Here in today’s blog– whether you have faced it or not, but this blog guarantees you to end your insecurity which you get from rejection, because I am going to tell you some amazing expert and studied ways, tips and examples and will try to help you holistically from this mindset issue.

How I handled my worst rejection.

No doubt rejection is painful, I had to give my preliminary exam for joining civil services and this year, it was my 3rd attempt. I was into my studies – focused, determined and with full consistency without thinking the second thought of, if I did not pass. Then what? What will I do? How will I face the criticism, how will I face myself with no confidence at all.

Three months left, I studied Day and night and made my sitting hours of 13 to 14 hrs., late night to early morning. I only used to eat, sleep and study. That’s all I was doing on loop.

Everything was on stake, I said no to relationships, parties, hangouts and even family gatherings also, because I didn’t want to get distracted and de-track for a single minute.

I knew, if I lost here– I would have to pay a heavy price in terms of everything, and would have to face backlash from every corner and from every single person whom I negated for my studies.

On the exam day, when it happened – I felt like everything was shattered now, the whole paper which used to be conceptual, suddenly came out to be of facts, small to small facts.

Now, I was feeling horribly failed , full of shame, dejected and out of nowhere– I was going through the major feeling of rejection and I didn’t know how to deal with rejection.

I have read in the studies(American psychological association) that our brain takes it & reacts with the same – pain of rejection is similar to physical injury.
No days passed, months passed but I didn’t have the idea of what to do with my future, what to proceed with, how I should cope with it.

Sometimes, I used to think overly wrong but one day– I sat with myself and I started to listen out, what I lost after this rejection, and asked some major life questions from myself.

Is this life finished?
Is this the end of my career?
Were people right about my aim?
By the way, what else’s in my aim, goal and bucket list? Yes! That’s the whole thing I was missing out on. There was just one egoistic saying – according to
that saying, “I will pursue everything else in my dream list after joining my civil services”.

That single saying holded me back for three years. Do you have any guesses about it? How long your one egoistic saying can fool you. Once I realized my overemphasis over one single aim, I figured out– that it was my ego, who was getting hurt and that ego was not letting me feel satisfied anywhere because I could not make it to the list of exams.

Why Rejection Feels So Painful?

According to Michelle P. Maidenberg, our reaction to rejection is based on our attachment style and according to that level of attachment, there is proportional impact on us.

As I told you my one of the stories, you can clearly see how obsessed I was with my exam and
the association with civil services.

We can understand this, level of attachment is the silent killer, where if we won’t satisfy it, it will kill us through overthinking, zero confidence and loads of self doubts on ourself.

Emotional and Cognitive Consequences of Being Rejected.

As per the study by APA, it says Rejected individuals show increased activity in the dACC ( dorsal anterior cingulate and anterior Insula) – 2 of the regions that show increased activity in the response to physical pain.

Means we can say that, for your brain – a broken heart is not different from a broken arm. So you can have number of consequences:-

• Increases Anger.
• Increases anxiety
• Depression.
• Loneliness.
• Excessive Jealousy.
• Embarrassment and sadness
• It reduces your ability to solve difficult intellectual tasks.
• Poor impulse control.
• Poor sleep quality, rise to overthinking and you might not able to sleep, so read (Reduce overthinking)

Practical Ways to Deal with Rejection.

If you feel rejected, that feeling will multiply, if you become practical at that particular stage, and take the command with full practicality and rationality. The results can be so beautiful that you have lost through rejections.

1. Face Discomfort.

If you get rejected from some sort of work, exam or in your dream job. You need to go through the phase where you are not comfortable in that particular situation, because you need to understand that if you could not make it to some list, work or job, there are potential points where you need to give yourself some time to sharpen your skill, work.

As per Eisenberg, activities that produce naturally opioids such as exercise – it’s an easy and healthy way to ease out the sore feelings of rejection.

There are a number of healthy and healing activities, where your mind naturally produces opioids, that could be dancing, enjoying your art, painting, writing, singing, performing yoga poses or meditation. In the start you might feel hesitant to go with these choices, or you might feel stupid. But trust me and Eisenberg’s statement, it’s not a joke.

I have tried it by myself, whenever I feel low, unhappy or dejected– I listen to music which cheers me up, music which hypes the feeling or I write or I do exercise. And it’s relieving.

2. Stop Overgeneralizing Rejections.

Mark R. Leary said people take rejections more personally than they should.

I find this statement to be 200% percent true because, many a time we don’t gulp the fact that we failed this time. We don’t swallow the fact. This non acceptance leads to create instability, insecurity and dissatisfaction in the mind as we go through the pain, real pain.

But the truth is, you don’t need to overgeneralize it. You need to think calmly and let that pain, ego or whatever it is out of your body, mind and soul. Rejection is merely a simple no, or normal uncomfortable feelings. It’s not the end of your world.

3. One step Ahead– Risk taker.

You need to analyze the whole thing as a graph of your performance, not just the single one, in which you heard a no from the door. If you look towards the holistic performance of yours, you will realise that you have leap high towards your aim, where others are thinking of just to start or making their first step, on the other hand you are trying to take every possible risk or step towards your goal.

The threshold of your rejection is only to the extent where you will be getting motivated, not to the extent where you are easily drowning into the feeling of horrible emptiness.

Remember every no or rejection is giving you a lesson, you have to just jot it down and improve from those rejection. You are not supposed to take these small setbacks into your heart.

4. Social connectedness.

According to studies, a dejected mindset should always seek out healthy , positive connections with family and friends.

It’s one of the healthiest ways to detox your mind from such negativity of rejection. You better talk to a member of your social circle who understands your points without a stigmatic suffix or prefix.

Loneliness will not help you much from these things, the more you spend alone time with yourself, the more replays your mind will get into, and one wrong overthinking can shake your whole self-esteem.

Activity in dACC during rejection is also associated with changes in people’s feelings about themselves at the moment(i.e., self-esteem), which is consistently affected by rejection.

5. Journal & Gratitude.

If you have ever tried to write your problems, you know sigh, the feeling of relief you get after it. It’s like you are sharing your every problem with your friend without any hesitation without any fear of judgement.

Plus you just only share by writing but after that don’t forget to show gratitude towards this life, journey, your health and experience.