How to Accept Rejection With Grace

Getting rejected is a huge blow to anyone’s self-esteem.  Whether it’s in the context of your love life or job, rejection happens to the best of us.  Despite the way you feel after getting rejected, rejection does have its benefits.  Learning how to handle rejection can help you avoid stress and anger.  Better yet, if you learn to understand rejection as a natural part of life, you will take more opportunities in the future without being afraid of getting turned down.

Understanding Why You were Rejected

To move past rejection you must understand and accept it.  Avoid making excuses or throwing a fit.  If you are auditioning for a theater play and don’t get the role, then perhaps you just weren’t good enough.  It’s tough to admit failure but doing so it much more productive than being ignorant.  Use this as a motivation to get better – train harder and sacrifice more so the next opportunity you get, you can nail it.

Dealing With Rejection in Love

When it comes to our love life, rejection can feel like our hearts are being ripped out.  Whether you ask someone on a date to the movies or your partner ends the relationship, it’s hard to put yourself in a vulnerable position.  We often feel small, as if we weren’t good enough to be with that person, or angry as if the world is treating us unfairly.  

Whatever you are feeling at the moment, you should take some time to let the situation digest.  If you react immediately, you run the risk of doing something you’ll regret like pleading, crying, or storming off.  When rejected, regain your composure and take a few moments to reflect.  After a while, your head will clear and you can think about the situation more logically. 

You two may not have been right for each other in the first place and you were just letting your emotions sway you.  Maybe he or she wasn’t in the right time of his or her life to be with you.  Don’t automatically assume you were rejected because of your faults. 

How to Not Take it Personally

Everyone in the world is self-conscious to a degree.  If you’re hair isn’t just right, you may think everyone notices – the reality is that while you are thinking about your messy hair, everyone else is thinking about their sagging chin and their drooping gut – and are probably jealous of yours. 

People tend to overreact to circumstances involving themselves, so if you are embarrassed about rejection, keep this in mind.  Would you think anything less of your friend if he or she got rejected by a lover or on a job interview?  Would that make them a failure or not good enough to be your friend?  Probably not, because you understand that in the overall context of things, one-off rejection isn’t that big of a deal.

How to Lose Your Fear of Rejection

If you can internalize the fact that rejection is a normal aspect of human interactions and everyone goes through it at some point in their lives, you no longer have to fear it.  Without the fear of rejection, you can take more chances that will lead to more opportunities, whether in your education, career, family, or love life.  Once you lose that fear, a whole new world of possibilities will open up to you.