It happens to all of us from time to time during our career, you get looked over for a promotion that you thought you had your name on it or your business proposal gets turned down or even worse the dream job you were excited about gets away. Rejection makes us all feel terrible about ourselves and one is almost guaranteed to have feelings of unworthiness / low self esteem and loss of confidence, the nagging feeling of being unwanted and blaming yourself at the same time.  Some people may even turn into bitterness, anger or depression which could take months to overcome. Rejection hurts and we need to work with these often painful emotions to get past them. You can do this by allowing the emotion to flow, as it was designed to do. Try:

• Naming the emotion and talking about it
• Giving yourself permission to feel the emotion
• Understand why you are feeling this way by questioning what the rejection means to you (e.g. I needed the money and so now I can't afford or I'm not good enough or what will other people think about me?and so on)
• Choosing constructive behaviours when you feel this way. Cited: Flyingsolo, 2011.

Managing rejection can be hard, each time it occurs we have the opportunity to improve and learn more about ourselves. We need to develop strategies to cope with rejection. Here are some skills showing you how you can swap hurt, hatred and suffering into positive living, learning and moving on:

• Skill One: After experiencing rejection increase your performance and work harder at your performance.
• If every athlete had to take it personally that they have let their team, coach or fans down they would no longer be professional athletes.  In order to manage the rejection effectively they need to separate their performance from how it makes them feel as a person and work on their skills in order to be successful for the next game.
• This way they are focusing on their performance levels and in turn this will make them feel better about themselves because they are improving on themselves to be prepared and succeed for the next event.
• Skill Two: Rephrase rejection as a performance disappointment. A good athlete tells himself that they are disappointed with their performance and does not take it personally.  By doing this an employee can focus on being disappointed in their performance rather than themselves, which leads to better recovery and identifies on what has let them down.  They can then also take this on board and work harder at their performance rather than wallowing that they have let themselves down.
• Skill Three: Keep evaluating your own performance.  You are your best judge on how accurately you are performing.  Sometimes you know when you are slacking a bit and when you have really put in all you have got.  Most times when you have not put in as much as you should have it reflects and the main thing is to recognize this and make sure that you believe in yourself in order to better improve your performance.  The Springboks certainly know a thing or two about bouncing back and readjusting their performance levels!
• Skill Four: Think of rejection as a bad inning.  If you can see things are going pear shaped it's time to take a 'time-out and get back in the saddle because it's not over till the fat lady sings- regroup and start with a fresh with a new goal and strategy.

These skills are cited from Pnet.co.za, 2011.

Sources:

• Flyingsolo
• pnet.co.za

Page Updated: 21 December 2011