Was I Rejected or Rescued By The Angels?

Have you recently felt the pain of being rejected?

Finding where we fit can take longer than we may wish. We really aren’t in charge of life’s timeline, and each rejection along our journey can really sting.

Why do I let it bother me so?

Was I wanting others to have a certain opinion of me? Did I feel shut out?

Or was I knocking on the wrong door?

There are lots of doors in life, and we can get stuck on wanting a specific outcome. When rejection is rubbed in my face, how resilient am I? How graciously rebellious? And how do I model that resilience, that graceful rebellion, for my team?

If I count success as being allowed into a group where I am not wanted, I have attached my hopes, dreams and outcome to the wrong team.

We wish it were the ideal world, where all human beings were accepted for their diversity. Many of us keep working toward that outcome. In the meantime, …….

As a spiritual person, I like to think of it as being rescued by the angels.

There is always a different adventure to take, another road to inner peace and success and to what you could call “achievement”.

As a young office worker and part-time student years ago, I was laughingly told (more than once) by a few in upper management that I would never make it through night-school to graduation. That “left-handed compliment” was enough rebuff to harden my resolve to keep moving ahead through seven and a half years of classes, to graduate.

The easy victories don’t take much investment in our personal resilience and self-belief.

On the other hand, the painful life lessons of building resilience and persistence when faced with a big slug of rejection, even humiliation, really make us invest in our personal courage and bravery. Let that rejection re-direct you to a new, different, more creative and positive route to your goals.

My son recently had an unexpected experience of peer rejection at school. We talked about giving more personal space and how “there are lots of other kids in band'“.

We also have been fired from piano lessons. It was a very painful parent lesson but I have learned to tell the story with humor and a laughing shake of my head. I don’t think my son cared one bit, but I felt the sting a long time.

The lessons of rejection are in the eyes of the beholder: We have been given an opportunity to be feisty, to be creative in problem-solving, to show perseverance, and to choose whom we life live with. If you are a bit different, neurodiverse, this may happen to you more than you wish. My son is with you, and so here we are.

Let’s make our own rules of what our success and acceptance looks like.

I tell my son, “to have a friend, you have to be a friend first”,

and

“the whole world is waiting for a text message of friendship”.

Be that text message, be that friend. Take back your power with grace and humor.

Let’s talk.