Same as it Never Was – 3 Empowering Ways to Move Past Rejection

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We all experience it: the dreaded NO. Unmet expectations gone awry.

He’s leaving you. An old friend stops talking to you. A family member cuts you off. You’re denied the loan. The publisher declines your book. Your ex just remarried. You didn’t get the job, or you got fired. The list goes on. Ugh rejection.

In the last week alone, I’ve been rejected more than seven times. But none of that affected me. In fact, I found myself saying, “I’m actually glad that opportunity didn’t pan out.”

When you can step back and trust that everything in your life is part of a bigger plan, you see that rejection is actual protection.

Thirty literary agents rejected me before I landed my contract for my next book. Forty publishers turned down the book itself. But it found its perfect home with Random House Penguin, one of the largest publishers in the world.

I could have allowed the rejection letters to wound my ego. Or I could see everything has its time and place. I chose the latter.

The happiest and healthiest people in the world take rejection with a grain of salt. Here are some examples:

Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

Oprah Winfrey was fired as an evening news reporter at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV because she couldn’t separate her emotions from her stories.

At the start of Marilyn Monroe modeling and acting career, she was told she should consider becoming a secretary.

After a performance in Nashville early in Elvis Presley’s career, a manager told him he was better off driving trucks in Memphis (his previous job).

Rejection is not rejection. You can learn to handle rejection with super grace and ease, remain unphased, ego still intact, and onward you go, confidently forward.

Here are three simple truths about rejection.

1. Same as it Never Was – Nothing Changes

Jack Canfield talks about rejection in The Success Principles. Nothing ever changes when you are rejected, he says. Think about it: if Harvard turns you down, you’ve spent your whole life not going to Harvard. You know how to handle that. It’s the expectation that get us wound up. You can handle rejection with more grace by releasing your expectations of the outcome. And when you hear a “No,” know that nothing really changes in your life.

2. Rejection is Super Protection

Every time I hear a “No,” I remind myself I am being protected. A plan greater than yours is in place. The universe is aligning you to what is best for you. You may have thought that job was the perfect fit, but not getting it could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Your future self will guide you. Trust the process and don’t take rejection personally. Instead, trust you are being protected.

3. Repeat after me: It’s this or Something Better

I repeat this powerful mantra, “It’s this or something better,” with every rejection letter or phone call. The real magic of living a full life is knowing the right thing at the right time is on its way to you. The perfect relationship, the right job, the money you want, it is all coming. So if you hear a few “nos” along your way to the “yes,” know the yes is worth it. Something better is coming to you soon.

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