Rejection - What signals are you receiving?

 Do you retreat and hide when you feel rejected at work? Do you stop speaking up in meetings? Do you try to stay under the radar?

Rejection often signals that something is wrong in terms of your perceived value or social standing in the corporate hierarchy. Your instinctive reaction to retreat is normal. Taking a little time for analysis and reflection is just what the doctor ordered. However, if you retreat for too long, you deprive yourself of growth opportunities and lose valuable time in which you could have showcased your gifts and talents. Playing small serves no one, especially you.

To come out ahead after a perceived rejection, take the time objectively to assess the situation.

Ask, is it personal? Know that our filters and biases may be clouding our perception. Most of the rejections we face aren’t personal and can be attributed to factors we can't see yet. Here, assuming good intent will help alleviate the pain and accelerate our recovery from the perceived rejection.

Sometimes, in a rejection is buried valuable insight. An opportunity for personal growth! Get off autopilot and pay attention to the situation, the players, and yourself. If you inadvertently caused it, you now have the power to fix it in the next iteration.

After you have ruled out all other causes, you may conclude that the intent behind the rejection was not virtuous. Take comfort in the fact that your detractors have strengthened you, clarified your vision, and set you on a better path. Biographies of most successful people point to rejection as an inflection point in their forward trajectory. Rejection in this case is a "Redirection" to something better.

Do you agree?



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