Coping with Rejection Fear

Let's talk about what happens when someone has a plan on business start up or career growth. How can you deal with the pain, frustration and disappointment when you fail to achieve what you want in the most loving way to yourself and how can you not let this incident stop you or slow you down on the way to your dream.

We all know and heard it many times that when someone turns down your idea or project it is not so bad and it means nothing to you. However, we all get hurt, disappointed and take it personally anyways. Just because we know the truth about rejection, doesn't mean our feelings don't get involved when it happens. Rejection is like an insect bite, first there is an immediate affect of pain in the moment - disappointment of not getting what you were hoping for. You can dwell on that pain for a while, scratching at your wound or you can let it pass by quickly and forget about it half an hour later. Then there is a short term effect - itching and scratching at your wound: "How could he/she say so? Why somebody would reject my dream? " "Who does he think he is?" The most damaging effect however is the long term effect which is fear of getting back to implementing your plan. Because we don't want to deal with the same frustration and problems again, we do all we possibly can to avoid it in the future. This may seem like a logical defense mechanism that protects us from pain and disappointment. In order to transform our entire experience and fears of rejection we really need to reprogram ourselves. In other words change our views around it.

First of all, it is very important to deal with your feelings in the moment. Our mind may tell us that it is unreasonable to get hurt this much over some words or opinions. The truth is, however, that there is no such thing as invalid or unreasonable feelings. Each hurt feeling carries a lesson for us to learn about ourselves and until we learn this lesson we will get hurt with the same thing over and over again. The more we nurture our feelings the more empowered we become. It is also crucial to have someone you can trust and talk to about these things. Sometimes it can be a friend or a relative we're close to.

The long term effect of rejection can last up to several years or even affect you for the rest of your life if you let it. As I mentioned earlier, avoiding pain means avoiding learning our important lessons about life. This means you have to be willing to go through the frustration and deal with it if you have to. Bottom line is, whether you have ended the start up due to the lack of financial support or knowledge, this doesn’t mean the idea or project was bad. Go on learn more about this business. Talk to the expert and businessmen. Share the idea with your friends, even if they are laughing from you. Remember people were laughing too, when somebody first said he would fly in the sky like a bird.

My personal experience showed that one should not be allowed to speak out his dreams. The more you talk about it, the more you discuss it, the more real it seems to you. There is always a chance that somebody else would love the idea or the project and would help you with it. Don’t hide your plans and dreams. Nobody would support you emotionally or financially until it is your secret.

Being rejected is not the pleasant thing, but the things that do not kill us make us stronger. So there is a high chance that after several falls and rejections you will become strong enough to do succeed in everything you planned.