When you pivot, as I’m considering doing right now, there is a lot of rejection that will come your way. I am receiving it every day, and yes, it stings.
The biggest issue is that you don’t get to the right place unless you experience rejection. In fact, I would say that if you are not experiencing regular rejection, you are not taking enough chances in your life. And you could be so much more than you are currently. I’m reminding myself of this daily as I go through this transition.
So as I chase that rejection to get myself to the next step, here is what I’m doing to address the mental health side effects.
Limiting how much rejection I chase
Laurie Ruettimann posted on Threads recently that you should really limit the amount of time you spend on a job search. After the third to fourth hour, you start seeing diminishing returns. And your time is really better suited to something else.
I think the same can be said about rejection. If you keep getting told no constantly, you’ll end up in a mental health spiral. And then you’ll think the only response to you is no. Because of this, I only go after a few jobs a day. Looking at my schedule, I could absolutely do more. But I don’t like the idea of what that could potentially do to my mental health. So instead I fill the rest of my time with other activities.
Fill my time with some easy “yes” activities
If I know there is a lot on my agenda that could potentially reject me, then I need to make sure the opposite is true. In other words, I need to chase those easy yeses.
This is my volunteer work. During this time, I make sure that I’m volunteering for organizations that are grateful for my help and are a positive experience overall. I am picky during these transition times to make sure my mental health is in check. So even a whiff of a negative experience has me running to the next volunteer opportunity.
I also fill up my time with activities that make me feel good. Either they’re easy to do or I just really enjoy doing them. So it’s really easy to feel accomplished after I’ve done them. When you don’t have much work to do, it’s so important to have that feeling of accomplishment somewhere. Otherwise, your mental health will suffer.
Get around others
Rejection has this way of making you push others away. When everything feels negative, you think you’re not worthy of relationships with other people.
Lean away from that feeling as much as possible. It won’t get you anywhere and will have you digging a mental health hole. Instead, make those coffee dates you’ve been putting off. Find some kind of social situation to dive into every day. It can be little or big. It doesn’t matter. Just get around others in some way every day.
I’ll admit that it’s a little easier for me. I have a very social three year old. I have school drop off and pick up every weekday where I talk to other parents. And there’s even a mom buddy who gets there at the exact same time as me for pick up. And then my little girl has an endless choice of activities to do. I limit them to one per day, because I believe being bored is a valuable lesson for a kid. And as an introverted person, that takes care of my social needs and makes me feel like a valuable person. My partner does push me out to get some non-mommy social time in, which I admit that I probably need to do more often. But if I don’t do it, I’m okay because I regularly talk to people in-person.
In-person is a big key to this. There is just something you get from being able to interact with someone in-person that you don’t get from Zoom, instant messaging or email. Although those other forms of communication definitely help as well.
Work your dream
Even after filling your schedule with all of this, it’s likely that you still have some free time left over. Put that time to good use by going after your pie-in-the-sky dream.
Look, we all have that dream that we don’t think is possible. Why not go after it when you don’t have anything to lose? It might turn into something and you can put that whole job search thing behind you.
For me, this has been helping my partner sell and market stickers. Is this my dream? No. I honestly am going after my dream with my job search. So I’m helping my partner with a dream of his that sounds like fun to me. We have modest goals of funding my daughter’s education with this. That frees up funds for other dreams of mine, including bringing more fun into our life. Or at least get a maid. Okay, fine. My entire dream is to have a maid to clean my house. And working on this small sticker business of ours, we may eventually get there.
Rejection is part of life
Acceptance of rejection is really what is going to help you the most. Every rejection gets you closer to what is meant for you. It’s hard to realize that in the moment. But if you keep working on yourself as you face that rejection, it gets easier to keep it in perspective. And getting it into perspective is the first step towards getting to where you are meant to be.
How do you deal with continual rejection?