Rejection is a common ache level. As social creatures, all of us crave feeling included, desired, and chosen. It’s thus no shock that rejection typically represents essentially the most weak space of our intimate lives—particularly once we are single and searching for a companion.
Furthermore, because the fast-paced world of on-line relationship supplies us with limitless alternatives to satisfy new folks, it additionally implies limitless alternatives to get rejected.
After teaching folks from all backgrounds, I’ve discovered that the worry of rejection is the primary hurdle to discovering and creating fulfilling relationships. Nonetheless, I’ve additionally discovered that working consciously with that have can deepen our capability to like in a profound, radically genuine approach.
As counter-intuitive as it might appear, the ache of rejection can OPEN a door to turn into really accessible for love!
On this weblog publish, I distill the teachings I’ve discovered from my very own rejection experiences and people of my teaching purchasers right into a method for turning rejection right into a catalyst for self-actualization—a course of that carves a path for real love and intimacy.
1. Use Rejection as a Flashlight
Rejection generally is a highly effective flashlight: once we use it to look inward, it illuminates the locations in us that want essentially the most therapeutic. Ask your self, “The place is the worry or ache of rejection coming from, precisely?” to disclose exactly the place your emotional wounds are. This consciousness is step one of therapeutic and remodeling these wounds, and residing an emancipated life.
As soon as we see the place the worry or ache of rejection is coming from, we are able to then work to like ourselves extra radically in these areas.
For instance, if an individual doesn’t really feel bodily stunning, feeling rejected in a relationship scenario will set off the ache related to missing love for one’s personal physique. Seeing this dynamic clearly will permit an individual to undertake self-love practices targeted on their physique, corresponding to lathering lotion on themselves each night time whereas deliberately infusing love into all of the nooks and crannies. Actions like these can create a brand new vibration round us, and shift our social dynamics.
We’re continuously educating others how one can deal with us by the way in which we deal with ourselves. How we really feel about ourselves issues a lot greater than how we glance—as a result of folks largely see us the way in which we see ourselves. Once we love our personal nooks and crannies, we robotically encourage others to like our nooks and crannies too!
2. Give Up on “Becoming In”
The worry of rejection often comes from our dependancy to exterior sources of validation. We’re a hyper-social species programmed to hunt belonging and approval from others as a matter of survival, starting in infancy.
Paradoxically, as adults, one of the simplest ways to draw love and real intimacy is to supply our personal love freely, whereas releasing others from having to make us be ok with ourselves.
As a teen, I used to be labeled a “reject” by my friends and have become socially remoted for a number of years. What ultimately freed me from the ache of utter rejection was the method of GIVING UP on being preferred or “chosen” based mostly on “becoming in.” After I realized that I didn’t have the choice of “becoming in,” I used to be compelled to hand over on ever becoming in.
What a RELIEF! I used to be free of the tyranny of looking for exterior approval, so I went on to carve my very own path based mostly on freedom and authenticity. I discovered my inside supply of boundless love and acceptance—and that newfound confidence started to magnetize folks into my life. In different phrases, I began receiving love from my friends as soon as I ended demanding it from them and began producing it for myself.
Anchoring your coronary heart inside your inside supply of affection may not occur in a single day; however, the extra you domesticate it, the extra peaceable you’ll really feel, and the extra engaging you’ll turn into to others.
3. Strengthen Your Nervous System and Give Love Freely
A gradual dedication to cultivating a community of loving relationships can strengthen our nervous techniques and construct our resilience to rejection.
Based on the polyvagal idea pioneered by Dr. Stephen Porges, each kids and adults want common, secure connections with others to “co-regulate” and develop emotional well being and resilience. Which means cultivating life-affirming relationships helps us get into the behavior of feeling secure within ourselves—which is the essence of emotional resilience. Thus, prioritizing reference to our household, mates, and colleagues builds our embodied capability to really feel secure when issues get laborious.
Within the context of relationship, having a powerful social community will make the perceived “menace” of rejection slide off our again way more simply—slightly than throw us right into a combat, flight, or freeze state.
And the way can we construct a powerful social community? By giving love. Giving love, particularly when it’s troublesome, forces us to remain linked with our inside supply of power—the ample, limitless geyser of generosity that lays inside every one in all us. Accessing that supply, particularly once we are feeling offended or rejected, shifts the emotional dynamic from being a VICTIM and into being a GIVER. This not solely feels a lot better to us, but it surely additionally makes us tremendously extra engaging to others who’re naturally drawn to our ample, brave, and daring love.
4. Domesticate Gratitude
The worry of rejection depends on a way of shortage; however gratitude is rooted within the notion of abundance. As such, gratitude is an antidote to rejection.
Too typically, we date with expectations that others will meet our wants. When these expectations are unfulfilled, we expertise disappointment and even emotions of betrayal and anger.
Once we domesticate gratitude, we remind ourselves that all the pieces is a present. Remembering that we’re not entitled to something from anybody, and that nothing ought to ever be taken without any consideration, helps us see the glass as half full slightly than half empty.
A 2-minute each day gratitude follow can create a river of abundance in your life. Attempt writing down one factor you’re grateful for each single day, and deeply give thanks for it. This straightforward follow will gently improve the circulate of receptivity in your life, and provide help to magnetize love!
5. Select Life!
Selecting life absolutely is to strategy each scenario with an angle of engaged curiosity slightly than judgment or condemnation. It’s about viewing the multitude of moments that we expertise each single day—even the disappointing ones—as alternatives to proactively create goodness, development, therapeutic, and love.
Once we honor life as it’s (slightly than how we want it might be), we absolutely take part within the nice journey of being ourselves. With this angle, we’ve got an opportunity to make use of ache—together with the ache of rejection—as a faculty slightly than a device of self-punishment. This attitude isn’t solely extra compassionate; it could possibly additionally free us from the jail of resentment, anger, and everlasting sulk.
Observe your reactions to on a regular basis conditions when issues don’t go your approach: do you instantly bounce to judgment? Victimhood? Blame? Merely injecting a second of consciousness in these conditions will start to create the area it is advisable to view issues from a extra compassionate lens. In that area lies your freedom to construct a richer, extra optimistic, and extra love-filled life.
Conclusion: The Magical Kitchen
Don Miguel Ruiz, writer of the bestseller books The 4 Agreements and The Mastery of Love, tells a stupendous story referred to as The Magical Kitchen. It encapsulates my relationship philosophy superbly. Right here it’s, paraphrased:
Our hero has a magical kitchen that produces any meals they need, in any quantity. There are at all times folks across the massive kitchen desk—consuming what they crave. The doorbell rings: an individual is on the door holding a pizza field. They inform our hero, “I provides you with this pizza should you promise to do no matter I need you to.” Our hero laughs and says, “Thanks, however I’m superb. I’ve a magical kitchen that can provide me even higher pizza—actually, you’re welcome to hitch me for dinner and eat something you need.”
Now, how would this have gone if our hero had been ravenous for days? He may need agreed to commerce his freedom for a chunk of pizza.
We run the danger of shedding ourselves and our freedom of self-determination once we date from a love-starved, determined place. Don’t fall into this lure! As a substitute, strive turning rejection right into a path of liberation, therapeutic, and as a catalyst to search out love. Discover your magical kitchen—I promise all of us have one.
