How to Empower Yourself by Embracing Rejection
Have you ever received a no - whether in life or business - that stopped you in your tracks?
If so, you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs have experienced a complete halt in progress at some point in their careers due to a rejection that stung so badly that they never launched again, stopped selling their course, or otherwise quit what they were pursuing.
But the most successful people don’t let rejection take them out. In fact, they use rejection as a stepping stone on their way to yes.
In today’s new post, you’re getting my signature Rejection Cycle Method - an empowering process that shifts your energy towards rejection and allows you to change your station to open you up to greater opportunities moving forward.
Read on to learn how embracing those nos can end up leading to more yeses than you’ve ever dreamed of.
How do you view rejection?
When I say that word, rejection, what comes to mind for you? Do you immediately make a meaning of it? Do you immediately get a feeling inside your body? Is everything inside of you saying, Oh, no… I don't want to get rejected. The feeling can be uncomfortable. That’s because your brain is making meaning of rejection.
I find that so many entrepreneurs feel like rejection means something about them. Perhaps you feel this way, too. When someone says no to you, or when they don't choose to move forward with the offer that you presented, maybe you feel misunderstood or invalidated. Perhaps there’s even some resentment bubbling up. Rejection can feel personal when we make it about us, about our own self-worth.
Identifying your rejection story
There are so many stories that happen in your brain when someone says no to you. I want you to identify the story that's happening inside your head. We'll call that your “radio station” - it’s the station that goes on, playing on repeat like a broken record over and over in your head whenever you are experiencing some form of rejection.
These stories cause us to create meaning. And these meanings don't necessarily mean what we think they mean. These stories can be rooted in childhood, or have been developed over time through our life experiences. We make them up in our head, then live them out again and again whenever rejection surfaces. This is why it’s so important to identify them, so you can become more aware of when they’re playing on your radio station and stop them so you can change the channel if/when they’re no longer serving you.
The rejection domino effect
If you don't stop the rejection stories playing on repeat and change your channel, they will likely prevent you from moving forward.
The next time a launch doesn’t go as planned, your stories may cause you to never have the courage to launch again. The next time a new product doesn’t sell, your stories may cause you to stop developing new products altogether. Your stories are powerful forces when left unchecked, toppling your progress, drive, and overall confidence. This is your opportunity to change the channel before they do the damage.
My Rejection Cycle Method
This process is about embracing rejection, not just overcoming rejection. I am going to teach you how to actually embrace it in a way that helps you further your business.
The Rejection Cycle Method has 5 steps:
- Embrace the nos
- Celebrate the nos
- Stop the bleeding
- Change your station
- Cycle back to embracing the nos
So how do you go about embracing the nos? You begin by taking away their meaning. You no longer allow no to “say” anything about you. No isn’t good or bad; it’s just no.
You can then celebrate the nos by seeing them as valuable information you can use. When you remove the emotion surrounding rejection, you allow your brain to move back to creativity mode. In creativity mode, you can brainstorm solutions on how to get back to yes.
Stopping the bleeding is about switching your energetic state. The station that's playing silently inside your head is what's being emitted on the outside through your frequency. So in order to not allow rejection to seep into any of your interactions that follow, you’ve got to shake it off, and mindfully change your station.
You change your station by checking your frequency and choosing how you want to move on energetically. Change your station to one of confidence and trust in the yeses to come.
Then you cycle back to a place of acceptance by embracing those nos. When you embrace the nos, you end up giving yourself an opportunity for more opportunities to come. When you give yourself the ability to be said no to, you also give yourself the ability to get more yeses.
Opening up to more yeses
What could you get if you let go of your fear of and resistance to rejection? What could you achieve? What could come to you if you started to embrace the nos?
My mom used to say to me, If you don't ask, you don't get.
What aren’t you getting because you’re afraid to ask for it?
I recently heard Jamie Kern Lima of IT Cosmetics speak at a conference I attended. On the subject of rejection, she said that she looked at the most successful people and realized that every one of those successful people received rejection on their journey to Yes. They received it, leveraged it, and moved beyond it to greater opportunities. Isn’t that a powerful way to think about it?
If you want to be one of those especially successful people, realize deeply that every no you receive is just a step on your way to Yes.
Greet your next nos with gratitude. That gratitude will literally change the frequency inside of you, and thus change your outward experience in life and business.
What's your frequency going to be?
