Overcoming failure and Rejection-Evolving the self

Mastering Failure and Rejection (Part 1 of 3) It's not misfortune itself that defeats you. Published on June 30, 2010 by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in Evolution of the Self The Problem Defined Below are a few quotes that define what, to me, represents the wrong attitude toward failure and rejection: "You put yourself on the line as a performer, and when people reject you, it's a personal rejection." And, "Everything is a rejection of you, not your product, or your script, or a cosmetic. It's you." (Morgan Brittany) "When there's no chance for failure, there is opportunity for success." (Arthur Tugman) "There's no way I'm going to put this kid in the movies, because of the rejection. It's so hard as an adult, so why set her up to feel that bad as a child?" (Rosanna Arquette) No question but that failure and rejection sting. And this sting can be--at least in the moment--excruciatingly painful. Yet it's really not possible to go through life without such adverse experiences, so strenuously attempting to avoid them is ultimately as foolish and self-defeating as it is futile. See All Stories In The Art of Failing The next best thing to success is knowing how to recover from defeat. What this three-part post will focus on is, in the present part, examining the problems not so much inherent in failure and rejection as in your counter-productive reactions to them; in part 2, exploring all the positive ways you can deal with such discouragements and letdowns--so that your immediately upsetting experience can actually pave the way for success later on; and, in the 3rd and final segment, presenting quotations from Confucius onwards to suggest the timeless wisdom of seeing disappointments and defeats as detours along the frequently circuitous road to success. . . . And, in this sense, I should add that I've long believed that the one thing more important than success is "mastering" failure. And, paradoxically, this fully coming to terms with adversity might just be the greatest success of all. But first a question. What exactly do these two deeply intertwined terms--failure and rejection--have in common? What, that is, do they both mean? While neither word really needs defining, it's still essential to emphasize that--conventionally, at least--each carries the most unfavorable connotations. And, in fact, it's curious just how frequently these two terms are uttered in the same breath--not only because there's so much overlap between them, but also because each typically brings up similarly worrisome doubts we tend to harbor about ourselves. It's not very likely that in growing up you were "conditioned" to view failure and rejection positively, as opportunities for learning, growth, and change. And without such encouraging family counsel, odds are that each of your encounters with adversity was, subjectively, experienced as shutting down opportunities, as pushing you right back to the starting line--definitely worse off than before. For now you felt worse . . . worse, that is, about yourself. The most unfortunate thing about failure and rejection is that if you're like most people, you're apt to take such incidents personally (like actress, Morgan Brittany, above). And such self-disparaging interpretations are likely to drive your mind back to whatever discouraged, defeatist ideas of self you may, however unconsciously, still be holding onto. Moreover, blaming yourself in such situations can't help but bring to the surface your most anxious concern: namely, that you may not be good enough. What commonly happens when you fail at something, or are rejected by someone, is to verbally beat yourself up. Or--whether in your head, or in person--critically attack the person or circumstance that (partly to help you feel less bad about yourself) you hold responsible for your misfortune. But either way, reacting in such knee-jerk fashion to events that didn't turn out as you'd hoped prevents you from evaluating them constructively-and in a way that would help you both to learn from them, and move beyond them. The main thing is that, initially, when you've failed at something or been rejected, your ego is likely to throb with pain. And such heightened distress may well prompt you to enlist your defenses to anaesthetize the blow. It may be that the person you wanted to pursue gives you a clear message that your interest is not reciprocated. Or that you weren't offered the job you believed you'd interviewed so well for. Or that the project you'd worked so long and hard on ended disastrously. But unless you can learn how to take such setbacks in stride, they're likely to hinder you from moving forward. Inwardly smarting from such experiences, you may decide--defensively--to do all you can to protect yourself from future indignities. The unfortunate outcome of attempting to keep your anxiety at bay and make yourself less vulnerable to life's many frustrations is that you'll wind up pretty much leaving your goals behind, as you move toward the self-protective stratagem of indefinite procrastination. Or, you may decide not to take on the challenge--whether it be a person or project--at all. And, again, what stops you in your tracks is fearing further disappointment, others' disapproval or rejection, or (if you're overly critical of your work and so afraid you may not be able to finish perfectly what you started) your anxiety about meeting your own (excessively high) expectations. The problem, of course, is that once you give up trying, you can't ever succeed. The same could be said about self-assertion. If you're to stand a fair chance of getting what you desire from life, it's crucial that you let others know about your wants, needs, thoughts, and feelings. Otherwise, how can you ever hope to be understood, empathized with, or assisted by them in your attempts at personal fulfillment? But if you're governed by fears of failure and rejection, you may well (again, defensively) adopt a passive, passive-aggressive, or aggressive stance toward those around you--which, predictably, will hold you back from saying or doing what, in the end, would most likely elicit their support. Finally, the worst thing about taking failure and rejection personally--and as a result shying away from life's challenges--is how it affects your self-esteem. For, sooner or later, adopting such a pessimistic stance compels you to conclude that your negative encounters with reality connote something irredeemably negative about yourself. And denigrating yourself this way can't help but solidify a most unfavorable self-image. Here's a large variety of statements you may come to believe about yourself--or assume your life has already confirmed about you--if you regularly take failure and rejection too much to heart . . . or, I should say, too much "to ego": • "I'm not worthwhile," "I'm a disappointment," "I'm incapable," I'm inadequate," "I'm incompetent," "I'm inferior," "I don't measure up," "I can't do anything right," "I'm stupid," "I'm a loser," "I'm hopeless," "I can't succeed," or-at its extreme-"I'm shameful," "I'm contemptible," or (if you really get carried away with such self-abuse) "I'm a bad person." With such seriously compromised self-regard, whatever suspicions you may have about yourself as being, essentially, a fraud might also lead you to such negative, "non-deserving" beliefs as: • "I don't deserve love," "I don't deserve respect," "I don't deserve to succeed"-or maybe even, "I don't deserve to be happy"; as well as such self-derogatory beliefs as "I deserve criticism," or "I deserve disapproval (or rejection)." And, in yet another realm of self-denigration, you may (however unconsciously) conclude: • "I can't trust myself," "I can't trust my judgment," or "I can't trust my authority." The end result--again, not related so much to your actual experiences of failure or rejection but what, self-deridingly, you've made of them--is that you're likely to decide: • "I can't afford to be vulnerable," "I can't get what I want," "I have no authority," and "I'm powerless (or helpless)." Mastering Failure and Rejection (Part 1 of 3) It's not misfortune itself that defeats you. Published on June 30, 2010 by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in Evolution of the Self I realize the above characterizations may possibly seem exaggerated, maybe even ludicrously so. But I did want to stress that the consequences of turning away from life's challenges--which, by definition, always involve a certain risk of failing or being rejected--can potentially carry immense personal costs. Not fully engaging with life for fear of encountering yet additional disappointments--determining, that is, to avoid "at all costs" anything that could be emotionally unsettling--ultimately can entail far greater costs than risking the possibility of defeat. Note: Part 2 will suggest how to effectively "reframe" failure and rejection so that they no longer constitute such difficult obstacles to your personal growth and success. It will also deal with building resilience and developing a deeper belief in your capabilities. Finally, Part 3 will highlight a variety of famous quotations, from Confucius to the present day, which eloquently underscore the different points made in the first two parts. Mastering Failure and Rejection (Part 2 of 3) What, exactly, is the upside of failure and rejection? Published on June 30, 2010 by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in Evolution of the Self In Part 1 I discussed the various consequences of letting your fears of failure and rejection control you. This second part will suggest how you can control--or better, master--the emotions typically associated with these two negative outcomes, so you won't be deterred from taking full advantage of whatever opportunities life offers you. Before you seek to change your attitude toward failure and rejection, it's probably best simply to allow yourself to feel the full intensity of the emotions that follow in the wake of major disappointment. For before you can alter these negative feelings (whether they be embarrassment, humiliation, panic, anger, depression, or despair), you first need to get in touch with them--as the initial step in accurately linking the emotion you've experienced to the underlying beliefs requiring modification. You can't really revise your thinking about something till you're able to grasp just what your emotional reaction was to it--and what exaggerated, or otherwise irrational, thoughts engendered these emotions in the first place. See All Stories In The Art of Failing The next best thing to success is knowing how to recover from defeat. Find a Therapist Search for a mental health professional near you. Find Local: Acupuncturists Chiropractors Massage Therapists Dentists and more! It's only human to view, reflexively, what happens to you as saying something about you. We are, after all, meaning-making animals. But this assumptive thinking isn't necessarily true. In fact, the personal meanings you extrapolate from outward events are mostly untrue. So if somebody refuses your love, you may instantaneously feel as though there's something about you that's not lovable. But, realistically, how could your lovability hinge on a single person's preferences? As in "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder," I once met an exceptionally good-looking man who confessed that he could only be physically attracted to a substantially overweight woman. Whereas we typically assume that men prefer women with hourglass figures, this example demonstrates that even "models" of feminine pulchritude aren't immune to rejection. Although you may never have given it much thought, in almost all instances, another person's rejection says more about them than it does you. Someone might reject your overture of friendship simply because they don't have the time to add anyone else to their social circle. Or they might even be intimidated by you because they regard you as better looking, more intelligent, capable, or accomplished than they are. Similarly, if you're not offered a job you applied for, it might not indicate at all that you were inferior to the other candidates but, rather, that you were seen as overqualified for the position--or too young, too old, too aggressive, not aggressive enough, etc. etc. So even if your immediate reaction to rejection is to feel powerless, crestfallen, or despondent, once you can accept the other person's rejection as probably signifying little more than their right to choose according to their own biases and tastes--as opposed to indicating something defective about you--you can begin, emotionally, to recover from it. And if, being scrupulously honest with yourself, you conclude that you really were responsible, say, for a relationship's demise--whether because you were excessively dependent, overly demanding, or because of bad, inconsiderate behavior generally--you can still turn their rejection to your ultimate benefit. For you can use it as an opportunity to determine just what in your behavior may seriously need to be worked on. Failure can also be perceived as an occasion to reflect on your role--or lack of one--in influencing a situation that turned out poorly. You may, for instance, assume you're not smart enough because you failed at a particular endeavor--unaware that only two percent of those attempting such a project before you ever succeeded. And, because of your pessimistically negative conclusion, it may never occur to you that your failure can actually propel you forward, since it's helped you to rule out what may first have needed to be ruled out, before trying other alternatives. Additionally, you should realize that even when you do something perfectly, success is rarely guaranteed. Which is precisely why it's so important not to let a failure--which, in almost every case, is best considered a setback--actively discourage you from undertaking additional efforts to achieve your goal. I frequently tell my therapy clients that the reason virtually all pencils have erasers on one end is that all of us make mistakes--and somehow pencil-makers (needing to stay in business!) seem to grasp this a lot better than sometimes we do. "Normalize" your mistakes and they'll no longer have anywhere as much control over how you see yourself. Certainly, there's no shame inherent in doing something wrong--just as the shame you may lay on yourself after experiencing failure or rejection is self-inflicted. Without your (tacit) consent, others simply don't have the power to guilt or shame you. That power resides solely within yourself. It's you alone that makes the final verdict. My main point here is that when you can hardly stop reeling after an episode of failure or rejection, you're looking at things from the perspective of a battered ego. It's not so much that you need to change: it's, frankly, your weak ego that needs to be strengthened. Otherwise, you'll continue to see external events as threatening in a way that can't but help stunt your initiative. And so it's vital to consider that the other person's unfavorable decision--or the situation that turned out contrary to your expectations--may, personally, have very little to do with you. To assume differently is something like concluding that a talk you gave must have been deadly dull because one person in the audience fell asleep while you were delivering it. But how could you ever know whether that person was up all night with a colicky baby? Or was, for that matter, narcoleptic (?!). So, in the face of rejection or failure, what exactly should you do? After looking at the situation directly--and not flinching from its immediately potent sting (but not letting the emotional pain deter you either)--you need to see it for what, objectively, it is. Which typically is nothing more than a temporary setback, or detour, delaying your forward progress. But delay isn't defeat and you don't need to (mis-) interpret it as final, or "definitive." True, it may spell the death of one particular alternative, but there are almost always other choices--even if they're not yet on the horizon. In fact, to the degree that you've ruled out the viability of one possibility, that failure or rejection can even be seen as a partial success, since it's "succeeded" in eliminating something that (for all you knew at the time) might have worked. It just didn't, that's all. Defeated hopes offer you the opportunity to recalibrate--to reload--to rethink why and how something didn't turn out as you'd anticipated. Take the popular business adage: "ready-fire-aim." Feedback is often crucial to success, so you can only aim so much if what matters most in the moment is to get feedback. Whereas those who fear failure and rejection can "aim" indefinitely in their attempts to avoid further disappointment, successful individuals--choosing to be pro-active rather than to procrastinate--are much readier to risk failure than what might be a valuable opportunity. (To temporarily change the metaphor, for them it's better to "strike while the iron is hot," even if they subject themselves to a burn, than--self-protectively--wait till all is calm and safe.) When successful individuals miss their target, well, they just re-aim--knowing that with each successive shot, they're likely to get closer to the bull's eye. Each miss is calculated not in terms of failure but progress. Consider, for example, this wonderful quote from Thomas Edison on his many, many abortive experiments that ultimately led to the invention of the light bulb: "I have not failed," he proclaimed, "I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Here is failure reframed as a lengthy, and ultimately successful, process of creative elimination. Invention isn't usually a single-step process--and neither is success. Mastering Failure and Rejection (Part 2 of 3) What, exactly, is the upside of failure and rejection? Published on June 30, 2010 by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in Evolution of the Self If you think about it, life provides you with an almost endless number of do-overs. Both failure and rejection need to be seen as reminders of this--as in "practice makes perfect"--or, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Ultimately, it's how you cope with failing or getting rejected that determines whether each setback brings you ever closer to your goal. Once you can see such disappointments for what they really are--hurdles that all of us must surmount if we're to succeed--then you won't retreat simply because the outcome of your behavior remains in doubt. Edison could only have failed in his electrical quest by giving up. What he did do was endure (or "triumph over") an enormously ambitious, multiple-step process to finally bring his invention to (er-) light. Each "mis-step" provided him with additional information, so that--bit by bit--he was able to make the final correction . . . and so the light bulb. It reminds me of the line in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: "The course of true love never did run smooth." And, in general, neither does the route toward success. Many times your right path can't be understood till you've taken a few wrong ones. Perceived in this manner, the wrong path--indirectly--is intrinsic to the right one. For the right path is commonly obstructed by detours that need to be located and traversed before the right one is even recognizable. It's wise, therefore, to consider personal mistakes as prerequisites to discovering the solution that's finally right for you. Making mistakes, then, is simply the way you pay your dues for later success. See All Stories In The Art of Failing The next best thing to success is knowing how to recover from defeat. Find a Therapist Search for a mental health professional near you. Find Local: Acupuncturists Chiropractors Massage Therapists Dentists and more! Persistence is the key here. Or, more precisely, I should say that believing in yourself is the key. For it's hard to persist at anything if you're not convinced that, sooner or later--and by dint of your own efforts--you'll succeed. (And this, incidentally, is what psychologists call "self-efficacy.") Once you're able to firmly believe that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, eventual success isn't just possible: it's probable. As long as your self-assessment is reality-based, it's simply a matter of not retreating in the face of failure but instead soldiering on. And what, ultimately, enables you to sustain your efforts is a sustained belief in yourself. That, and persistence, sway the odds in your favor. If in the past you allowed some immediate defeat to prompt you, prematurely, to give up on something, what's crucial now is that you cultivate your resilience. And you do this mainly by remembering, and then visualizing (i.e., making as real in your head as possible), all your past successes--all the things you've done right over the years. Your courage to go forward after failure and rejection can then be restored, as you bring into the here-and-now the positive mindset that accompanies such recollections. To conclude, regarding every failure, every rejection, as a learning opportunity is the best way to avoid letting setbacks deter you from continuing toward your goals. Ultimately, disappointments have only as much power as you choose to give them. Once you can "befriend" your failures and rejections, they--paradoxically--can actually support your future efforts. If, however, you define failure and rejection self-defeatingly, they'll continue to control you. And they'll even doom you to further disappointments because of the resignation that comes with such a pessimistic attitude. If, on the other hand, you can see such defeats as an inevitable part of life--as something you must learn to deal with courageously and creatively--you're hardly likely to succumb to them. Future obstacles can almost always be reframed as challenges; and once you've effected this transformative mental shift, that last defeat will become your next opportunity. What felt like "the end" can now become a new beginning. And--in affirming yourself in the face of failure and rejection--you will have truly mastered them. Note: Whereas part 1 delved into the wrong way of dealing with failure and rejection, this present part has suggested far more adaptive ways of reacting to personal disappointments. Part 3--by far the shortest of these three segments--consists almost entirely of quotations. Collectively, these quotations say just about everything I've labored to articulate in the first two parts. Call them a kind of unusually eloquent SparkNotes version of the subject. I selected them not only because of their ageless wisdom, but also because they encapsulate "lessons" so vital for all of us to learn. Hopefully, reading them (and maybe even writing some of them down) will enable you to change whatever programming is, by preventing you from taking necessary risks, also keeping you from realizing your hopes and dreams. ---I invite all readers to follow my psychological musings on Twitter. Mastering Failure and Rejection (Part 3 of 3) What are the most profound things ever said about failure? Published on June 30, 2010 by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in Evolution of the Self Ageless Wisdom on Failure and Rejection By way of "consummating" this three-part post, this final segment will present a series of famous--and frequently eloquent--quotations on how best to understand, and respond to, failure and rejection. Call this, if you will, a kind of appendix for (or even SparkNotes review of) parts 1 and 2. Actually, toward the end of writing this extended post, I decided to check out a few web sites for well-known quotations on the subject. And by the time I'd completed my research, I realized that I'd hardly covered new ground at all--that virtually everything I had to say had already, though piecemeal, been said (and generally in small, appetite-whetting chunks that would fit nicely into Twitter). . . . So much for being original. See All Stories In The Art of Failing The next best thing to success is knowing how to recover from defeat. Find a Therapist Search for a mental health professional near you. Find Local: Acupuncturists Chiropractors Massage Therapists Dentists and more! Anyhow, here are some of my favorites. If you're concerned that you may be overly reactive to failure and rejection, you might want to pick out those utterances that "speak" to you the most--and adopt them as your personal mantras: "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." (Confucius) "You can fail so very often. But you are not a failure until you give up." (Anonymous) "Failure is the path of least persistence." (Anonymous) "The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures." (Humphrey Davy) "Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." (Denis Waitley) "A rejection [cf. failure] is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success." (Bo Bennett) "We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery." (Samuel Smiles) "Psychoanalysis shows the human infant as the passive recipient of love, unable to bear hostility. Development is the learning to love actively and to bear rejection." (Karl Stern) "There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself." (James Lee Burke) "I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat." (Sylvester Stallone) "You need to develop, somehow, a huge amount of faith and confidence in yourself, because there's a lot of rejection throughout an actor's life and you have to believe in yourself more than anyone else." (Stephen Collins) "Having harvested all the knowledge and wisdom we can from our mistakes and failures, we should put them behind us and go ahead." (Edith Johnson) "The man who has done his level best . . . is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure." (B. C. Forbes) "Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act." (Maxwell Maltz) "We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure." (Leo F. Buscaglia) "He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being." (Paul Tillich) "The only real failure in life is the failure to try." (Source Unknown) "Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts." (John Wooden) "Failure is success if we learn from it." (Malcolm S. Forbes) "There is no failure except in no longer trying." (Elbert Hubbard) "Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have." (Elbert Hubbard) "Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work, and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach." (Roger Von Oech) "Failure is the tuition you pay for success." (Walter Brunell) "The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure" (Sven Goran Eriksson) "Try and fail, but don't fail to try." (Stephen Kaggwa) And, finally, "There are no failures-just experiences and your reactions to them." (Tom Krause)