Failure and Rejection
I love inspirational, underdog stories. I think we all do. The idea that failures are necessary, even good, for our lives is becoming more widespread and accepted.
I’ve told my kids that Michael Jordan was cut from his basketball team, that Walt Disney was fired from a job because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”, and that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple (his own company!) in 1985. There are so many more examples, too. Oprah was fired from her first job as a TV news anchor, Star Wars was repeatedly turned down by several film studios, Thomas Edison had 1,000 failed experiments before a lightbulb actually worked, and Vera Wang didn’t make the Olympic team as a figure skater. However, all of these people achieved great things in their lifetimes, despite the failures.
So inspiring.
The past few months have been interesting, to say the least. I have watched one of my kids have tremendous success at times, and then endure devastating rejections as well. She knows exactly how it feels to fail. She is also young enough that there hasn’t been time to keep moving forward—yet. In her words, “this is my origin story, Mom.” Still, the failures and rejections can feel personal, disappointing, and overwhelming.
Failing feels like garbage. It’s horrible.
Rejection is gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, humiliating stuff. It is awful.
Don’t convince yourself that the inspiring humans listed above can just handle failing better than most. This isn’t true. They don’t have special DNA or exceptional abilities that make negative emotions less tolerable. We are the same. Failing feels as bad to Michael Jordan as it does to you or me. As we live our lives, there is no way around these feelings. They are attached to the failures. The only way to avoid the negative emotions that come from failing and rejection is to never try anything at all.😳
Hmmm.
That seems like a bad idea. Don’t do that.
You are going to fail sometimes. Your kids are going to fail. Your parents are probably failing right now. 😜 Rejection is going to be a part of your life. Please stop fighting that and just embrace the truth. You can get really good at feeling any emotion. Part of being mentally tough is understanding that feeling badly is not going to kill you. Seriously. Rejection is horrible, but it will pass. All the emotions, even the ugly negative ones, move on. Stop trying to drink them away, or snack them away, or scroll them away. Emotions need to be felt.
Inspirational stories are my favorite. But I have never known one that wasn’t intimately connected to failing and rejection. The key is to remember that a particular failure on a certain day in a specific time in your life doesn’t mean that YOU are the failure.
It means you are human.
❤️
