What do you do when someone says no to you? I feel offended. I also often feel embarrassed and wish that the floor would open up and swallow me whole. It usually leaves me feeling small and insignificant and stupid for ever daring to ask. However, the defeat of a no is a personal feeling. When someone says no to us, it is not final until we agree with them. Hence it doesn’t end with them it ends with us. When another puts up their rejection sign, it is important to remember that it is their right to do so. But we, too, have the right and the power to translate that answer for ourselves. Here are a few questions I have started asking myself: 1. What would an approval really mean? 2. Do I really, really want it? In other words, how much does it mean to me? 3. How should I try again? and 4. What are my other options?

Recently I got burned by a rejection. The ignoring kind, which has this way of making me feel so foolish and insecure. However, after I got over the uncomfortable feeling, I was considering #3, when I came to the realization that the rejection issued was actually best for my current circumstance. I am not really ready for what a yes could have generated; positively or negatively, hence #1 got me back on track.  In regards to #2, I sometimes seek out something only to have a change of heart and, therefore, find myself hoping that I will get a rejection, and when it does come it is accompanied by a sense of relief. #3, is a new exercise. Not taking no for an answer is something that I am terrible at. It makes me so shy to even think about being that daring. It used to be that when someone rejected my request, I would go running and never go back there again to be humiliated. Now, I try to step outside my comfort zone and venture again. 

It is not fun, but there is something wickedly cool about persevering and getting what you wanted because they either got tired of you and felt that giving in to you is the only way to get rid of you, or that your persistence impressed them.  #4 is choreographed by anger and the need to make a statements like; Who the heck do you think you’re? Or Watch me, I am going to be GREAT without you!  But through actions rather than words. #4 is my default. It’s where I often seek comfort when I get rejected. I find myself wanting to make it more, and especially without the help I had asked for. Eventually, I end up proving to myself that I didn’t really need them after all, and that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. The rejection becomes a gift that pushes me onto a path that I would not have otherwise followed, and this releases me from any remaining feelings of bitterness toward them. Sometimes anger is a great thing, especially when it is directed towards self-improvement, and sometimes it takes a fat rejection to get one on that road.

If everyone said yes to us, life would be ridiculously easy, and somehow we would probably get bored to death. There won’t be many passionate stories to share. The word “no” is a challenge and it should be seen as such; not in all cases, of course, sometimes a no is a no, and one must back off. But rejections often forces one to face oneself and reassess what they mean to do with an approval and why they want it, or if they really need it. There is also the question of whether what one seeks is even worth fighting for at all.

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Jane