“Rejection doesn’t mean that you aren’t good enough; It means the other person failed to notice what you have to offer.”
Our deepest fear as human beings is the fear of rejection. Reject a baby and it will die physically or fail to thrive emotionally. Think of nature and it’s the same. Picture a David Attenborough documentary as he speaks in hushed tones and we watch the baby wildebeest crying for its mother after crossing the river. It has been separated from its mother and will die. Think of the small cuddly panda cub who is rejected by a mother more intent on eating bamboo. Unless hand-reared, it too will perish.
So rejection cuts the deepest. Rejection by a parent or sibling as you grew up. Rejection at school; perhaps you were bullied as you were ‘different’. Rejection in your much hoped-for career so you’ve had to settle at your job and hate every day. Rejection in love. Having your heart broken so badly that you feel unable to breathe. It is horrible but it is survivable.
Some people seem able to bounce back from rejection time and time again. Type into Google: ‘Celebrities who have come back from rejection’ and thousands of examples appear. Madonna and U2 were famously passed over by record producers who didn’t feel that they were ‘ready’ before they signed to greatness. J.K. Rowling had so many rejection letters prior to finding a publisher for Harry Potter that she just filed them in a box in her attic.
In one of Fred Astaire’s first screen tests, an executive wrote: “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little.”