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DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 6 months ago
Experiencing rejection is something that everyone will face many times throughout their life. It can take place within your family, social interactions, work environment or even religious institutions.
There's simply no way to go through life without encountering both acceptance and rejection, and people either appreciating or disapproving of what you do or say.
So, the question is, are you addicted to seeking constant approval and praise?
If you are, criticism and rejection can become incredibly painful. You may also have unrealistic expectations that if you are somehow “good” enough, you will never experience rejection. This is a fantasy that you are not going to achieve and one you are wise to dissolve.
It is a futile exercise trying to achieve a one-sided life, one where you experience only praise and no criticism, only acceptance and never rejection.
I like to use the example of a magnet to explain this. You likely already know from physics that a magnet comprises both a positive pole and a negative pole. Imagine someone offers you a billion dollars to cut the magnet in half and asks you to give them back just the one-sided positive pole.
Regardless of how many times you try, how many options you try, and how fast you try, if you cut a magnet in half, you will simply end up with two magnets, each comprising a positive and a negative pole.
In other words, it is a futile exercise because there is no known way to separate a positive pole from a negative pole in order to end up with a one-sided magnet.
The unlikelihood of creating a one-sided magnet is a powerful analogy for how it is similarly futile to create a one-sided individual, one-sided relationship, and a one-sided life.
Yet, so many people spend their lives trying to achieve the unachievable, by expecting others to be one-sided (nice never mean, supportive never challenging, accepting never rejecting) and they also expect the same of themselves as they try to rid themselves of traits they perceive to be “negative” and keep only those they perceive as being “positive”.
In society, you will also find that people have diverse value systems that are sometimes even complete opposites. For example, there are those who are pro-life or pro-abortion, pro-democratic or anti-democratic, pro-capitalism or anti-capitalism, pro-gun or anti-gun, to name just a few.
As such, as you journey through life, you'll likely find that some people appreciate what you're doing while others disagree, some accept and others reject, some like and others dislike, some support and others challenge, and some praise and others reprimand.
Having an expectation in life that embraces both poles or sides objectivity and in balance prepares you for a more meaningful life. However, expecting life to predominantly lean one way or the other can lead to sacrificing your authenticity and identity just to fit in with everyone, which is neither sustainable long-term nor the wisest way to live.
As the old proverb goes, "I'd rather have the whole world against me than my own soul."
So no matter what you do, you'll be both liked and disliked. You will meet people with similar values and different values, and likely find that some will be supportive while others are challenging.
If it is not possible to avoid rejection, what would be a wise way to begin learning how to handle and even appreciate rejection?
What I have found most effective and that I recommend is to identify your highest values.
Living congruently with your highest value(s), the actions that are most important and highest in priority, makes your blood, glucose, and oxygen flow into the forebrain, the executive center, the medial prefrontal cortex in your brain, which becomes activated. In this state, you tend to be the most objective, striking a balance between your expectations and actions.
You also tend to become more resilient and adaptable. In this state of balance, you are less likely to experience the fear of losing what you seek or gaining what you're trying to avoid; you simply remain present, seeing the benefit and drawback equally of gaining and losing both that which you once were impulsively driven to seek and that which you were once instinctually driven to avoid.
However, if your day isn't filled with high-priority actions and you allow others' highest values and expectations to come into your life, you are more likely to become a people pleaser. In doing so, you may cloud the clarity of your life's calling and mission - the thing that is most important to you. Instead, you may find yourself doing what you perceive others expect of you and spreading yourself thin, often resulting in emotional exhaustion and fatigue if not even self-rejection.
This is because energy DEPLETES when you engage in low-priority tasks, and SURGES when you tackle high-priority ones. Your self-worth follows a similar pattern.
When you engage in lower-priority activities, fail to prioritize, and neglect delegating lower-priority tasks, you'll tend to feel unfulfilled, distracted, and frustrated.
You may then find yourself constantly putting out fires, reacting to what you perceive others would like you to do, and live a life where you are driven by duty rather than design. In these instances, your blood, glucose, and oxygen flow to the lower subcortical region of the brain - the limbic brain, specifically the amygdala. This area is an emotional reaction center, where the desire to instinctually avoid pain, impulsively seek pleasure, avoid predators, seek prey, avoid challenges, seek support, avoid criticism, and seek praise takes hold.
When your amygdala is activated and lights up, as opposed to your executive center, you are far more likely to crave pride, validation, rewards, praise, and support. The more you become addicted to these, the more painful rejection tends to become.
So, the more you crave praise, the more painful criticism feels, and the more you crave support, the more challenging situations can become.
I learned a long time ago that if you're not filling your day with challenges that inspire you, it fills up with challenges that don't.
When you are actively pursuing challenges that inspire you, you are most likely to experience eustress (also called “beneficial stress”). Eustress promotes wellness and balances the cytokines and pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses in your autonomic nervous system. This is when you are most likely to thrive in your life.
However, if you are not aligning your actions with your highest values and not pursuing inspiring challenges that genuinely interest you and require creative, solution-oriented thinking, you may find yourself becoming problem-oriented. In this state, you'll tend to seek easy pathways to avoid challenges.
The irony is that by doing so, you’ll attract the very challenges you want to avoid and experience distress, which promotes illness instead of wellness, and survival instead of thrival.
If you're not actively embracing equally both acceptance and rejection, aware that people will like and dislike what you do, you might find yourself trapped in a cycle of self-pity, trauma, drama, and a monotonous, disheartened state of mind.
As I mentioned earlier, it is wiser to appreciate and embrace both sides of the magnet and both sides of life, instead of becoming fixated on the idea of a one-sided world where only one side feels good, and the other side hurts.
The upside of rejection
The beauty of rejection is that it can foster independence. In fact, when you face challenges and rejection, you tend to become precociously independent and think autonomously.
Many people aspire to make a difference in life, and you don't achieve that by blending in. Instead, you make a difference by standing out. It's often the challengers, the critics, and the rejectors who help you become more autonomous, authentic, creative, and solution-oriented.
Through rejection and challenges, you can also learn how to communicate effectively with individuals who hold a variety of values. This includes understanding that there is no need to change them or try to inject your values into their lives, but that you can communicate what you value effectively within the context of their values. This is more likely to happen should you choose to calm the impact of rejection and use it to your advantage.
I firmly believe that if you ask yourself, "How does this rejection serve me?" at the very moment someone rejects you, you'll discover that simultaneously, someone else is welcoming and accepting you - either in reality, or virtually in your mind due to the law of contrasts of perception.
You see, if you receive nothing but support, you might become overly dependent on that person. On the other hand, if you face nothing but challenges, you may become overly independent. Yet, when you strike a balance between support and challenge, you pursue a path of growth, where maximum development occurs.
The sweet spot for growth is at the intersection of support and challenge, acceptance and rejection, assimilation and accommodation, as we call it in learning. Both aspects - those that build you and those that challenge you - are vital for transformation, personal growth and your evolution.
So, try asking yourself, "How does this challenging criticism or rejection serve me specifically?" By answering this question, you'll tend to realize that rejection opens doors, streamlines your communication, prioritizes your life, and nurtures your independence, making you less dependent and obligated.
Simultaneously, it can help you become more authentically you. When challenges question your values and push you, you tend to ascend your hierarchy of values. In contrast, support often leads you to descend, sacrificing what's important to you to fit into others' values for fear of losing their support.
If you think about it, rejection can actually encourage you to go up on your hierarchy of values, reinforcing and strengthening your authentic self. This process tends to make you more resilient and adaptable because living congruently with your highest values enhances your objectivity and executive functioning.
So, paradoxically, it's the challengers and the rejection you encounter that can also truly facilitate growth.
In my signature seminar program, the Breakthrough Experience, I help people transform what they perceive as challenging into something they can genuinely appreciate. I assist them in reframing and reappraising situations in a way that diminishes fear.
As long as you view rejection as solely negative without acknowledging its positive aspects, you're likely to carry a wound in your subconscious mind. Anything that reminds you of that wound may trigger anxiety. However, if you can see how rejection serves you and cultivates resourcefulness -returning to the source of your energy - you can find inspiration in it.
The essence of mastering life lies in doing something so extraordinary that it transcends conventional understanding. It involves creating something original and enduring the rejection that often accompanies such groundbreaking work.
In my own journey, I have developed the Demartini Method, which challenges prevailing psychological paradigms, particularly victim psychology. This conventional view often portrays individuals as perpetrators, innocent victims, or predators preying on others - a rather simplistic perspective, in my opinion. However, my research has led me to a different understanding.
I believe that you sometimes misattribute actions to others, falsely perceiving them as perpetrators. In reality, your perceptions, decisions, and actions shape your lives more than external events. It's not what happens to you but how you perceive those events that truly matter.
Rejection is a common aspect of life, but it can be a powerful catalyst for growth if you learn to harness its potential. In the Breakthrough Experience, I teach people to be resourceful and transform their experiences, no matter how challenging, into opportunities for personal growth.
Throughout my career, I've encountered individuals who have faced a wide range of perceived hardships – events that they labelled as financial difficulties, emotional trauma, physical “abuse,” legal issues, and more. Yet, I firmly believe that there is nothing your mortal body can endure that your immortal soul (authentic - self) cannot transform into an opportunity. The key lies in how you perceive and utilize these experiences.
Rejection is simply part of the journey, and how you handle it depends on your perception. If you view rejection as a roadblock, it will hold you back. However, if you see rejection as a stepping stone, a chance to strengthen yourself, rejection can become a valuable gift.
To Sum Up:
- If you would love to learn more on how to handle rejection, I would encourage you to attend the Breakthrough Experience and learn the Demartini Method. Through this process, you can identify your core values and align your life with what truly matters to you. When you live congruently with your highest values, you become more resilient and less affected by external challenges, including rejection.
- When you prioritize your values, rejection tends to lose its power to deter you, and you are more likely to gain self-confidence. I teach participants in the Breakthrough Experience how to dissolve emotional baggage stored in the subconscious mind, leaving only gratitude in its place. Anything you can't express gratitude for is baggage, while everything you can say thanks for becomes fuel for your individual growth.
- It is wise to elevate your thinking and recognize that your destiny is not solely determined by external circumstances. It's your inner world, your perception, and how you transform external events into sources of inspiration that truly define your path.
- There may be those who argue that we are products of our external environment, but I'm more interested in what sets extraordinary individuals apart. Many have risen from poverty to wealth, from disability to Olympic glory, and I'm fascinated by what distinguishes them. I'm not concerned with the average; I'm focused on the extraordinary.
- You have the power to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, and rejection is just one part of the journey. How you handle it is a matter of perception, and that's precisely what I teach at the Breakthrough Experience. I am inspired to help people discover their resourcefulness and learn to turn life's challenges into opportunities for greatness.
In closing, I want to emphasize that there's no reason for rejection to distract you from achieving extraordinary things in your life. You can either see it as an obstacle on the way or as a necessary stepping stone on the way to your ever greater achievements.
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