I’ve been rejected a lot this year.
This was to be expected as I launched my coaching career, but reflecting back on the number of No’s I’ve received is insightful.
Byron Katie said: “You can have whatever you want in this life if you’re willing to ask 1000 people for it.”
That’s damn true. However, it also means most of those thousand people will not “give us what we want.”
The cool thing is, with practice and repetitions, we can become incredibly skilled at not giving a shit about a certain outcome.
I’ve invited hundreds of people to connect calls, coaching sessions, or long-term contracts.
The majority of people do one of these things:
• leave me on ‘read’ • say they’ll think about it and never get back to me • stop responding • never read the message • cancel the call and ghost • say No thank you
In the early days, it was hard to not get emotional when one of these would happen…especially getting ghosted. I would get in my head and question my abilities and motives.
But over time, I became desensitized and learned how to truly take nothing personally. The key lesson from Jia Jiang’s book Rejection Proof got etched into my brain:
When we get rejected, it says nothing about us and everything about the person doing the rejecting. It’s just proof that they don’t feel it’s the right fit right now.
Two weeks ago, I invited one of my best friends to the group coaching program I just created. He politely walked me through why he felt he didn’t have demand for what the program offered. Being wary of my feelings, he asked, “Is that okay?”
I laughed. “No,” I replied. “This program isn’t optional.”
This is the perfect example of this rejection truth.
My best friend said No thanks to me. I know for a fact that he loves and supports me and thinks I have good ideas. So it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that right now, the program just isn’t a good fit for him.
This can be applied to dating, event invites, or anything else where we put ourselves out there.
Rejection isn’t a bad thing. It’s a process for sifting through and finding the right people at the right time.