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Understanding and Dealing with Rejection: The Key to Creative Success
It can leave whelps. Your tender skin will show the marks. It eats at your brain. It drains your confidence. It can leave you on the bridge rail thinking the dark waters below look mighty inviting.
Rejection.
The core of our success as writers, composers, entrepreneurs is how we deal with rejection and failure.
Embracing Rejection: Transforming Failure into a Badge of Honor
Tiger Woods said they taught him to rail against the fates for ten seconds, then let go and focus on the next shot. A friend said after every rejection letter he threw a pencil up into the hanging ceiling of his basement office. When the pencils up there mounted into the hundreds, he said rejection became a badge of honor. He wrote a book praised by no less than Stephen King and found outstanding success.
To me maybe one of the greatest tools for training to deal with rejection are $2 lottery tickets. You buy them; you walk around with dreams in your head for a couple of days and then you check the numbers. You learn to wait for success but expect failure until neither has any meaning anymore. Meaning lives in taking the shot, not hitting the target.
