Facing Rejection

I believe this is the one obstacle that stands in my way of succeeding as an entrepreneur.

I’m currently reading through The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster. It’s given me wonderful insight into some of the hardships entrepreneurs face on their journey to business freedom, and it’s also opened my eyes to how I face my own challenges and ways to improve my reaction.

One thing this book has drawn my attention to is my rejection recovery time. This is how long it takes for you to bounce back after a failure, disappointment, setback or obstacle. In the book, Dan Hardy talks about how he got his recovery time down to the following:

• At first it took him 2 weeks to recover.
• He eventually focused on getting that number down to 2 days.
• Then he reduced it again to 2 hours.
• Then 20 minutes.
• Finally, 2 minutes.

Now, when I get knocked down, I give myself about two minutes to sulk, and then I brush myself off and get back on the horse.

When I read that, I was in disbelief. “Two minutes?!” I thought. “I can’t imagine getting over something like that in just two minutes! It would take me…probably two months to recover!”

…

Oh. Wait.

It already does.

I have this notion that my interest in a subject can only last for about three months before I get bored and switch to something else. My excuse was always that that’s just how my brain worked, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But through conversations I’ve been having recently, I’ve become more and more aware of my tendency to run away when things get hard.

I don’t want to face hardship. I don’t want to own up to a mistake, because I’m afraid it will mean people are disappointed in me. I’m afraid it will mean I’m just not cut out for the thing in question, instead of seeing it as a genuine setback that can be moved past.

Eventually I do “get back on the horse” in that I eventually come back to the subject after about two months of ignoring it. The problem is, I never dealt with the setback, so that sense of rejection was never worked through. And the next time it happens, the same process starts all over again, and I run away.

I’ve been dealing with this in my writing for years. I can think all the way back to my freshman year of college:

• Campus literary magazine trashed my poem
• Lit professor said my poetry needed work
• Got an article idea rejected from my supervisor at an internship
• Turned down for several freelance writing positions
• Barely anyone bought the (two, hah) books I’d published

And here are some rejections I’ve had related to Japan:

• Turned down for a job at a Japanese company in my hometown
• Just missed getting a job as a diplomat in DC; candidate right before me snatched it up
• Completely bombed the hardest level of the JLPT
• Turned down for several translation positions

And here are some more related to graduate school:

• Professor rejected my thesis proposal
• Stanford turned me down

The more I think on it, the more I can think of rejections I’ve had in the last couple years. And in each case, I allowed myself to believe that I just wasn’t cut out for that career or industry. Instead, I sulked on over to the next thing in my list, thinking I would have better luck at constant success if I tried over there.

That’s the truest truth I’ve thought all night. I need constant success. If I get any sort of rejection, my natural instinct is to cut and run. I’ve had a lot of successes in my writing career lately, but I assure you, if any one of those had been a rejection, I would have stopped trying.

For two months.

So now, my goal is to help myself learn how to sit with the negativity of the rejection, and to brush myself off so that I can get up more quickly.

The first step is to acknowledge my feelings about the rejection and to be able to sit with them and accept them.

Step two is to really see the rejection for what it is: a temporary setback or obstacle, and not an indication that I’m not cut out for whatever it was that rejected me.

The third step is to finally start working on reducing the time I spend sulking. I realize now that the 2-3 months I spend pursuing a different interest is not my brain hopping around to different activities; it is simply a defense mechanism, meant to protect me from the pain of rejection by giving me something else to distract myself with.

But I don’t want to be distracted anymore.

So let’s acknowledge that time period for what it is: the 2 months I spend sulking over a rejection.

Moving forward, my goal is to move that time down as follows:

• 2 months (stop this shit immediately)
• 2 weeks (a helluva difference for me; if I could get my rejection time down to where Dan Hardy started his, who knows what I could get accomplished)
• 1 week
• 3 days
• 1 day
• 12 hours
• 5 hours
• 2 hours
• 1 hour
• 30 minutes
• 15 minutes
• 10 minutes
• 5 minutes
• 2 minutes

I’ve given myself much more leniency, because I know this is a super huge issue of mine and that I’m going to need to be gentle with myself and patient as I work through this hardcore vice.

I can’t get my time down as fast as Dan Hardy can; but, with time, I’ll be able to get back up after 2 minutes, just like he does.

It seems impossible now, but I know that I can get there.

And I will get there proud.

Subtle Sabotage

I got a promotion.

Hooray! Congratulations. Good for you!

That’s what any normal mother would say, right?

But not mine.

No, never mine.

Speaking My Truth

I’ve accepted that I cannot ever again trust my mother.

Even though the instinct is there — the want, the need — is there, I know rationally that it’s best for everyone involved if I don’t listen to a word she says.

Now I’m able to recognize when her ramblings do contain some nugget of truth (though usually because it’s a widely known opinion of some sort), and I’m able to extract those things and take the rest of what she says with an entire shaker of salt.

I want to say that I’m proud of myself for how far I’ve come and how much I’ve grown, because if I was still thinking like how I was this time last year, who knows how derailed my life would be now.

She Has No Maternal Instincts

This is not my mother.

That urge to just love your baby, no matter what?

I’m not quite sure my mother has it.

I want to believe what she says: that she loves all her children, that she wants to raise Joy and take care of her, that she wanted to stay home with us… but then, when I look at what she does, I don’t know.

Here are some of the things she said (and did) when I visited this past weekend:

You Have to Say Goodbye

My aunt is getting divorced.

My uncle is leaving us.

He’s known us practically our whole lives, knows one of my sisters since she was 1 year old, was a major father figure for another, and still hasn’t even met the last.

He left without saying goodbye.

My Mother Is Gone

There’s a little girl sitting on the swings. Her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head, the hair near the nape falling backwards to touch the soft skin of her neck. She’s in a white shirt, a black skirt and shiny black dress shoes, frilly white socks hugging her tiny ankles. She was scuffing her toes in the sand, kicking back and forth, slowly rocking on the swing.

Her mother was nowhere to be found.

Jealous of the Good Moms

Mother’s Day should be hell for me.

I manage to make it through with loving feelings towards my mother; able to, for that day at least, pretend as though she truly cares for me, that she loves me with all her heart, that she wants to be a part of my life because I am her most cherished treasure.

But I know it’s all a lie.

I know that it’s not love I feel, but rather a wish – a longing – for my mother to be like all the other good moms I see out there.

How To Support Your Scapegoat Sibling in 5 Easy Ways

There’s always one in every narcissistic family.

The Scapegoat: the one who always makes the bad decisions, who is continuously shamed and derided for their choices, who is seen as the “black sheep” of the family, who bears the brunt of all disappointments.

“You’ll cause your fair share of drama, too.”

My mother said this to me last week, when I was adamant about being done with all that shit.

We were sitting on the sofa at her new apartment, and she was complaining as usual about the state of her life and how she always seems to be the center of any family drama.

But you know? I think she likes it.

I Want to Trust Her (But I Know I Can’t)

I want to trust my mother.

I want to believe that she loves me, that deep down she cares about me unconditionally and only wants the best for me.

But I know in my heart that none of that is true.