Congratulate yourself on being rejected and on failing

“A person who’s trying to achieve the pleasure of success without ever experiencing the pain of rejection will never succeed long-term. In fact, this person will sabotage himself before he ever truly succeeds on a major scale.”
Anthony Robbins: Awaken the Giant Within

In my speaking engagements I will sometimes ask for a show of hands of those who have been rejected: every hand goes up. I then ask people to keep their hand up if they really enjoyed the experience; you should see how fast those hands go back down! Then I ask for a show of hands of people who have failed. Again, every hand goes up. But when I ask how many can’t wait until they fail again, hands quickly return to laps. Everybody gets rejected, everybody fails; nobody enjoys it.

Unfortunately, when pursuing big goals, you cannot get from where you are to where you want to be without facing rejection and experience failure. What you need to do is reframe how you interpret those experiences.

Rejection is the Medal of Honor in the world of work. It takes courage to ask for what you need and face the possibility of rejection; it takes even more courage to pick yourself up and do it again and again and again following each successive rejection. Cowards don’t earn many medals of honor because they don’t try very often.

And in the world of work failure is the Red Badge of Courage. It takes courage to try something with no guarantee of success. It takes even more courage to keep at it when everyone around you is convinced that you have already failed and your determination is the only thing keeping it all going. Cowards don’t earn many red badges of courage because they quit after the first one or two.

Rejection is the Red Badge of Courage Failure is the Medal of Honor