Mark McGuinness - Resilience: Facing Down Rejection (8 page)

No, none of these scenarios is where you
want
to be. You thought it would be quicker and easier than this. You thought you’d have been well on the way to making it by now.

But you are where you are. The world is what it is. And the game is still there to be played—if you still want to.

Your next steps:

1. When you get a big rejection, one that feels like your last stand, don’t resist—roll with the punch. Give yourself your allotted 48 hours (or equivalent) to nurse your wounds.

2. When the wound licking time is up, take an inventory of what you need to keep playing the game and chasing the next opportunity: time, money, connections, collaborators etc. Do you still have the necessary?

3. Now ask yourself whether you still have the enthusiasm—is it still there, even if only a tiny flicker?

4. If the enthusiasm is there, ask yourself: “What’s the smallest step I could take to rejoin the game?” For example, calling your agent, checking out a job listings site, or opening up your list of publishers.

Make it as small and specific as possible—something you could do in the next 5 minutes. Then go do it.

15. Is the prize worth the price?

If this were easy, everyone would do it. But everything has a price. If you want to achieve something extraordinary with your life, then rejection is part of the price.

Most people are not willing to pay that price. It hurts too much, or they are too impatient or too proud to put themselves through the ‘humiliation’ of being turned down again and again.

So… if you can persist in the face of rejection, you are automatically ahead of the pack.

When you stop taking rejection
personally
and accept that it’s just part of the process, you start paying the price for success.

But there are no guarantees—otherwise more people would be willing to persist. So you need to keep going in the face of uncertainty as well as rejection, and this puts you in an even smaller category.

But we’re not talking about blind persistence. It’s only worth paying the price if the ultimate prize is worth it.

In his book
Man’s Search for Meaning
, about his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, Viktor Frankl recounts how his vision of the future kept him going: in the midst of the miseries of the camp, he would imagine himself having survived, giving a lecture to an audience about his experience and the lessons he learned from it. The desire to tell that story, to make something positive out of such an awful experience, gave him the strength to carry on—and to tell the story to many, many people, in his lectures and books. Hopefully you’ll never have to go through anything as harrowing as Frankl. But you can use this same technique to keep yourself going in your darkest hours.

Next time you are undergoing your latest and most discouraging rejection, pause for a moment and imagine you can see into the future. Picture yourself having come through your trials and achieved your biggest goals, and sharing what you have learned with others.

Your next steps:

1. Next time you suffer a big rejection and start to wonder if it’s worth carrying on, have a look in your crystal ball…

Start by imagining all the good things you will have—a sense of achievement, money, freedom, prestige, opportunities, and so on.

Then imagine the positive difference you will have made to other people through your work.

Next, imagine what it will be like to have the satisfaction of having done it the hard way, overcoming all the obstacles that were put in your path.

Finally, imagine what lessons you will have learned, that you will be glad to share with others.

This is the prize you are pursuing.

2. Now look at the reality of the situation you are facing. (Be careful not to make it worse than it really is—re-read
Chapter 12
to check!)

This is the price you are paying.

3. Now ask yourself: is the prize worth the price?

If not… give up.

Seriously.

Why put yourself through it for something that’s not worth it? Go back to
Chapter 4
and rethink your ambitions. Do not pass ‘Go’ until you have found something worth committing to and putting yourself on the line for.

If the prize
is
worth the price… grit your teeth and get on with it. The sooner you do this and move on, the more chance you have of grasping the glittering prize for real.

Note:

For inspiration and advice on handling the uncertainty that goes hand in hand with pursuing creative and risky projects, see Jonathan Fields’ book
Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance
(Portfolio/Penguin, 2011).

16. You gotta laugh

Humor is a neglected source of resilience. If you can laugh—especially at yourself and your situation—you can persevere.

One of my goals with every coaching and psychotherapy client I have worked with over the years has been to get them to laugh at least once in every session, no matter how horrendous the situation they are dealing with. Firstly, because they need it, and secondly because if they can laugh I know they can change. Laughter helps them break out of their current mindset and see things differently, even if only for a moment. It unlocks their creativity and playfulness. And it makes them feel more human, giving them the strength to persist.

Laughter can help you develop resilience. Next time you’re suffering the pain of rejection, imagine sitting down with your best friend over a drink, and telling the story of your latest and most humiliating disaster. Ham it up and exaggerate the worst bits for comic effect. Describe your floundering, incompetent, hilariously bad performance. Do an impression of the gatekeeper as they delivered their withering putdown. And don’t forget to include the embarrassing encounter with your rival on the way out, or the dog crap you stepped in on the way home, or any of the other excruciating details that made this whole escapade a tragedy of epic proportions.

When you do this, you let go of your ego, you get out of the ‘poor me’ way of thinking. You start to see the funny side and get some perspective. This is the beginning of thinking creatively about the situation.

And make sure you call your best friend and tell the tale for real. It’s empowering to tell a funny story and make someone laugh. You’ll also bond with them and feel less alone. Chances are they’ll also start to tell you a funny story about one of their own personal disasters, and you’ll realize it’s not just you who has to put up with this kind of crap.

Make a habit of doing this, and you will find it helpful even in the midst of the disaster itself. Sitting in the interview room, or holding the rejection letter, or looking in vain for your name on the team sheet, a little part of you will shrug their shoulders and say: “Look on the bright side—this is going to be one hell of a story!”

You’ve got to laugh. Seriously. It’s part of your job. Make it a priority—especially when things don’t seem so funny.

Your next steps:

1. Next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself, imagine you’re sitting with your best friend over your second beer, and tell the ‘humorous disaster version’ of your situation. Then call your friend and make a date to tell the story for real.

2. In the midst of a disaster, see if you can lighten up—and unlock your creativity—by telling yourself it will be one hell of a story!

3. Spend time with frivolous people who like to have fun. They can teach you plenty—if you’re not too proud to learn from them.

4. Make sure you have a stack of comedy DVDs, books, and comics to hand and use them!

17. Find your tribe

“I said the world was mad, and the world said I was mad, and dammit all, they outvoted me.”

Attributed to the playwright Nathaniel Lee, on being asked why he was confined to Bedlam insane asylum

Rejection is normal but it doesn’t always feel that way. If you’re trying to achieve something original, chances are you won’t always be surrounded by people who ‘get’ what you’re trying to do. Your friends and family may be well-meaning, but if they don’t know what it’s like to pursue a dream like yours, they can subtly—or not so subtly—discourage you, by saying things like this:

“Why not get a sensible job and do [insert dream] as a hobby?”

“It’s all very well aiming high, but sooner or later you have to live in the real world.”

“I guess you need to get it out of your system.”

So it’s absolutely essential that you find a group of fellow travellers—people who get what you are trying to do, because they are doing something similar.

People who share your enthusiasm and build on your ideas.

People who will introduce you to other people and resources that will help you on your journey.

People who will be there to support you when things are tough, having gone through exactly the same thing themselves.

People who make you feel normal.

For a very long time, I was used to being ‘the one who’s into poetry.’ With the exception of one or two very close friends, virtually no one I knew shared my passion for poetry to anything like the same degree—even among my classmates when I was studying for an English degree! Then one day I walked through the door of the
Poetry School
in London. To my delight, I found myself in a room full of people who were
just as obsessed as I was
. It felt like coming home.

A few years later, when I got the blogging bug and started connecting and meeting up with other social media users, it felt like we were discovering a whole new world together. These days we take it for granted that we can meet people via Facebook, Twitter, forums, and so on, and meeting up is a natural (if not inevitable) way to extend the relationship. But back then, this was all new and excitingly strange. Each time I went to a bloggers’ meetup, for my first meeting with ‘friends’ I’d known for months online, it felt like we’d been beamed down from the deck of the starship
Enterprise
. This was the future.

But try as I might, it was hard to explain the good news to my friends and colleagues from ‘real life.’ Their eyes glazed over as I enthused about the brave new world. Then I finished and they would say something like, “But isn’t it antisocial to spend all that time on the computer?”

Converting people to your point of view is hard work. Better to accept that some people will never really ‘get’ your enthusiasms, and to go in search of the people who do. Fortunately I was right about the brave new world—our hyper-connected social networks make it easier than ever to find people who share your passion.

Seth Godin
calls these groups ‘tribes.’ He points out that human beings have organized themselves into tribes for millennia. The old tribes were based on kinship and geography. The new tribes are organized around common passions—music, motorbikes, madrigals, parkour, face painting, fencing, cupcake baking, and so on. When you find your tribe, you plug in to a powerhouse of resilience.

Your next steps:

1. Who do you already know who shares your passion? Could it help all of you to spend more time together—face-to-face and/or online? Maybe you could organize a regular get-together, or set up a private discussion forum online. Or maybe just make more of an effort to stay in touch via phone and email.

2. Is there a local group or class dedicated to your passion? As well as checking the usual sources, search on
MeetUp.com
—an online directory of groups organized by interest and location. When you find a likely group, go along and check it out.

3. Look for online tribes. Search for forums, Facebook or LinkedIn groups, Google+ circles, and blogs dedicated to your interest. Spend a bit of time lurking to begin with, to check out the vibe and etiquette, then join the conversation.

4. If you don’t find the kind of group you’re looking for, why not start one yourself? Advertise the first meeting in your local library, and on sites like
CraigsList.org
and
MeetUp.com
. Start a blog or Facebook group and begin reaching out to people.

Notes:

Seth Godin,
Tribes: We need you to lead us
(Piatkus, 2008)

The Poetry School:
http://poetryschool.com

18. How to fix it next time

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein

There’s no point getting back up if you leave yourself open to the same left hook every time. You’ll keep getting floored until you can’t take any more. Once you’re back on your feet after being hit by rejection, ask yourself what you can learn from the experience.

Here are some of the most common reasons for rejection, and how to fix them next time round.

1. You didn’t meet the minimum criteria

This should go without saying, but—having been on the other side of the fence, as a gatekeeper myself a few times—I can assure you it doesn’t.

When I was editing the magazine
Magma Poetry,
our website clearly stated that email submissions should be pasted in the body of the email, with a maximum of six poems per poet. So no prizes for guessing what kind of impression it made when someone sent in a Word document with over 50 pages of poems.

On my blog at lateralaction.com, I’ve posted a set of guidelines for guest writers and yet I still get submissions via the form on the same page, that ignore the guidelines.

When you apply for an opportunity, you need to check the application guidelines:

• Do they take speculative applications?
  
• Do they take email submissions?
  
• How many copies do you need to send?
  
• What’s the closing date?
  
• What file formats are acceptable?
  
• How many images do they want in a portfolio?
  
• Is there an age limit?