Desensitized To Rejection

I was chatting with someone the other day. This person has had some success getting manuscripts accepted for publication. We were talking about handling rejection.

My conversation partner told me about a little project she and her friend had some time ago. They both set a goal of getting 100 rejections. That’s right. Both writers were submitting their work and the goal was to get 100 rejections each. That’s brilliant. And,they each met their goal.

Albert Ellis, the famed cognitive behavioral therapist, had a task he would ask of shy people who were afraid to face public humiliation. He would ask them to go to a lecture and get up and ask the dumbest question they could come up with. This may sound a bit extreme and, yet, it worked. People in the audience might snicker but the world doesn’t end and the shy person gets through it.

Bob Collins was a morning personality on WGN radio out of Chicago. I used to tune him in back in the late 70s when I was working in Illinois. He off handedly remarked one time that he could wallpaper his garage with rejection letters he’d received from radio stations to which he had sent tapes (yes, back then it was tapes and not MP3 files) to radio stations over the years trying to get a radio job.

We all get rejected a few times in life. Embracing it can make it easier to deal with.