This is one of those things that everyone deals with but no one ever really talks about. There is not one person on this earth that has not dealt with rejection in one form or another. So why is such a prevalent issue, and the main cause to so many other issues, just being swept under the rug or accepted as a normal part of life?

Because rejection is like a parasite; its main goal is to live inside of you and thrive on your detriment while it uses everything you have in you to fuel its life cycle.

Everything that has ever been created was created with a purpose, or a reason for being here, it is the drive that keeps us going. Rejections only goal is to take away that drive so that you loose your sense self worth, then eventually your sense of purpose, and inevitably lead you to lose your feeling of “having a reason for being here.” How many times have you or someone you may know have said, ” No one ever picks me” or ” I’m not gonna even try because I know I wont make it anyway,” and before you know it you have spent your life living out those exact same words: Never being picked, and never trying or accomplishing anything.

Many do not realize that the greatest damage rejection causes is usually self-inflicted. That is why this is something that is so hard to deal with because it is never easy to confront yourself. No matter the cause of rejection it is something that the only person that can overcome it is you. A lot of people try to deal with rejection with a new relationship, a change of environment or physical changes because they believe that the answers can be found in something tangible and they fail to realize where the change must first occur.

If someone spent a week without showering, and then takes a $500 bottle of perfume and sprays their entire body and dirty clothes with that perfume, not only will that not make them clean, but they might just end up smelling worse than they did before regardless of how expensive the perfume was. The truth is that masking a problem, in any way, only fuels it.

And here comes the hard part; dealing with those feelings of rejection.

Everyone has their own personal experiences, and deal with those experiences differently, but it is important to keep in mind that what ever feelings those experiences may bring, although they are very real, are also fleeting and subject to change, and the only person that is truly in control of your feelings is you.

For me dealing with rejection was coming to terms with the fact that I was so full of negativity, self pity, unhealthy emotions and bad habits and I knew I could not continue to nurture those things if I wanted to progress in life. And there were three major things in my life that I had to deal with in order to overcome rejection.

So I turned to God.

I let go of every unnecessary distraction and it became about just me and Him. I took my bible and filled myself with new things. You can only attract what you project, or what is inside of you and I realized that the more filled I became the less of an affect rejection could have on me because I no longer had room for it. Reading the bible helped me to remind myself of who I am and how God made me. (Some may use self help books, quotes, affirmations etc, but this is what has, and continues, to help me) The more I did this the more my focus began to change, and certain issues that once seemed “world ending” to me all of a sudden became minuscule.

This brought on a whole new realization of other things that needed change in my life. For example; the way that I thought about myself.

No matter who you are, your life will always be a mirror of your thoughts. There is no way one can expect to live out a rich life with a poor mentality. I thought so poorly of myself and I was so use to thinking that ” no one likes me” or “I’m not good enough anyway” and I had to change that. I had to make sure that my thoughts matched all the other effort that I was making. I changed my mindset and I stopped expecting to be rejected. How could I expect others to accept me if I did not even accept myself?

Speaking of people;

I was a “people pleaser.” I wanted so badly to be liked that I did not care what that persons intentions was for being in my life, as long as they were there. Yes, I have made some poor decisions for the sake of attention, and I payed for those decisions also, and I was only left feeling completely backed up in a corner. I use to think that I had to accept however someone treated me so that I could keep them happy, even though their presence added no value what so ever to my life. It was mentally and physically exhausting! Everyone else had control over my life, except me, and the only person that I had to blame for that was me. I learned the hard way the importance of the people you chose to surround yourself with.

Everyone in life is on a Path. When your path is destined for greatness people who purposely try and bring you down, or are only there for their own gain, are road blocks on that path. The longer that they are around the bigger and harder those road blocks become. It is so important to surround your self with people that not only are on their own paths of greatness, but help you on your own path. They are going to be the ones that when you need it the most, will uplift you and push you to be the best version of yourself.

I use to think that feeling rejected was something that was based on other people, that they had to stop rejecting me so I would not feel rejected anymore. The only thing that accomplished was I had placed the heavy burden of loving myself in the hands of others. I had to realize that what defined me was not how I was seen in the eyes of other people but how I saw myself.

Rejection will come in many different forms in various times of your life, but people only fear what they do not understand. You should never let someone’s incapability to understand your greatness be a testament of who you are.