Emotional First Aid 101 – How to Bounce Back from Rejection and Failure
Can you imagine feeling less lonely, easily bouncing back from failure, being immune to rejection?
Generally feel happier, more fulfilled, and empowered to believe in yourself.
Well, I am here to tell you that by developing a few daily emotional hygiene habits, you can thrive, build emotional resilience, and elevate your quality of life.
We’re taught the habit as children to care for our bodies, but rarely are we taught how to caring for our emotional mind. Yet, just like having physical health, psychological health is often the key difference to sustainable happiness and well-being. Our goal must be to catch unhealthy psychological practices and change them, and add-in feel-good practices that make us feel worthy, connected, happy, and whole.
Get Support When You Feel Lonely or Stressed
Loneliness is a deep psychological wound that, much like depression, distorts our perceptions and jumbles our thinking. It makes us afraid to reach out and ask for support when we need it the most because why set yourself up for more rejection, disappointment, and heartache than you can stand.
Loneliness doesn’t just make you feel sad, it can kill you. Loneliness is a leading cause of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and low immune function. It has a direct effect on your long-term health and longevity.
Stop listening to the voice that tells you, you’re better off alone, don’t need anyone, or why bother. Find a community of supportive, like-minded people and reach out to trusted friends to give and receive fulfilling connections.
Change How You Respond to Failure
How we deal with setbacks and frustrations make the difference between whether or not we experience failure. It is easy to believe failure is a result of life circumstances, but failure is a perception of the mind. Frustration and setbacks are a given and happen to everyone, but when we decide this means we are failing, or worse yet, we are a failure – we stop believing in ourselves and give up. Our minds get tricked into believing we’re incapable, rather than noticing that our strategies or life situations may just be inadequate.
If you’re convinced you can’t succeed because the market is down, there are no jobs due to a recession, or all the good single men are taken, this becomes true. Same happens when we believe we can’t create what we want, because of some personal inadequacy or defect. Believing you can’t make it likely you’ll stop trying too soon or not try at all, further convincing evidence that you can’t succeed. In psychology, we call this learned helplessness. It explains why so many people function below their actual potential. Somewhere along the way, the belief that you can’t have what you desire takes hold and shapes reality as you experience it today.
First de-personalize supposed failure and greet it with more helpful attitudes. such as, “The way I approached that situation didn’t work, I need to try another way”. Give yourself some TLC and re-group with a new better strategy, so you can break the cycle of negative prediction.
Protect Your Self-Esteem
Stop translating our emotional states into assumptions, self-judgments, and declarations. You know, that inner voice that says “go ahead eat that yummy chocolate cake” and in the next breathe abrades you for being weak and fat. (Thanks a lot!?!)
Imagine you go on a date, you feel a little nervous, but mostly excited to meet this guy who online was deeply interested in you. The date starts out great but halfway throughout the date you notice he seems distracted, distant and disinterested. The date ends quickly and awkwardly, and you never hear from him again.
Two things might happen:
First, the mind frantically replays every aspect of the date and online exchange wondering what you did or said wrong to trigger his cold and abrupt departure. The mind concentrates on the one thing it’s convinced you did wrong to turn him off, and ruminates on the event, replaying it over and over in your mind. (And if you’re anything like me, I take it one step further, wishfully re-writing my actions with a happy outcome at the end, taking all of the blame and feeling more despair for having failed.)
Next, feeling lousy and down and out, translates to feeling bad about ourselves. Miss Inner Mean Girl kicks in with oh-so-not-helpful statements about how stupid, too-trusting, naïve, fat, old, ugly, we are and who could love a woman like me mental diarrhea starts spilling out. We lose our self-compassion and every internalized belief about why we’re not good enough pops up for review.
Both totally understandable reactions to rejection, but not helpful! Ruminating doesn’t solve the problem, it perpetuates it. The feeling bad/negative thought trap turns into a downward spiral making us feel doomed to repeat our past and never get what we want. Fail a few times, add rejection, and compound it with heartbreak, disbelief gains a foothold.
Stop the Emotional Bleed
If we beat ourselves up, call ourselves names, ruminate on our shortcomings, faults, and failures – we’re making the damage inflicted by life and others, worse. If we can stop blaming or berating ourselves for whatever we believe is the cause of the failure, we can learn to move through disappointment, without feeling afraid.
Further, avoiding getting weighed down with hopelessness and defeat.
Making rejection personal only teaches us to fear taking risks and hold back from being ourselves. Left unchecked, we’re more motivated to avoid growth and change than be courageous and risk vulnerability. This means a bad date can turn into never wanting to date again.
Practicing self-compassion, loving kindness, and positive affirmation will be far more effective than trying to motivate yourself with a barrage of negative comments. Spend your life-energy on feeling relaxed, hopeful and encouraged, rather than being tied up in the pain of not feeling good enough.
When we believe we’re unworthy, we act unworthy by over-eating, isolating ourselves, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and more. Acting into the low self-esteem created from believing others bad opinion of us, makes us feel even more undeserving, perpetuating the not good enough cycle. Studies prove that when our self-esteem is low, we’re more vulnerable to anxiety and stress, plus failure, criticism, and rejections hurt more.
Guy Winch says, “When you get rejected, the first thing you should be doing is to revive your self-esteem, not join Fight Club and beat it to a pulp. When you’re in emotional pain, treat yourself with the same compassion you would expect from a truly good friend.”
Re-Design Negative Thinking
Focus on Your Dreams, not your fears or failures. Focus on the now, not your past.
Ruminating on upsetting events can become a deeply ingrained habit. Break it means developing the habit of now, by focusing only on what you want and what action you can take right now, to create the feelings and outcomes you desire.
Even the simple and easy practicing of positively, distracting yourself for a few minutes can break the spell of negative thinking. Try listening to an uplifting song, take a brisk walk around the block, play with a child or beloved pet, or EFT tap away fear and worry until you believing in yourself again.
Honestly, do anything that unconditionally makes you feel accepted, worthy, and carefree. In time, the practice of providing emotional nourishment will feed and nourish every aspect of your being and manifest love and well-being into your life.
Start where you are, choosing one of these categories as a focus and enacting 1-2 self-loving daily habits. As you invest in caring for yourself, the positive changes will progressively build and emotional resiliency and even happiness ensue.
Remember, you’re worth loving and it starts with you.
Love,
