Hard Feedback: The Advantages of Rejection

Negative feedback doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Here’s how you can make the most of it

“No”

“Although your background is impressive, upon further review, the team was unable to select you as an ideal fit for the position and current needs.”

Sound familiar?

Of course, it does.

We have all had our fair share of rejections, and we are not just talking in the professional light. When we were younger, we had our parents tell us NO when we asked for that extra piece of meat, when we wanted trousers for Christmas, and even when we wanted to go for sleepovers.

Admittedly, we never saw any positives for why our requests were not granted, and for the better part of that day, we’d be discontent.

Fast forward to adulting; we have received rejection emails, a bunch of “No, you can’t have that(s)” as well as being “curved” by people we liked.

The truth is no one likes being rejected or told No; you wouldn’t want to be told off when you put your absolute best in a particular project, but there’s an excellent side to rejection that is mostly not seen.

So here are three formulas we’ve learned over years of accepting hard feedback.

• Rejection Equals Reevaluation

Picture this: You have to come up with a product, and you’ve been given the inner workings and dynamics of how the product should look like. You researched and put in your best (or so you thought). You send in the project, and you were greeted with feedback that you were not expecting. Honestly, your first call of action will be to sulk or complain or doubt yourself. However, you find yourself going back to the drawing board and retracing your steps. Reevaluation is a process that lets you see where you missed it and how you can fix it.

“I make no mistakes,” Said no great man that ever lived.

There will always be a need to reevaluate, so when next you get that disheartening feedback, then it’s time to get back to the drawing board.

• Rejection Adds Motivation

So here’s a relatable occasion: When we were younger, and we were told that we couldn’t sleepover at a friend’s house, we sulked for a while and came up with a genius idea. We deployed the art of extra-obedience, hard work, and wore a constant smile for our parents for at least that week, hoping that our actions will change their reply. Guess what? It didn’t. However, their rejection motivated us to do something different. In the same vein, when you receive that rejection mail or No from your boss, it should be a sign that you need to do better or be better. Rule of thumb: When your jump doesn’t hit the mark, Jump higher.

• Rejection Subtracts Impatience

J.K Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, had to handle rejection twelve times before her book got published. If this isn’t patience, we don’t know what else is. She had done the work, arranged the pieces, the plot was good, the plot twist was crazy good, but she had to hear “No” twelve times. When asked about her resilience, She said, “ I wasn’t going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen. “ When you face rejection, you find that you subconsciously grow patient, as you keep trying to change the feedback. Also, whenever you catch yourself slipping, remember that your next try may be accepted.

No one wants to keep hearing negative feedback; however, what we can do is to keep knocking till we get a positive reply.

Originally published at https://medium.com on September 3, 2020.