Coaching- Rejection

Rejection has been a big theme in my life and my need has been to create more and more awareness in me as to, how do I handle it? I am a very sensitive person and even a if i feel somebody is trying to ignore me can make me feel rejected. Well rejection does sound like a big word but it has scalability. Small rejections if not expressed can become larger if the pattern continues. Some rejections are very minuscule and escape our awareness and also sensitivity radar, for example you want to go out for a walk and you ask your sister and she says ‘no’, there are chances that it may sound like a little rejection. Some feeling of hurt may emerge within you, but you will call yourself silly and move on. But when this continues to happen over a period of time and you notice that your sister says no to every idea of yours you will feel a much deeper sense of rejection coming your way. Then also there are high end rejections where a marriage breaks or somebody commits suicide rejecting life. So there are different degrees of rejection, the impact of each rejection depends on the emotional mould that we carry. If a person in childhood has faced rejection then this person would be very sensitive to any rejection, this person will evolve strategies to handle or avoid rejection either by creating too much space for others to feel good (Generally seen in 1950-60 housewives) or by rejecting the rejection (you don’t care, I don’t care syndrome like the hippies). Although at the core the pain is to deal with rejection, it might be very difficult for both these personality types to engage with each other or even understand each others motivation. They are alien to each others world, in spite of holding the same pain.

What I also want to bring to light here is that the genesis of our personality itself has rejection as a inbuilt part. When a child asks for something and we say no, it is rejecting the idea of ownership of that particular thing for the child.

So do we stop saying ‘No’ to our children,

of course not, but bringing to awareness that the thing is being rejected but not the child’s idea is an important distinction to make.

Will this help?

I believe that all we can do support our children have a healthy self esteem and personality and that their personality emerges from a core of acceptance and love. However facing rejection and developing strategies to resolve it, is an important part of our life journey, especially in a competitive world. In today’s world where worth of a person is either weighed in money, education, race and influence. Rejection constitutes an important part of this system, where one would be chosen and others rejected. Most of us keep working our way towards our acceptance by  either spaces or people or Brands who hold power. For example, a well known Ivy league university degree makes us more acceptable in the intellectual circles that are of interest to us, Holding position in a power brand makes us more acceptable etc. However if a rejection comes from powerful spaces or people or brands, it can make us feel small, lost, angry and hurt. The important piece in this case is to remember that we were seeking that acceptance from an outside entity, which may be beyond our circle of influence. What is in our circle of influence is really how do we accept ourselves and create challenges for ourselves, which are focussed on new learning and not on finding acceptance.

Rejection because of race or religion has been giving birth to wars and blood shed across the planet. Violence emerges when we reject the identity of a human being or an entire race. We are seeing this as a rampant phenomena, our morning news papers are full of this.  The hard part is that the strategy of crushing the rejection brings back more and more of it. If we look into ancient wisdom, in Hindu mythology Kali drinks the blood of Demon Rakt beej (Blood Seed), whose every drop of blood which fell on ground gave birth to another Demon, so he couldn’t be killed. He could only be devoured in a way that no drop of blood fell. I am not sure how can rejection be devoured, but I believe that the answer lies in the blood seed, the core that gives rise to rejection. If we are more and more aware of what is creating this feeling of rejection and not allow it to slip our consciousness, I am sure it will dissipate and not create dis-ease in our mind and body.

Let us see in today’s context what creates a feeling of rejection, and we could go from least to most, using few examples:

Rejection Triggers and Impact

The impact statement is like a virus that infects our being and we start becoming a proponent of that statement. Example a person who deeply believes ‘life is unfair’ will propagate the same thought and energetically will also attract situations to validate the existence of the Virus. I know it sounds like an excerpt from a sci-fi movie but that is how it is. These rejection impact statements become drivers for how we life our life.

To create awareness first become aware of the thoughts you commonly have, these thoughts are emerging from certain core beliefs that you may hold, get in touch with the emotion that they create in you and finally what is the statement that creates the ‘Drive’, the ‘Impact’. When you have become aware of this Virus, this Rakt beej, then you are at a point of choice, do you want to explore this and dissipate it or just let it be…

The choice is yours, you create your being. You could Self coach or hire a life coach to create awareness and energy for well-being. These days we have several competent coaches bringing the ignorance to light and making choices about who we are and who we want to become possible.