Member-only story
The Importance Of Being Rejected
Look at the above graphic. Being rejected is pretty much one of the most normal things that can happen to you in life and/or business. Unless I’m reading the graphic wrong, J.K. Rowling isn’t mentioned — and she received ‘loads of rejections’ before publishing one of the most successful book and film franchises ever. Being rejected is going to happen. There’s almost no really good idea that ever got through on the first try — which is logical, because most really good ideas inherently change a previous idea, and people are by and large not that comfortable with any form of change.
Why is being rejected important, though?
Being rejected and the work failure-success interplay
Most organizations and workplaces are terrible about discussing failure in any type of proactive way. This creates a bunch of different situations, notably the ‘Iceberg Theory’ or ‘The Duck Theory’ whereby you only see the success — the top of the iceberg or the duck gliding on the water — and you don’t see what’s underneath it all. That’s the same way failure and success work. Most people who succeed in some great way also fail about 19,238 times en route to that success — which is the whole point of the graphic above. You really can’t have success without failure…
