Rejection

I don't really have a set pattern as is probably pretty obvious to anybody that reads my notes. I pretty much just write what I feel at the time. I love to laugh, so if I think something's funny I write about it. I have strong feelings about life, and I write my opinion on subjects. The feedback is always great and I appreciate it, but I don't seek it out, if that makes sense. The one thing that I sincerely hope is that we can all be comfortable in our own skin no matter what anyone thinks. I don't want to act like I don't care about what people think because obviously we all care how we're perceived. People who say that they don't are lying. I just encourage people to push through that. The old saying is that the people who matter don't mind and the people that mind don't matter. It's a cool saying, but has a lot of truth. I always encourage people to be themselves in every way as long as your respectful of others. That means being natural, whatever that might be for you. This is me...this is who I am. I do what I do and sometimes people think it's funny or agree with what I say and sometimes they don't...and that's cool. I don't try to please everybody, but I do try to respect everybody. I learned long ago that if praise drives you then criticism will destroy you. The bottom line for me is that dealing with rejection is one of life's great ironies. It absolutely devastates you, but it can make you so much stronger. The lesson is a hard one, but one that we all must learn. We will all face major rejection(s) at some point in our lives. Whether it be relationships, or different circumstances in life. What someone or something is telling you is that you're not good enough. There are two bad ways of handling this. People go into a shell and become guarded bitter people refusing to let anyone close enough to hurt them and quit taking chances, or people go wild and seek acceptance from anything to try to erase the pain. The best advice I have is to develop a resiliency to learn the lesson from whatever the situation is and make changes to your life for the better. The people that take the first route aren't really living....they're just existing. Great living comes from the group that takes the second path, simply seeing life as a continual learning experience. These people go through rejection and take a tour through a land of depression and hurt and rise above it. You find an inner strength and drive that no one will be able to take away. When someone tells you you're not good enough you have to remind yourself that it's just their opinion. Rejection isn't bad, in fact it's great. We can never see it at the time because whatever is rejecting us is what we want most. As time goes by we can always look back and see our broken path. We realize how great it was that it didn't work out. Sometimes, as is the case with the delusional American Idol singers who think they're incredible, rejection is our first dose of reality. Sometimes we need to be rejected to wake us up. At the end though, rejection is simply doors being closed to continually lead us down the hallway of life.