REJECTION: When Will We Stop Taking It Personal

REJECTION: When Will We Stop Taking It Personal

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been rejected in my life, I’ve been rejected by women, prospective employers, friends etc. in fact we all have been rejected many times in our lives. Yet it still hurts to be rejected, for many people at least it does.

‘Your loss’ is almost a sour grape response to rejection, but at times it’s true, I’ve missed out on jobs I applied only to see a candidate of less quality being appointed (of course that’s according to me, and in some cases it’s according to once-to-be-colleagues). When in the midst of rejection pain do you ever stop and think, ‘He is so wrong about me’ or ‘It was not meant to be’? Maybe it’s because all my life, after every rejection there has always been, without fail, something better along the way.

I’ve worked as a TV Researcher, Scriptwriter, Content Producer all my working life and this requires weekly torments of being told by your colleagues and bosses ‘your brain-child is a retarded idiot’, in some cases they are actually the ones who are unimaginative retards. For any new journalist, creative – editorial meetings can be cruel, till you accept rejection as part of editorial meetings, part of life.

After many of the shows I’d produced we’d have post-moterm meetings with the crew and my then boss would say, ‘Great show, Msizi’, and I’d always modestly respond, ‘Yeah, it wasn’t too bad’, of course he hated that response, he felt I was being too hard on myself and not good at taking compliments. The thing is, TV taught me not to care much what people think – good or bad. The very same boss who tells me I’m a shit-hot content producer changes his tune about me during salary negotiations, people say things about YOU that reflect THEIR reality. Your lover will tell you how much they hate today and the following day without you doing anything spectacular they’d be gushing about how deeply they love you.

You’d by now have noticed I’m in a business of ideas, so if I allowed one retarded gatekeeper to make me believe my idea was not good enough my self-esteem would forever be crushed. There are many reasons why ideas are turned down by gatekeepers; maybe they can’t afford you, maybe they are not ready for your ideas, maybe you intimidate your insecure prospective boss, maybe they are too busy to read them, etc.

I, also have rejected people who were next to perfect, I wasn’t ready to receive them. You’d have a placed a perfect woman on my lap but I wouldn’t have noticed all her great characteristics because I wasn’t ready to. She’d have walked away wondering what’s wrong with her when everything wrong was me.

A few months ago I told a young woman with aspirations to be a TV presenter that she was too skinny and needed to gain a bit of weight because we don’t want to be seem to be conveying a message to kids that thin is cool. Recently she probably got some gig and decided she was gonna write on my wall on facebook and tell me how well she’s doing and how men drool over her skinny ass. She was hurt by my words which were just an honest assessment, took that as rejection of her tiny body and I earned myself a mention in her acceptance speech IF she wins an award someday. Our rejection-senses are so fragile that even things said innocently always seem to break our hearts.

Sadly, the really confident people are incompetent ones in denial about their poverty of talent. South Africa needs to start seriously appreciating confident mavericks who don’t care much about conformists. We must embrace and learn from these people, but please learn to separate confidence from asshole arrogance.

For some reason, people love forwarding me their TV proposal ideas, unfortunately I can never lie to anyone and say ‘awesome concept’ when I know that not even Soweto TV would be fascinated by that concept, and people take it personal when I politely say, ‘I don’t think this is a strong concept because of this and that…but if you disagree with me continue pursuing it maybe the people that matter would love it’.  

And once in a while, being rejected does mean you still have lots of work to do. However, in many cases, for that one person who rejects you, there are many who disagree with him. Don’t take it personal, he’s just being honest as far as his reality is concerned.

Sit your phat ass down and stop taking rejection so personally. SIT DOWN!