When someone rejects you, it helps to remember that there’s another you. By Adam Grant.
In the publish-or-perish world of academia, having an article rejected can feel like a stab wound. We all get rejected at work, whether it’s having our suggestions shot down, being denied for a promotion or getting fired from a job. It hurts —- and it’s not just a metaphor.
Neuroscientists have scanned the brains of people who have cruelly been excluded from an online game or looked at a photo of their ex who dumped them. The physiological response looks fairly similar to processing physical pain.
Apparently, this was adaptive in our evolutionary past. If rejection didn’t sting, you might have been perfectly comfortable leaving your tribe, which would not bode well for your survival.
But it’s left us wired to overreact to everyday rejections. The good news is that we can learn to take rejection in stride. A good starting point is to remove, “It’s not you, it’s me” from your vocabulary.
The real reason to ban that phrase is because most of the time when we get rejected, it’s not you. It’s not me either. It’s us.
When one of your identities is rejected, resilience comes from turning to another identity that matters to you. Great read!
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