5 Productive Ways To Respond to Rejection

Experiencing rejection, personally and professionally is inevitable—but it can be devastating when not processed productively. Ultimately, how rejection is addressed determines resilience and success, but cheerfully handling disappointment isn’t always easy, especially in the face of a great deal of rejection. So what are the best ways to handle rejection? Below are five productive ways to respond to rejection:

Think About It This Way: It’s Not You, It’s Not Them, It’s You Two Together

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant wrote about bouncing back from rejection in the New York Times, and one of the points he makes is to better handle rejection, do not blame yourself or the employer, consider that the two of together did not work. He writes, “Rejection often happens because of a lack of fit in the relationship: Your values were a mismatch for that interviewer, your skills didn’t quite suit that job, your ratty conference T-shirts failed to overlap with the taste of your decreasingly significant other. New researchreveals that when people are in the habit of blaming setbacks on relationships instead of only on the individuals involved, they’re less likely to give up — and more motivated to get better.”

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