Finding it hard to deal with rejection? Ishita from SIBM Pune will help you out!

If you are a millennial, try watching a Simon Sinek talk addressing millennials and their habits. You will be relieved knowing you are not in this alone. And by ‘this’, I mean the chaotic feeling about your professional life, your goals, personal relationships and the general fear of not having it all figured out. Almost everyone from our generation was told that he or she is special and can have anything they want! Until they grew up and learned otherwise. Once thrown into the rat race, our generation started applying to colleges, tried scoring the highest marks, sat for job interviews only to realize they are not as special as they thought they were. What a shame! Self-esteem takes a hit. The self-image shatters. And they recoil. They were only taught about success and how to deal with it - a gift, a call for celebration! But wait! What do you do when you fail? How to deal with rejection? How do you react when you are told, ‘No’? 

I am a part of this generation with all system defaults embedded. Facing a setback of not getting the college of my dreams as an undergraduate, I recovered partially by cracking through one of the first companies during placements. Three years of the corporate world and I landed back into college life, this time in one of the premier B-Schools in India! Life was good! 

And the Dismal Rejection

Every MBA student knows the ‘Flash’- like the transition from the serene ‘Oh! I made it into a B-School’ feeling to the dreadful ‘Summers are coming’ feeling. Nothing travels faster than light? Ask us! Fortunately for me, I was spared very early with a great offer, in terms of learning, stipend and the biggest buzz word on campus, ‘PPO’ - Pre-Placement Offer a.k.a a free pass to relax before your peers. The organization I was placed in had a history of more than 60% chances of converting a PPO, with results being declared as early as before the second year of MBA begins! Wouldn’t that be convenient? Oh yes! Every time people discussed their internship organization, the focus was always on PPO and not on the two months of work there. The idea pricked me, but more on that later!

On the induction day of my internship, during an HR exercise, everyone was asked to close their eyes and find the answer to ‘why are you here today?’, ‘ what do you want to learn or achieve here?’ and write a letter to a family or friend about the same. I surprised myself when I didn’t mention ‘PPO’ in that letter. I mentioned ‘sales & marketing’, ‘on-ground experience’, ‘learning’ and ‘having fun’ but nothing about a final offer. Mysterious!

Yet the word PPO kept lurking in the shadows. Like ‘likes’ on Facebook, it is a social validation one seeks. The Head HR asked us to use the two months to find out whether the organization was a good fit for us. Of course, we didn’t listen. ‘Give us a PPO and we are sorted!’, we thought. After living in a world of instant gratification of binge-watching and one-day deliveries, patience is a rare quality!

Two months of toiling hard, albeit enjoying the work all along, and finally we were at the end of our internship. ‘What do you think are the chances?’ was the only question floating around campus. Mine was good! I had worked so hard. The ray of hope had stayed strong until the end of two months. But long back, a friend once told me ‘to hope, but not expect’. And so, I did. On the D-Day, as promised, more than 60% made it to a PPO and I was in the remaining 40%, bringing us back to ‘The self-esteem lowers. The self-image shatters. And they recoil.’ Again faced with the big question, how do I deal with rejection? 

Closure is a gift, not a necessity you are entitled to

How often do you see people sharing a sad story/post on their Instagram? Rare? That’s how often we are allowed to break down in front of the world. The ideal image has to be perfect with filters even if the self-image is crumbling under pressure. Not having an established coping mechanism to deal with rejection, I went into the human version of ‘Airplane mode’, choosing numbness over feeling sorrow. But it was during this ‘Nirvana’ break that I tried to sort through the mess, to build a coping mechanism for the future. 

Rejection hurts! How does anyone manage to deal with rejection? But not knowing the reason behind it hurt me more. Impatience and anxiety wanted to know the answer to know how to react and process the information. Sadly, most companies, like millennials know how to celebrate success but not failure. I never knew the reasons behind the decision. But then, it’s the same for our lives. Don’t we put our lives on hold searching for complete answers? What is even a complete answer? Because humans are never satisfied, ready with another ‘why?’ waiting at the end of our previous ‘why’s the answer. Not all loose ends get tied. We learn to live with them. 

Everything happens for a reason

I went back to the neatly folded letter I had written on the first day of my internship where I had jotted down everything that I wanted to walk away with after those 2 months. The mystery, now gradually unfolded in front of my eyes with unsettling happiness. It had always bothered me when everyone focussed on PPO before the internship. When asked to write what I want, I didn’t mention a PPO. This was what pricked me all along. I just went in to ‘learn’ and let time decide the rest for me. Like a Nolan movie, the time loop came a full circle when I realized my subconscious always knew that everything happens for a reason!

Because who knows! Life might have planned the best surprises ahead. It might be everything that you wanted. But you didn’t try. You wanted to be safe. Even after knowing you could have done more. When you put yourself against the unknowable universe, things start making sense. I had to be thrown into the sea of possibilities to realize it and I made it the turning point to replace fear with curiosity for what lay ahead. I would like to steal a beautiful quote to put forth my point: ‘The unknown is scary, but what’s even scarier is a comfortable misery’

Things that actually matter, job satisfaction, learning a new skill, happiness, love, they all take time. And time, again, is a complex matter, not running at the same pace for all, thereby rendering comparisons pointless. In a world, where our hands itch at every ping of a message, we have to master the rare quality of patience, to watch our lives slowly unfold in front of our eyes not always according to our plans; patience, to withstand the storms and learn to be a better sailor because: ‘This too shall pass’! Let this be your guiding light when you at any point have to deal with rejection. 

This article was submitted as an entry to Become an Author 2.0 with Dare2Compete.