3 Lessons I Learned From A Year Of Rejection Letters

“We regret to inform you…” I can’t count the number of times I’ve read those words over the past year. Before 2020, I was the girl who never needed to apply to jobs or opportunities. They always came to me by recommendation or recognition based on my previous work. So rejection letters were new territory to me. 

I was rejected for jobs, rejected for funding for my business and rejected for a Master’s degree that I believed was the next step in my life plan. My first thought was: well these people must be blind, can’t they see my history and all the great work I’ve done? If they can’t it’s their loss.

But as the rejections piled and one followed fast on the heels of the other, I started to wonder if maybe my time was up. Maybe my days of being a superstar were over and I needed to humbly join the masses in their struggle for daily bread.

Obviously, I broke out of this thinking. Or should I say I’m working everyday to break out of it. This is a season in my life and it’s here to teach me something. I’m still learning the lessons but just in case you’re in such  a season too, here are three lessons I’ve learned so far from a year of rejection letters:

1. Your value is not determined by external things

When you’ve built a career as an overperformer, it’s easy to lose yourself in KPIs and performance reviews. I’ve always struggled to detach my self-worth from the work I do. That’s one of the dangers of getting paid for work you love, it’s so easy to lose yourself.

However, in the past year of being mostly without work, I’ve rediscovered my intrinsic value. I’m a person of great worth whether I have a job or not. Jobs are a dime a dozen, they come and go. So how can our value be tied to something so transient? You are enough in every season, whether you’re receiving rejection letters or letters of commendation. 

2. Rejection is redirection 

After receiving so many rejection letters, I started to feel like a failure. Then I remembered something Oprah said in her Harvard Commencement address in 2013: 

“It doesn’t matter how far you might rise. At some point, you are bound to stumble. If you’re constantly pushing yourself higher and higher, the law of averages predicts that you will at some point fall. And when you do, I want you to remember this: There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

So I stopped sending out frantic applications and asked myself some questions. What is the next right step? What are these rejections saying to me? What is working right now and how can I build on that?

I’ve learned over time that even when life is at its darkest, there’s always a small light shining somewhere. We usually can’t see it because we’re overwhelmed with worry and fear. But if you’ll just take a pause to look and listen, you’ll find a little thread to pull on that will slowly and surely become the rope you need to climb out of the hole. 

3. You can draw strength from rejection

No matter who you are, you will be rejected at some point in your life. It might be for work or even in a relationship. It happens to the best of us, nobody can avoid it. 

So when rejection kicks down your door and sits on your couch, what are you going to do? You can let it break you or you can draw strength from it and keep moving forward. We all know the story of J.K Rowling who became the first billionaire writer after 12 rejections of the Harry Potter series. 

It’s really not about the rejection letters, it’s about what you do after receiving them. I’m not pretending that it’s easy to move on after being rejected. But I’m going to ask you to be like my friend Oluchi. She’s been turned down for opportunities 500 times yet she still sends out applications every day. According to her “Something will eventually work out. Someone will eventually give me the chance I need. It only takes one yes to make 500 nos evaporate.”

So keep going. It won’t be easy but you have what it takes. See you on the other side. 

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