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August
15, 2002:
Handling Rejection
Interview
with Elayne Savage, author of Don't
Take it Personally!
Mike
Carruthers:
It turns out that rejection is not fatal, though many of us act
as if it is.
Elayne
Savage:
The fear of rejection causes people to freeze in their tracks.
They are so petrified at taking that chance because they might
be rejected.
Elayne Savage,
author of the book Don't
Take It Personally, says the key to dealing with rejection
is to take a step back and try to be objective when someone
rejects you, which is admittedly not easy.
Because
we get emotionally flooded, as the psychologists would say,
with the feelings that happen, and we get so taken up with them
and so a part of them that we can't step back. But we can teach
ourselves to step back a little bit by taking an internal time-out
or even an external time-out, for instance. We can count to
ten slowly because that gives us ten long seconds to separate
ourselves from what's going on and the feelings that are taking
over. We can breathe slowly. We can actually excuse ourselves
from a situation and say, "I need to go collect my thoughts.
I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
Rejection
doesn't feel good to anybody. It's okay to feel bad about it.
The trick to it, says Elayne, is to not get so caught up in
it that it becomes devastating.
I think
it's important just to know ourselves well enough to say, "Okay,
I'm feeling rejected. That was a rejecting comment, I can feel
rejected," but not have it tear our lives up.
For transcripts,
visit our website, somethingyoushouldknow.net.
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's "Something You Should Know."
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