I read something life-changing this morning:

“Rejection is a type of communication.”

from The Search for Significance: Seeing Your True Worth Through God’s Eyes

This means that rejection could mean:

You confuse me

I don’t get you

You don’t fit my paradigm so I don’t know how to act with you

I am overloaded and don’t have emotional energy for this relationship

You are doing something offensive and I don’t know how to talk to you about it

You have beliefs that I can’t reconcile and I can’t see you as a person right now

Or, for some of us “sorry – I was so far in my head I didn’t realize you were talking.”

None of these are bad – they are all perfectly acceptable responses. After all, there are 7 billion people on the planet – we are bound to hit a few people we really can’t relate to.

This opens up our ability to respond to rejection. Just contemplating this will help you respond to rejection with grace – both for yourself and for others.