Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How to Stop Taking Rejection Personally | Nona Jones - Fmr Head of Global Faith Partnerships at Meta & Bestselling Author

Transcript

Lessons - How to Stop Taking Rejection Personally | Nona Jones - Fmr Head of Global Faith Partnerships at Meta & Bestselling Author · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, discover how rejection can become a source of hope, growth, and greater self-awareness.
• 0:05
  Understand why rejection is often more about others' choices than personal worth.
• 0:10
  Explore the open framework for processing painful experiences and uncover how finding the lesson in rejection can restore agency and create a stronger path forward.
• 0:26
  I mentioned this before we press record, and I think it's just an interesting point, and I want to get your perspective on it.
• 0:32
  And I love that.
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  I love that.
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  I love that sort of that thought experiment, because it makes a lot of sense when you lay it out, how everyone is, it takes so much.
• 0:43
  There's so many coincidences or however you want to call it, that we're alive here living today.
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  it almost seems impossible.
• 0:51
  I think statistically it is almost impossible that we're alive living here today.
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  But I think that a lot of people, they don't have spirituality and I think less and less people have God in their life.
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  And maybe not just speak about
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  Speak about if somebody does not have God in their life, what problems do they run into when facing rejection?
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  Is there ways that God's spirituality helps?
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  I'm sure, because you've mentioned that it's impacted your life twice just in this conversation.
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  But if somebody doesn't have that peace in their life...
• 1:34
  What is the puzzle piece or the component that they're missing that they should try and solve for to make some of these difficult life events a little bit easier?
• 1:44
  I love this question because what I can tell you, first of all, I did not grow up in a church going home.
• 1:52
  Like I didn't grow up in a situation where I just knew about the Bible or Jesus or God or any of that.
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  I had my own encounter, my own awakening, my own experience.
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  And what I will tell you is.
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  I had my own awakening in the middle of being abused and not, not the act, but I'm saying in the chronology of my life, the abuse was still happening.
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  And so what it did for me is my awareness about God.
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  There's a, there's a verse of scripture in the Bible that says it's in Romans chapter eight, verse 28.
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  And what it says is that God will work all things together together.
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  for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
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  What that says to me and what that even said to me then is this situation may not be good, but God has made a promise to work it together for my good, which means I have to figure out what is the good in this?
• 2:53
  Like that, that what is, what is the kernel of good in this that could serve other people?
• 2:59
  I think what spirituality does, what faith does, is it gives you an anchor for hope.
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  In the absence of the belief that all things will work together for my good, you can get so fixated on the bad and what happened that you lose sight of this will eventually work together for my good.
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  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year, but I know at some point I will look back on this situation and I will be able to say, oh, that's why that happened.
• 3:28
  I think about, my God, I think about the rejection of my mom.
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  I think about the many times I was cheated on.
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  I think about professional rejection, like deep, deep rejections that I've experienced.
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  And every single experience has worked together in some way for my purpose.
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  And for the ability to serve other people.
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  And so even if a person doesn't have a faith or spirituality, I do think that what we ultimately need is we need hope.
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  And that's why the gift of rejection is really a message about hope.
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  It sounds crazy, right?
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  It's like, how could you say rejection is a gift?
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  But understanding that it is, is a source of hope.
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  And I take my hope for my faith in God and just knowing that it may not feel good.
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  But it will eventually be good if I just continue and persevere in this situation.
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  I think that's beautiful.
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  But I think the biggest issue with lack of faith or spirituality or God, and I love this.
• 4:25
  I don't love this concept, but I love...
• 4:28
  Sort of this thought experiment is when you do not have God or spirituality in your life, something else becomes your God or your spirituality.
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  And it could be money, it could be women, it could be gambling, it could be drugs, it could be alcohol, it could even be work, which is technically not...
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  a vice, but it can be all-consuming.
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  And when shit hits the fan, none of these things really give hope because they're not things that you, they're not things that kind of like exactly what you described.
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  They let you see some potential better future.
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  They're just sort of these vices in the moment.
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  And I think people, yes.
• 5:09
  You're absolutely right.
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  We actually all do have a place that we look to for hope.
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  Some of us, and you use the exact right word, is like our God is something.
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  For some of us, our God is frankly ourselves.
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  Like we're like, look, I've got it all figured out and I'll make it happen and I'll make it.
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  But there comes a point where you just realize that you've exhausted all of your personal resources from,
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  And you need that higher power to be able to kind of re-infuse the sense that, yeah, I can't do this on my own.
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  I can't.
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  And I have a bunch of friends who are atheist and agnostic.
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  And I'll always joke with them because I'm like, you guys actually have more faith than I do.
• 5:54
  Because you have to have a lot of faith to look around at all this and be like, eh.
• 6:00
  came from nowhere you know you have that so we all have faith in something yeah no that's that i love that i want to just a framework that people can at least walk away with um and i'm just going to caveat with this so uh so the book is out now um so you can get it wherever you get your books like we'll put we'll put the links in the show notes and whatnot um but one framework that you speak about is uh the open framework
• 6:28
  So I just want to leave people with a framework they can take away, and they're going to go dive into the book and learn a little bit more, obviously.
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  But I want to unpack that one.
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  Thank you for even offering me the opportunity to do this because one of the things I am very careful about as a writer is I don't ever want people to read my books and just be like, oh, that was nice.
• 6:47
  I don't know what to do with it.
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  Honestly, one of the reasons I write my books is because I want people to be able to have practical tools that they can apply that I had to discover on my own because I couldn't find it anywhere else.
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  So the open framework,
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  is it's essentially kind of a four-part framework that will help you really start to get intentional about understanding what is the gift in this rejection experience.
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  And so the O stands for observe.
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  And I talked about this a little bit earlier, but what you wanna do is when a rejection happens, before you allow yourself to mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually spiral into your normal rabbit hole, you want to observe what am I thinking and what am I feeling?
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  What are the thoughts that are just automatically playing in my mind?
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  What are the feelings that are just automatically cascading through my body?
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  And when you kind of pause and you actually think about the thoughts, like metacognition, like you think about the thoughts,
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  you're actually able to then begin to pinpoint where did this come from?
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  Where did this belief that nobody wants me, where did this idea come from?
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  And once you can actually pinpoint where the idea came from, now you have something that you can start to work with, okay?
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  And it's important to pinpoint it because until you identify where it comes from, you'll think it's you, okay?
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  You'll think this was just my own thought, but I promise you 95% of what we think after we experience rejection was seeded into us by words somebody else said.
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  So start with observing.
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  Secondly, what I encourage people to do is just pause.
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  Just pause.
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  Don't allow yourself to act.
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  Because sometimes what we'll do is the pain will be so real that we'll just want to either get back at the person immediately.
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  We'll want to take some sort of action to try to, you know, nullify the pain.
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  No, just pause.
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  What I do is I pause and I pray.
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  Okay.
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  And I actually bring those thoughts to God.
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  I'm like, okay, I just thought, my thought was, no one will ever want me.
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  No one ever supports me.
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  No one ever.
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  And I bring it to God because that then gives me the opportunity to reflect on, is this true?
• 9:05
  You know, as I've been releasing this book about rejection, I've been experiencing so much rejection, Scott.
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  It's been crazy.
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  Ironic.
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  And I got...
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  Isn't it ironic?
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  And I got to a place where I literally felt, I was like, man, nobody's, nobody's supporting me.
• 9:18
  But as I paused and I prayed about that, I had to actually reflect on the fact that, wait a minute, a lot of people are supporting me and there are people supporting me who I've even not even met before.
• 9:28
  And, and like, even being on this platform is just such a gift because it's like, you've so lovingly cultivated this platform and yet you're inviting me on it.
• 9:37
  Like that is a gift.
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  that counters the idea that nobody supports me, nobody wants me, right?
• 9:43
  So we pause and for me, I pray and I just get into a meditative place.
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  And then the E is explore.
• 9:51
  So I believe that every rejection has a lesson that it can teach us about ourselves or about others.
• 9:57
  In the case of my book release and having some folks that I thought I could count on not show up for me, as I explored that, what I realized is,
• 10:05
  I placed them in a category of friendship that they actually weren't in.
• 10:09
  Like, these are people that I supported.
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  These are people that I just knew would show up for me that didn't.
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  And so as I explored it, I realized, oh, our relationship actually isn't where I thought it was.
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  So now...
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  I don't hold a grudge against you because you didn't show up.
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  I just realized I can't count on you for what I thought I could count on you for.
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  And so that then changes the nature of the relationship.
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  And the last step, which is in the N stands for name.
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  And what I talk about is just name your next step.
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  So you've observed your thoughts, you know how you're feeling, you've paused, you've actually explored the lessons and the experience.
• 10:42
  Now, what are you going to do with what you've learned?
• 10:45
  Um,
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  and how is it going to change the way that you show up?
• 10:48
  So that's the open framework in a nutshell.
• 10:50
  And you're right, I go into a lot more detail in the book, but it's practical and it's something that I've even used as I've experienced rejection releasing the book and it works.
• 10:59
  What would be one thing about rejection that people fundamentally get wrong?
• 11:03
  Like a very commonly held belief that is just absolutely incorrect.
• 11:08
  Yeah, I think people take rejection personally and think that it's about them when in reality, what people do is not about you.
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  It's about their choice.
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  So we say, well, they did this thing because something's wrong with me, when in fact they did the thing because they did the thing.
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  Right?
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  So instead of taking it personally, I think we just have to recognize they did what they did because of them, not because of me.
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  What would be one belief about rejection that you used to hold that's changed dramatically?
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  It could even be as you wrote this book.
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  I thought rejection was like the end of the world.
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  Like I thought that not being invited, I thought not being included.
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  I thought having somebody I cared about abandoned me when I needed the most.
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  I thought that was the end of the world.
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  But now I recognize that there's actually a lesson in all of those experiences.
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  And I actually can take the time to consider what that lesson is.
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  And I can apply it to my life and I can retain my sense of agency.
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  And it can make me better.
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  Thanks for tuning in.
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  If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.
• 12:15
  And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.