It is a fact that we will be rejected—often—in life. Understanding that this is a normal part of life allows us to develop strategies ahead of time to plan for these inevitable occurrences.
Someone else gets the promotion instead of us. A would-be “significant other” chooses somebody else. Our offer to buy a piece of property is refused. An investment decision turns out to be poor choice. All are examples of the reality of life.
Accept what has happened. Acknowledge it. Learn the lesson from the experience and move on. The emotional baggage of our negative thinking only intensifies the pain and the length of time we experience this pain.
Remember: this too shall pass.
Youth
Apply This Concept
This is an excerpt from an article “Words that won Japan” that was written by Margaret Mason, Washington Post (September 17, 1990). Samuel Ullman originally wrote the essay on youth. It sends a message about how to live beautifully to men and women, old and young alike.
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope and cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope that you may die young at 80.