Was I humiliated?

All this time I thought I was afraid of rejection when I was really afraid of being humiliated.

What's the difference? It’s huge!

Let's start with defining rejection.

Rejection: not given approval or acceptance. The Latin noun "reicere" means to throw back and is the ancestor of the word rejection.

In my case, rejection automatically led to a feeling of humiliation.

Humiliation reduces someone to a lower position in one's own eyes or others' eyes.

The Latin root of humiliation is "humilis" meaning low as in Cumulus Humilis (the low-floating clouds).

As it turns out, my fear, rejection, was really a fear of being humiliated as a salesperson. The fear of being humiliated impacted my success, causing me to exert a great deal of emotional energy just to keep moving forward.

Once when I was trying to sell computer networking equipment to Charles Schwab, the well-known brokerage company, I didn't succeed and felt humiliated because they purchased the same product from another vendor.

The price and delivery were the same from both of us, but I was rejected and I felt humiliated.

What was the difference?  The winning competitor was 10 times larger than my company.  That didn't matter at the time…

I still felt humiliated.

Eventually, I realized that the rejection was one of "fit."  My company wasn't the right fit, or size — so I got thrown back into the pond like an unwanted fish for not being the right size.

For a short time, I did feel humiliated like a lowly salesperson but I started going after medium sized accounts and found success there.

The bright side of being thrown back into the pond was that I lived to fight another day.

Rejection or humiliation was not the end game.

Realizing this and moving forward is called resilience and that is the trait of winners.

In one of the Rocky movies, Rocky tells his son,  "You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!

Resilience is the answer to rejection or humiliation. It's the ability to withstand shock without permanent deformation or ruptures.

My first step in managing feelings of rejection was to realize that I was not a powerless victim, and to keep moving forward.

Life will deliver blows, but with resilience you can go the distance.

My wish for you is that you have a blessed holiday season and to be resilient.

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