A Tutor's Tale Part 1: Acceptance and Rejection

Since I have started tutoring, I have encountered many different life stories from my students. I may not give the best advices to them (as I too do not know it all) but I'm surely honoured I'm put in such a position to speak into their lives as they confide in me. Some of the issues they are facing, are also some that I have faced before, some of which I may not have fully dealt with and am still exploring about too.

With that, I would like to start a new series of me telling stories from them and also perhaps instill some values into them. As some of you would have known by now, I get inspiration from my daily conversations and I would ask my students if I can post about it with their names remain anonymous or changed.

What happened?

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One of my female students was telling me about a rejection she felt in school among the clique of friends she usually hangs out with. There are 5 of them, of whom are all girls aged 13. She was with 3 of them when the other two had left to go home. Suddenly, one of them approached her and told her that the two of them have other personal agendas so they asked my student to go up to the classroom first. Being a bit shocked by this response, she just nodded and said, "Oh."

After she told me this, I asked her what she was feeling. She said she felt sad and left out when they wanted to be exclusive. Though in my mind I was thinking maybe it wasn't a big deal, maybe they weren't even trying to reject her, I didn't say my thoughts out because she is at a delicate age, the teen age. So whatever the incident made her feel, it can be valid as she sorts out her feeling about it. She said one of them used to be her best friend and then she got closer with the other girl. I could tell she was feeling sad and yet she tried to be alright about it. Hence, I encouraged her that it is okay to acknowledge her feeling as it is, and she need not try to deny it or coat it with something just to sound not hurt. She was also thinking what she should do when she sees them again tomorrow in school. She said she thinks she didn't do anything to wrong them and how she wished her old best friend (who has migrated) is around.

(This student of mine had also talked to me about why some beautiful girls in her school would act a certain way and why she was always told to lose weight. She doesn't think she is pretty because she thinks being slim is beauty. I think I will cover this part in my part two tomorrow.)

Acceptance and Rejection

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I think none of us is exempted from going through rejection as we learn about acceptance more and more. Sometimes it can be a rejection that only happens in our mind that we overthink, sometimes it is as real as we get it as a tight slap on our faces. I would say if we do not recognize rejection, we would not learn about acceptance.

Rejection can happen in businesses, relationships, and even within ourselves. It is a feeling of casting away someone or something that we may not be able to accept and it communicates a feeling of unloved. Acceptance is the total opposite of rejection, which means embracing and receiving in people or things. I think there is not a single person in this world that is all pleasant to everyone that he or she has not felt rejection before. It can also happen when we do not feel the support from our loved ones or community. At times, it can be one of the ways the society or community "punishes" some people and deem them as the outcast. This is nothing new under the sun.

In my opinion, rejection can be felt at any age and it usually leave deep impacts in our lives if we experience it since a tender age. It may be magnified in our teenage years as we learn about self acceptance and having cliques is one of the subtlest ways of causing rejection. However, because we are collective beings, we tend to form cliques in friendships because maybe we enjoy the exclusivity of being special with a group of friends. Due to this reason, whoever is not included or defined as close enough may feel rejected.

What are some powerful ways to deal with rejection?

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Back to my conversation with my dear teenage student. Instead of telling my student what she can do, I asked her some questions.

• What are you feeling?
  
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Acknowledging our true emotions is the first thing to do. This is one essential step for self-restoration. Sometimes, it is because we are scared to be overpowered by hurt, we bury the hurt within. This will prolong the pain of rejection and eventually, situations would push us to still feel that feeling which could have been intensified because of the years of suppression. Often than not, rejection also brings along embarrassment and shame because we are seen being rejected in front of others. That is also another valid feeling to be addressed and processed over.

Thus, it is okay to admit we feel rejected in a certain situation. Congratulate yourself if it is a hard thing for you to come to terms with and you finally can do it. It has to be answer from a non-defensive yet vulnerable state, so it actually takes courage for one to admit this feeling more than to live in denial of it.

• Can you accept yourself? Who or what defines you?
  
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Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don't base your self-esteem on their opinions. ~Harvey Mackay

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Try not to take rejection too personally, though acknowledging it, still. Sometimes, the rejection is very much felt because it mirrors to us what we actually feel inside: self-rejection. If we are constantly blaming ourselves for every thing that happen, rejection is adding fuel to a fire that is already burning. It can easily lead to depression if it is not realized. Can you still be kind to yourself when a rejection happens, or are you beating yourself up?

There can be many causes to why rejection can happen. It may be some insecurities surfaced and made people trying to be defensive or exclusive to feel superior or good, it can be really some people have different preference towards us, it can be they cannot deal well with a certain part of us etc.

Check what our self-worth is based on. If it is based on something really flimsy or wobbly, any TEST of rejection will reveal this to us. It can tell us if we are living by people's opinions, likes or dislikes. Hence, determine today who you will let to define you. As for me, after some rounds of rejections and finding my worth, I base mine on who God says I am and I guard it with all my might. Anything that comes against the word of God, I would not let them stay too long in me but to realign myself back to God's definition of me. Sometimes, I would have problem in believing that too, so I ask help from God to even help me believe.

• What do you think you can learn from this incident?
  
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Rejections do not always have to be on the negative note. We can learn to know ourselves through incidents like this. Rejection doesn't mean the end of the world! It can be a leaping board for us to break some limits to live life to its fullest by exiting a comfort zone, perhaps. If we equate rejection with failure, we may miss a very good opportunity to shine. Who among the legendary famous successful people have never faced rejection?

• Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”
• After a performance at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, Elvis was told by the concert hall manager that he was better off returning to Memphis and driving trucks (his former career).
• Steve Jobs was fired from his own company.
• When Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard he started a business with Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data, which flopped. Luckily, they tried their hand at business again and this time Microsoft was born.
• When Marilyn Monroe was trying to start her career, modeling agencies told her she should consider becoming a secretary.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. He once said, “I have missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the gam winning shot, and I have missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
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How does this apply in relationships, you may ask? When we are rejected by friend(s), it simply can mean either these friends are the real good friends who would stand by you and accept you OR the harsher truth would be yes, we might be really pissing them off until they are not able to relate with us organicly. Let's talk about the first reason: if we can discover some friends aren't constructive for us and would not be taking our feelings into consideration, I don't see why we need to beg ourselves to still be in such a toxic relationship just to please them. About the latter reason, it may sound like a tight slap on our face, but it is actually a good self-evaluation to check on how we actually treat others and what are the things we are pissing them off, if it has been happening not just with one friend but with more than that. It provides an opportunity to fix and upgrade ourselves, which is actually good, despite the defensive slogan that has been shouting: Be yourself and haters gonna hate! Nothing wrong with being yourself or doing any other thing so long it does not birth forth from a place of hurt, defense and denial.

I even try to convince her that she can do an honourable confrontation with her friends. My husband always says this to me: Sometimes, we girls who are made to be more sensitive, may create our own unreal thoughts for ourselves without verifying them and we tend to use extensively our time as well as emotions on things which may not exist in the first place. Over the years, I do agree with this, which is why girls relatively have more internal problems in friendships compared to guys because of our own guessing. Hence, an honourable confrontation would solve this problem and I think a real friendship should be able to pass this "test" and can sustain through a confrontation.

• How can you love yourself better?
  
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One thing about loving ourselves is that we learn to accept more and more of ourselves and also able to speak to ourselves kindly, including correcting ourselves and be humble to admit. Besides that, take time to be powerful to determine how our responses can be, regardless how others may treat us. We can still be nice and move the other party with our good heart, provided we do not do from a place of just wanting to please them. We can actually do it from a willing heart, for ourselves and also for others. This will build our character and mental strength. It also improves our relational skills greatly.

• Does that mean we have to accept everything in order to be nice to others?

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Is rejection a total bad thing? I would not say so, because part of a person being healthy and wholesome mentally and emotionally, is also the ability to say 'no' or reject. Imagine if everyone has the same access into our inner core, and we allow everyone to affect our feelings and thinking, that would be disastrous and cause an emotional burnout on us as well. That certainly won't do as we too have to learn to take care of our emotional self, thus I would encourage healthy boundaries as well. I personally think it is okay to reject, but do it with honour and not putting anyone down, as much as I can. That is part of being powerful.

Now, the famous quote about acceptance and rejection says:

“If you live for people's acceptance, you'll die from their rejection.”
― Lecrae Moore, Unashamed
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After I asked all these questions, my student sort of got a better understanding. She does not prefer to confront as she is scared, which I can understand it from the point of peer pressure and losing friends. She did say she feel better and will think about what we have just gone through. I am no relationship guru, but I am very happy that as earlier as she can realize life will have rejections coming her way, she can know how to deal with them healthily.

Thank you for taking your time to read about my tutor's tale Part 1. I may not have covered everything about acceptance and rejection for it is a topic with different dimensions and is actually situational. Feel free to drop some of your thoughts on this matter in the comments below. Still, thank you for your patience for reading through and stay tuned for Part 2: Definition of Beauty tomorrow!

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