Inside Sources: Lessons to be learned from rejection in everyday life

SALT LAKE CITY — Rejection is a part of life. We have all experienced it in one shape or another from relationships to professional to educational.

Scott Livingston, author of The Bright and Morning Star, joined Inside Sources Thursday with Boyd Matheson to discuss the lessons that can be learned from rejection. He recently had a post entitled “No. Not you. Not Now” that takes on the topic of rejection.

Matheson asked how he decided to write about the topic of rejection.

“It’s that season when a lot of wonderful young people are getting those exciting letters, notifications, or emails or text,” saying, ‘You’ve been accepted,'” Livingston said. “And it’s just awesome to watch. It’s so fun. You see the videos now of kids getting accepted into that dream school. …. Because of a relationship I have with a special young person who got the opposite of that, who got surprisingly a letter saying you weren’t accepted, you weren’t chosen you weren’t picked.”

Livingston says this special young person in his life started to question, ‘Why wasn’t I selected? What did I do wrong?’

And that Livingston to thinking about how people in life face such rejection. 

“Probably in the millions every year, that are being told for whatever reasons you’re not, you’re not the right fit for us,” he said. “And it just caused a lot of thought and feeling and some emotion about that.”

Rejection with a silver lining

Livingston says with rejection comes an opportunity to create a different path, but it requires searching.

“I just thought you know there is a component to rejection, that I mean none of us like, none of us court it,” he said. “And yet there is a silver lining so to speak, or potentially could be one for us if we scratch beneath the surface a little bit.”

Matheson asked, “What are those lessons from rejection that we can all glee from?”

Livingston talks of a personal experience in the publishing business. He had worked on a novel for nearly 10 years and had high hopes of it being successful.

He had received a rejection from the potential publishing company.

“Those are not dead-end signs,” he said. “Those are not you can’t go further signs. Maybe, there’s just more work to do. Maybe there’s more growth you need, and that’s a key lesson.”

Another lesson Livingston mentions is empathy with the understanding that you aren’t the only person to feel rejected. 

Over the course of history, Livingston says great people, such as Jesus Christ, experienced rejection more than any of us.

 

Inside Sources with Boyd Matheson can be heard on weekdays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

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