No…

We regret to inform you…

Let’s just be friends….

Rejection hurts.  I have interviewed for jobs and did not get them.  I have chased business dreams that did not ever take root.  I thought I was going to land deals that I did not get.

We build up an expectation of “what will happen if I get this”, and when we don’t, an entire future ceases to exist.  We mourn things that were never really born and never really died.

Michael Jordan was cut from his 9th grade basketball team forcing him to practice harder than anyone else on the team to get a position on the team.  The founder of Home Depot started the company after he was fired from a local hardware store.  Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram Studios went bankrupt in 1923, forcing him to move to California and eventually invent a new character named Mickey Mouse.  Nobody bought H.J. Heinz’s original commercial venture in horseradish, forcing him to invent a new product called ketchup.

Rejection is a form of protection.  You could have walked into a miserable situation.  You could have taken the job only to have it eliminated. You could have started a business just in time for your product to became obsolete.  You could have married that person.  You could have been the dog that finally caught the car it had been chasing, with some very messy results.

Be thankful you did not get what you wanted.  What a stroke of luck!  You could have become the lesser thing you wanted to be, rather than the better thing you are today.