In embracing rejection, you embrace yourself because ultimately there is no single person out there who has the power to move you or change you. Only you possess this. Hence, individuals or groups that reject you per se are themselves of no consequence. What is of consequence is the lesson learnt therein. The greater the rejection, the higher the mountain. If one were to look at oneself as a mountain climber, getting angry at the mountain is ludicrous. The greater the challenge, the more there is to clear.

So just as a mountain climber looks for the next mountain you will need to embrace your next rejection.  The only thing that you would not want to do is to repeat the mistake without correction. If the same mistake defeats you continuously then it is not the incidents, nor the mistakes that are at fault, but you are.  Embracing rejection without self analysis is defeatism. Self analysis makes a difference. Hence, it is about planning and preparing that makes a difference.  A rejection gone by unanalysed is a rejection lost in time. Which is why the post mortem of every rejection (through practise of Sphere of Silence) is crucial to your next stage. 

For me, my morning practise of the Sphere of Silence allows me this unique introspection where I can fit the pieces of the jigsaw of the person that I am and since I am continuously evolving, of the person that I am becoming.  Most people who have spoken to me about rejection, ask,” why me?” As if they have been handpicked for this pain! For this dismal experience they feel they have undergone was orchestrated by the lord himself.  But ultimately we are the architects of our own rejections. I do not mean that we are expecting or designing our own defeat but that we need to plan and prepare for both rejection and acceptance in the same manner.  And acceptance merely affirms a thought process and ability of a strategy. A rejection merely challenges you. So change it. And if pride has no role to play it becomes that much easier to deal it .

 

Rejection by Vijay Eswaran

Rejection is a central platform of all networking endeavour. Anyone who doesn’t understand why rejection is such a powerful and yet intricate tool of learning does not really understand networking. Take the word 'networking'. Ultimately it’s about working a net. If you see a spider building a cobweb, in essence that’s where the term net/web originated from. It’s a concept we have pulled from nature per se.

First the spider pulls one single thread from point A to Point B. And this is the most difficult most, strenuous, most daring, more imperilled venture by the staid spider. Because it is one thread and hanging by that single thread the spider tries to span an expanse of space. And generally it fails about 99 times before connecting the thread. And because its so tenuous, it breaks again about 99 times. The actual percentage of success is about 1%.

But the web itself upon completion can be an extremely powerful and extremely intricate construction. In nature, there is nothing that comes close. Man, despite all technological progress cannot match the intricacy and strength of a single cobweb even today. The strength of a single spider thread is still far stronger than the strongest steel cable known to man, if one were to measure it proportionately. Hence, it is the ideal example to use in this field of business/networking.

The first thread fails 99 times out of 100. But yet, this is the basis of the entire network that is yet to come and it will be the strongest thread that spans that space. Upon that single thread being achieved the spider goes back to its centre and then drops again to create another thread. Hence, you eventually see the entire cobweb over a period of time. Now how does this  affect the term rejection?

The spider has no ego, it has no pride. It has no intellect in terms of counting how many times it fails. It is focussed on the objective and keeps on striving and trying till it's objective is reached. It can only focus on one thread at a time. But this is how the most complex, intricate, dynamic networks are built.  The only thing that differentiates us from the spider is this concept of pride/ego/self awareness/social intelligence.

Hence, you would find that some of the most successful networkers per se, who have been able to completely build huge networks, i.e, 50,000/80,000/ 120,000 people, they have done so because they have never looked beyond the next thread/person that they are building upon. This so called simplistic approach is so powerful because there is no expectation, there is no pride in achievement, there is only the next step forward.  So why this fear of rejection? Rejection does not demean you. It does not deride you. It does not deny you. It certainly doesn’t defeat you.  It doesn’t even defy you.  So why let a single rejection or a 100 rejections stop you.

In the words of a good friend of mine, who is a great networker, "Rejection is just another gust of wind on my face. It cools my brow and is gone in the next instant. If I know it not, how can it affect me?"

Through rejection though, there is so much to be learnt. In every rejection there is a new lesson.  In every rejection, there is a different map of who you are internally, different part of a map internally being projected. If you can piece your rejections together, you will begin to see who you really are.

A rejection teaches you what you should not do next.  A rejection teaches you where you went wrong. And therefore teaches you if you care to learn from it, what you should do right.  It is an excellent opportunity that allows you to experiment just as a painter does with his canvas. If you can only remove your expectation out of the way; if you can only remove your ego out of the way, then rejection becomes a gift divine.  It becomes a true teaching tool and the master plan teaches.  There is so much more to be derived from rejection than there is from success.

Embrace it and it would guide you. Repel it and you will be forever entwined.

 

 

It is an absolute necessity. Sense of urgency says, “I do not have time”. Let me burn the candles at both ends. The sense of urgency is felt precisely like cutting off your air supply.

If someone comes up behind you right now and grabs your nose and shuts your mouth. First minute you will say someone is playing a game with me, who is this person…trying to figure it out etc. You hit your next 30 seconds and start wanting to breathe, the person grips harder. Now you start pushing harder, because you want to breathe, and if it continues for 30 more seconds, you are into desperation. You scratch, you bite, you claw, you don’t care who the hell it is holding you. At that moment in time, you will kill to breathe. And that is burning desire. It is a lot more than just survival. It is basically recognizing that nothing can hold you back. Nothing should get in your way. Survival would have been there in the first 10 seconds. But at the last 10 seconds, it was not even the issue of survival. It came down to the simple fact: “I WANT to breathe”.  Total focus becomes tinier and tinier until it reaches the point that “I want to breathe”.

 Look at Thomas Alva Edison. He is there, working away, continuously for 96 hours in his lab, not having gone home or out at all. He is so focused on his work. Literally, his housekeeper has to force-feed him. Nothing can irritate him, nothing can take him out of the lab if he is burning after an idea.

Tagore would look himself up in the middle of the night, when he was writing his masterpiece  Gitanjali. Nothing could touch him. Until it came out of him (Gitanjali), nothing could get in the way. What drives these people like that?

Picasso locked himself in the attic until he finished his painting. They all have that, where their focus boils down to that particular thing being achieved and nothing else. But you do have it too. Every single one of us does. Almost invariably, usually, when we fall in love. Be it puppy love at the childhood phase or more serious mature things in adulthood, it comes at a point where those that you love deeply, your parents, your best friends, who before this thing happened had the greatest influence over you, the people for whom you had great respect and admiration, all of them flushed down the toilet because of someone you don’t know, have not really understood, not got to know very well yet, and yet who took over your entire existence. So the capacity is there.

The sense of urgency is not something that one can seek, it cannot be contrived, it has to be derived. It comes from within us.

A great Italian sculptor was brought by the Bishop of Florence to  create a  statue.

One tonne of marble was brought and put up in the front of the chapel. The sculptor was told: “They have the Sistine Chapel, now I want something special here, in Florence. I want it to be the best ever.” He commissioned him and asked: “How long do you need?” He said: “I need a year.” He said,  “Ok, take a year”.

The bishop went on a small tour and  when he came back, he walked straight into the chapel to see what had been done…half expecting a half-finished piece of work.

It had been three months…and the stone was completely left untouched. Not a single scratch, not a mark. All the tools were brand new, still lying on the side…nothing had moved, nothing had happened.

So he called one of the lay brothers and said “Where is my statue?”

He was told: “Every single day, the sculptor is here. He comes at the crack of dawn and he sits in front of that statue. Then he repositions himself and then he repositions himself  again, as the light changes. And he just sits and stares at the stone.:

“Does he take notes, does he draw sketches…what does he do?”

“Nothing. He just stares and stares and stares. And when dusk falls, he leaves.”

“This is going on for three months?

“Yes, it is going on for 3 months.”

 “Oh well, he is a great sculptor, maybe he needs time.” So saying, the bishop took off for another tour. He came back 2 months later. He went into the chapel,  and again not a single scratch. Again, when we he talked to the lay monks, they told him exactly the same story.

 So he called the abbot and said, “You are the abbot of the monastery. Go down to him tomorrow and tap him on the shoulder and ask him what is going on”. So he went, and there he was—the sculptor—staring intently at the white square marble.

He leaned over very gingerly and tapped him on the shoulder. At first, the sculptor didn’t react. So, he tapped him a little bit more…again there was no reaction. So he gave him a light shout and there was a massive eruption.

The sculptor turned around and immediately snapped at the abbot, cursing him vehemently, demanding that he get out of the chapel, and not darken the threshold of the chapel ever again for as along as he was there. If he ever took a breath, made a squeak of a noise again, or interrupted the sculptor, the sculptor would actually complain to the archbishop.

The abbot just slunk away. The archbishop, on hearing this, thought “Let us leave him for a little while and see what happens. I am coming back next month. By then, he should be finished. Again, he went into the chapel…there was nothing waiting for him to see. Seven months of the year had gone by.

The archbishop decided to talk to him the next day. At the crack of dawn, the archbishop sat in front of the marble, waiting. The doors opened. The sculptor strode right in. He did not even see the archbishop.

He went straight up, picked up his tools and started hammering. The archbishop quietly left. Four months later, one month short of the year, La Peitra David was born. It is considered to be the finest sculpture ever done.

Now the question would be: What was he doing for 7 months? The lay monks asked the archbishop this when it was unveiled.

The archbishop replied: “The question is what has happened to my other 200 Davids.”

"What 200 Davids?” 

The archbishop said: “Seven months of 30 days, makes is 210 days. Each day, he sat there and as he walked around and he has finished an entire sculpture in his mind, and then chosen to reject it. Can you imagine, I just missed 210 Davids.”

The sculptor had studied the grain of the stone, the colour, the lighting and everything. You cannot remove it after it has been sculpted, and the sculptor learnt from the stone.

If you can learn from stone, then the question even for an agnostic is, why can’t you learn from the person in front of you? Why would you need to asses him?

The question is: How receptive are you? That is studentship.

 

Asking does not reduce me nor does it take away from my friendship.
Asking requires humility, something I am always in need of.
Asking is how I learnt as student and how I remain so.
Asking is how I learnt my trade and how I continue to ply it.
Asking is how I get customers and how I keep them.
Asking is how I got my wife and how she remains so.
Asking is the basis of prayer.

It is the only way to the Lord.

If I have no expectation and no fear asking can only make me stronger.