Resilience is a buzzword. It comes from the Latin word resilio, which means “to jump back, to spring back, to bounce back.” It was originally a concept used in the world of physics. It describes the ability of a material or an object to recover its original volume when the force that caused a deformation ends. That is, to what extent an object recovers its original shape after having been impacted or deformed.
Currently, resilience is a concept that is widely used in the field of psychology. It defines whether a person who has suffered a strong trauma is able to recover their previous situation. That is, to effectively recover from the setbacks that life throws at them. Even in some situations, the person who has suffered a traumatic situation is able not only to recover their previous level but even come out better than he was. The saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And this is a very important skill nowadays, since most of us will receive hard blows at times throughout our lives.
However, in my opinion there is another concept that is as important or more important than resilience. And it is about the ability of people to overcome rejection. And the thing is that resilience seems to be about exceptional cases, great tragedies, great blows, about overcoming yourself in extreme situations, and obviously it is very important. But knowing how to overcome rejection is also important, since most of us will have to do it hundreds or thousands of times throughout our lives. Learning to manage rejection, small failures, is essential, especially today, since to have any small success you generally have to have many small failures.
As they say, “success is hidden on the other side of failure.” Because we will all be rejected many times in our lives. Salespeople know this perfectly well. In many cases, in order to close a sale they must hear the word “no” many times. Those trying to find a job usually have to suffer many disappointments in order to find a job opportunity.
In an environment like the current one, knowing how to manage rejection, knowing how to manage the “no”, is essential to be successful. Many scientific studies of really successful people have shown that the most important factor in achieving success was precisely that ability to manage rejection, failure. The perseverance to keep going, to not give up.
For example, the well-known actor Sylvester Stallone, at the beginning of his career, knocked on the doors of hundreds of agents to offer to work as an actor in any film. And he was rejected each and every time. Instead of giving up, he chose to look for money and make his own film with limited resources, “Rocky.” And from there you already know his story.
Or also the exemplary case of J.K. Rowling, well-known writer of the Harry Potter saga. Well, when she finished her first manuscript she went looking for a publisher to publish it. Her project was rejected every time she presented it. She was also criticised: children don’t read, the subject of magic is not fashionable, that it was a too long book to be a children’s book… And so on up to 12 times. And instead of giving up, she continued to pursue her dream. At the 13th publishing house she visited, they gave her confidence and you have already seen all the success that her perseverance has brought. As the famous quote says “Try and fail, but don’t fail to try.”
So now you know the importance of managing rejection, and of being persistent. Because as Woody Allen says, “90% of success is simply based on showing up.”
