REJECTIONS DURING TEEN YEARS ARE THE WORST
Although rejections continue throughout your lifetime, they tend to have a brutal effect in the initial years, a time when you are a little too passionate, too hopeful and a little too entitled. It might have been in your early years of schooling, when a teacher you really wanted to be noticed by somehow always moved past you as if you were an unwanted ad. Or, it could have been a person you liked, or a person with authority or charisma. The sensation felt from that experience was, Am I invisible to them? Your mind is unable to come up with any rational explanation for such behaviour from others, and you’re too embarrassed to open up to your parents about it. In case you do, chances are they see it as an opportunity to fill your mind with complete nonsense: Something is wrong with that person for not realising how great you are, so screw that person for not seeing that.
Of course, your perception can’t agree with screw them, it goes in direct contradiction to the fact that you like them and wish to be liked by them in return. You have given them value, in your mind. Therefore, what you end up feeling in the absence of a sensible explanation for what is happening is—Something is wrong with me.
As time goes by, these sensations double, triple and start to multiply. You haven’t been selected for a school activity, a debate, a play, the sports team; the ‘cool’ senior students don’t seem to take a shine to you; and most devastating of all, your crush, the really pretty one or the popular one, those whom everybody seems to be interested in and talks about, doesn’t notice you at all either, even though you are crushing it in the contest of staring at them. That’s when the voice starts to become louder: Maybe something is wrong with me. From this, the conclusion your underdeveloped brain draws is: I am not special. As discussed earlier, you haven’t the slightest clue of what being special means either.
These are the developmental years of the perceptions and personality of a person, and the only tool at hand is an underdeveloped brain. Without guidance, the response to being rejected is rarely going to be mature. A heartbreak, opportunity lost and isolation may make you feel it’s the end of the world. So, depending on your fearfulness, fearlessness, strength, weakness, you make a decision about what to do with this voice saying: I am not special. In short, you get screwed because you haven’t been told that rejections are fucking normal, mate. Your mind doesn’t really know how to process emotions productively either. The results could be really disastrous.
BEING MOTIVATED BY REJECTION IS NOT REALLY A GOOD IDEA
Of the many outcomes of rejections, three of the results could be:
I am going to accept that I am a loser.
The world doesn’t notice me; therefore, I will become successful to be noticed. I will show them. I will prove to them I am superior/better/above them all, and they are going to regret not choosing me.
I am going to declare that the world is unfair; basically a shitty place, and devote myself to blaming, hating and spreading toxicity.
You may think the second point is quite powerful—Kudos to that kid. Well, not really. That person is going to be successful only so they can prove to others that they are a somebody. And, in that pursuit, they will most probably chase success blindly, ignoring what they actually want to do, because their prime motivation isn’t to be self-satisfied, but to satisfy others. And here’s the fatal flaw behind this motivation: the desire to prove something to others requires that these ‘others’ actually care, which they don’t. You are the only one invested in what becomes of you. And the only thing they are interested in, is what becomes of them.
Also, in the likelihood that the person choosing option two is not able to achieve that success, what option do they have but to become more bitter, more sad? And let’s assume they do achieve that success, what are the chances that these ‘others’ would be satisfied? What if those you want to prove your superiority to become more successful than you? Should you shave your head out of frustration at this point?
This thinking goes completely against the idea of knowing how to think because, at some point, you will be forced towards introspection by your own mind and age, and such choices and pursuits serve as the prime ingredients for an existential crisis. This may, with time, also create a bitter, meaningless outlook on what you do, because what you have built is a personality that relies heavily on proving itself to others. The self is mostly or entirely clueless, because the mind has been trained to look towards those you respect to give you satisfaction.
Those who are able to find out what they want to do in life chase after greatness to prove to themselves that they are great at what they do. With time, they realise they don’t need anybody’s approval, as doing what they want to do gives them purpose, and fulfilling that purpose gives them satisfaction and a meaningful life.
CHAPTER FOUR
PEOPLE ARE WEIRD
Side note: We will be talking about our second foundational principle here, which has to do with your general perception of people. Why do we need a general perception for people? Well, because we get rejected by them all the time, and it hurts a lot in many cases. That’s what this chapter is about; so hold on to your sweet seatbelts and shift the gears of your reasoning to the maximum as this foundational principle is called: ‘People are weird’. Yes, that’s how I want you to start seeing people from now on.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PEOPLE?
To understand how to deal with something, you need to first figure out what it is you’re dealing with. Your understanding of that thing builds a perception of it in your mind, and based on that perception, you build expectations. This is not very complicated; you do this with almost everything. You have strong perceptions about animals—a lion is dangerous, so is a crocodile. And this perception influences your expectations from them. You expect a lion or crocodile to attack you, and therefore you act accordingly. Similarly, a domesticated dog is perceived differently by you, hence your expectations from that animal are friendliness and playful behaviour, and you act in accordance with those expectations. Now comes humans: What is your perception of them?
Let’s think of a few adjectives you may have heard or used for people: people are stupid, morons, idiots, selfish, untrustworthy, unreliable, calculative, assholes, trash, the list goes on in all spectrums.
There are two problems with the above. One, these are too specific; and two, because they are too specific, you don’t really believe them. You have seen people perform acts of amazing selflessness. You have seen, at a professional fighting event, two warriors beat the living crap out of each other, and after the fight, hug each other, congratulate each other and show respect for each other. The theory that people are garbage flies right out of the window after witnessing that.
But you don’t believe people are amazing creatures either. You have been hurt, mistreated, wronged, judged and cheated by people. You have heard, read and watched multiple stories of others getting hurt by people. And you have been warned by people you trust to look out for yourself and not blindly believe in people.
In the midst of all of this, what to really think? Are people too complicated? For convenience, one could just leave it at that. Is that what you believe? The truth is, you have never really thought about it. You may say, People are complicated, or agree with that because it seems like the most logical answer. That’s the difference between ‘knowing’ and ‘understanding’. You know a lot of sensible things, but the reason why you don’t apply them is because you don’t understand them. To understand something, it must come from the reasoning of your own mind. Knowledge can be borrowed, but you can’t borrow understanding. Once you reach a conclusion derived from your thinking, it is called a realisation. And once you realise something, your perception changes about it once and for all. And that perception remains locked down until another realisation impacts it—that’s the process of learning and growing.
YOU ARE CONFUSED
When it comes to people, the right answer is, I don’t know. You, sir or madam
, don’t have one perception of people in general, you are confused.
It is entirely possible that there isn’t a day when you aren’t defining what people are. It could be conversations in which you are giving advice to someone you care about. It could be a discussion on how people think or behave in different situations. It could even be a debate on the state of the world caused by the people in it. And these definitions of people change regularly depending on the context, mood and bias of the individual. People become ‘great’, if it is a beautiful story warming the heart of the listeners and storyteller. People are ‘stupid’, when someone you firmly oppose gets elected. People are ‘assholes’, when someone you trusted screws you over.
So, it’s understandable why it must be hard for you to pick one perception of people with conviction, and have it consistently serve you in changing situations.
As mentioned before, you can’t put your entire belief in ‘people are stupid’ or ‘people are amazing’— both are too specific. They don’t inspire believability if you want to see people in a realistic way. The one we are left with is, ‘people are complicated’. The problem with that is, although it is sensible, it isn’t personal; it sounds like we are defining machinery we don’t know much about. It’s complicated. It makes people seem more distant, secretive and difficult to understand.
Why not try people are weird? Weird is one of the most fantastic words humans have come up with. It is neither a fully positive nor negative term. People on the internet often call themselves weird, almost as if they are paying a compliment to themselves, which shows it has connotations of positivity and self-acceptance in it. At the same time, it has the property of strangeness to it, which gives space for people to act oddly at times. People act strange ‘coz they are weird. It also has the property of fun, allowing people to act silly without judgement. Lastly, ‘weird’ has the same sense of mystery that ‘complicated’ does, but without that wall of impossible penetration.
Let’s test all of the above in scenarios involving rejection:
I don’t know why they don’t want to be friends with me. I guess people are fucking stupid.
It doesn’t make sense unless you actually believe they are missing out because you’re so amazing and awesome. This would come from self-assumed superiority, arrogance, self-obsession and a disregard for others’ opinions when they don’t agree with your plans.
She doesn’t want to be with me because she is amazing.
This doesn’t make sense either, because saying this would be concluding that you are inferior. It involves self-degradation, murder of self-belief, self-esteem and self-worth.
They don’t want to be my friends because people are complicated.
It actually doesn’t help at all on an emotional level, because the two parts of the sentence feel completely unrelated to each other. One sounds like something that affects you, and the other an unemotional fact.
They don’t want to be my friends, because, well, people are weird.
This leaves room for an actual reason to exist which, perhaps, is currently unknown to you. It allows for doubt to fill the space instead of assumptions from ego or hurt. Frankly, you don’t have all the facts to make any assumptions, judgements, or conclusions. By saying people are weird, you allow the experience to not affect your ego. Let it go, man, people are weird; you don’t have to understand them, nor blame anyone. The truth is, you don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on in their lives, what kind of a person they are, what their motivations are behind forming relationships. You don’t know anything about them. You tried, and that’s great. Always remember: your job is not to understand people, but to understand and take care of yourself.
What we have understood so far is:
We need a general attitude towards rejections in life, rejections are normal, they happen.
In terms of rejections from people, it becomes: rejections are a normal thing, and I don’t have to take them personally, because people are weird. Who knows what’s going on in their heads—it’s not my job to find out.
WHY THINKING PEOPLE ARE WEIRD IS AWESOME
Why is having the perception ‘people are weird’ necessary for your growth?
For one, having a perception to fall back on is better than having no perception at all, and much better than having delusional perceptions. To understand why this perception is better, we have to go back to the statement at the beginning of this chapter. Your perception of something creates expectations from them. Where does this perception come from? In one word, data. Your perception of lions comes from data about lions. They are predators who wouldn’t differentiate between a baby and a man in terms of food; they lack empathy, are territorial and fierce hunters. Your expectations come from a perception about lions which is formed by factual behavioural data about them.
What about people you want to be friends with or desire romantically? Your expectations from them come from a perception which has no real data backing it. You are getting hurt, disappointed and affected by rejections from people you have no data about. What you have is impressions of them, first impressions to be precise, which is debatable data, or unreliable data, to say the least. Here’s how it happens in your mind, stepwise:
You notice a person, and you think, Hmm.
The ‘hmm’ can be caused by multiple reasons: they are physically attractive, appear to be warm, friendly, fatherly, kind, intelligent, knowledgeable, mature, wild, fun, crazy and awesome to you.
These first impressions are registered in your mind, creating an attraction towards them in a friendly way, or a romantic way, or in a purely attention- and approval-seeking way.
From these first impressions emerge expectations: I would like to be friends with them, I would like them to take me under their wing, I want them to notice me and like me, I want them to think I am cool, I want them to be mine, I want them to assure me I am capable, I want them to assure me I am sane, fun, valuable, too.
These expectations further push the first impressions into conclusions about them in your mind—they are perfect beings, or something very close to that.
This is a very important stage. The truth is, there is no actual data to support all these claims, only impressions created in the first moments of interaction with these people and from what others say or feel about them. Therefore, your response should be: They may seem this way, but I don’t fucking know. Instead of doing that, your brain starts a brilliant new process called idealisation, which involves your imagination.
When you start to idealise them, they begin to appear more special to you; you focus more on them and your expectations from them strengthen. You have already accepted without proof or confirmation that they are what your first impressions tell you. Now, you are running scenarios of them accepting you and becoming your friends, and you are making plans with them in your mind.
You get hurt when none of that happens.
In case it does happen, in the long run, let’s say, after years, you realise they are completely different from what you believed they were. Now they are completely human to you, which means regular, ordinary people with plenty of flaws, insecurities, and unimpressive accounts to their life’s story. Your excitement about them is over.
The process repeats with new people.
BECOME MORE LOGICAL, LESS EMOTIONAL
Here are four concrete points you need to remember very clearly to avoid the above from happening again:
1. Data is king. Knowledge about something, anything, comes from data—remind yourself of this. I am not going to expect anything from them. I know practically nothing about their life. I am going to observe and wait for real data to show up. Waiting means that you allow yourself time to calm down from your initial excitement. I am not going to judge them based on rumours about them, nor buy into the hype around them. There is a possibility that you might not even get real data about them unless you are working closely with them.
Real data is any pattern of behaviour and thought
that backs a person’s actions, not words. People say a lot of shit to sound amazing. The sentiment behind what they say could very well be to sound thoughtful, caring and kind on purpose. But what people say and what they do are quite often two separate things. Therefore, don’t outright buy the nice-sounding bullshit they say. Observe whether it reflects in their choices as well. Choices, specifically, reveal the thought process of that person because, in making any choice, a person is also rejecting the other available options. Real data is found in the choices they make, not what they say they would like to make. Fuck what they would like to do, focus on what people actually do.
2. First impressions are horseshit. Make a conscious effort to dissolve the first impressions your brain is making of people. First impressions don’t come from data, but from how you perceive the world—which relies solely on your level of intelligence and knowledge. So let’s talk about your intelligence. Do you have a history of figuring out people accurately? Do you claim it takes you no time to find out who’s who? Or do you have a tendency to trust people too soon, forming completely wrong perceptions and ideas about them and realising later it was horseshit? It is entirely possible you’re too hopeful, too naive and a believer in people, a believer in the goodness in people. Two things you need to consider:
Whoever you are, or however you try to appear in front of people, manipulates your perception of people as well. For example, I am nice, therefore others must be nice as well.
Whatever you believe in does not change the practical reality that people are not you. If you are nice—good for you—that is by no means a guarantee that people will not be themselves.
The point is, do not rely on your intelligence to make assumptions about people if it isn’t considering the practical reality outside of you. Once you remove those general assumptions that your mind takes for granted, and the first impressions, what you are left with is, I don’t know—which is the most intellectual place to be in regarding all matters of life.
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