Hey, I’m Sunny Lenarduzzi. If you’re going to do what you’re truly meant to do in this life, you’re going to come up against rejection and hate. I offer 5 solid tips that will keep you out of the self-doubt muck, and give you perspective on the people who – although rare – are trying to pull you down.
RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO:
Videos:
Brene Brown | TED talk “The Power of Vulnerability”
Watch my video “5 Steps to Developing a Growth Mindset (Execute & Achieve)”
Watch my video: “8 Habits that Stunt Your Success”
Books:
You’re going to get told no. Sometimes it’s temporary. Sometimes it’s permanent. Some doors close. Some doors open. But the best way to continue to move forward is to get better at handling and bouncing back from rejection. And how do you get really good at handling rejection? You need to get rejected more. Seriously.
Hearing the words no or having your work slammed by a stranger doesn’t really feel good, but the truth of the matter is if you want to be successful and if you’re putting yourself out there at any capacity unfortunately it is inevitable. It’s all about figuring out how to navigate that feeling and navigate that kind of attention because it doesn’t feel good and you’re human so it’s going to affect you, but making sure that doesn’t affect you to the point where you just stop trying because that’s the truest tragedy of all. I wanted to breakdown some of the ways I’ve gotten used to dealing with rejection and with hate all while having a smile on my face.
#1 – IT’S NOT PERSONAL
What the first thing is that you really need to understand and know about rejection or hate is that it’s not personal.
Really truly and honestly it’s not personal. Facts are facts, rules are rules, and preconceived notions are preconceived notions.
You have no idea what the person who is rejecting you or criticizing you or throwing hate your way is going through in their own life, or what their set of rules and judgements and whatever it is that they’ve been built and created stories around for their entire life, but they’re just projecting them on to you.
It has nothing to do with you, it’s not personal, and you can’t take it to heart necessarily.
It actually has nothing to do with you.
Now what you can do that’s really constructive is when you do get any sort of negative feedback or criticism or you are rejected from something, you can objectively take yourself out of the situation, separate from the emotion of it, and kind of question, “What can I take from this? What’s the opportunity?”
The greatest way that I’ve learned to handle rejection or any kind of hatred coming my way is to look at it and figure out if it’s useful. It’s not, I let it go. I just leave it. I have a moment. I shake it off.
But I will also try and always see the opportunity. Seeing the opportunity in pain, seeing the opportunity in a negative situation is the best way to see real growth and real change for the positive in your life. Try and see if there’s an opportunity.
If there isn’t, if it’s truly just a harmful thing being thrown your way, you don’t need it.
#2 – IT’S A PROJECTION
Tip number two, and this is something that I have dealt with recently, is that it’s a projection.
It has nothing to do with you.
It’s not personal.
A great book on how to really achieve freedom in your life from feeling this sort of negative energy from other people is “The Four Agreements”. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s basically my bible.
I read it all the time as a reminder, and one of the agreements is not to take things personally.
Part of how you don’t take things personally is understanding that a lot of what comes your way is a projection of other people’s beliefs, there are stories, whatever it might be.
I wanted to give you an example of how this showed up in my life recently actually right here on YouTube and it came through a comment. This is pure proof that most of the time it’s not about you. It’s about what the other person is projecting onto you. I got this comment on one of my most recent videos and it said:
“I owe you an apology. I’ve been feeling a bit resentful towards you for shifting your brand, as you’ve obviously shifted from strategic in the physical perspective to the emotional and thought perspective. The reason for the resentment I believe is likely just to do with you moving from comfortable for me, i.e., what I know and can understand really well, to what I do not. I almost did not watch this episode but I’m so glad that I did, and I want to thank you and myself for pushing me outside of my comfort zone.”
Pretty powerful. If every troll in the world left comments like that, it’d be a much better place.
I have so much respect for that person.
I’m not going to name who they are, but I have so much respect for that person because they understand that their feeling of resentment towards me or hatred towards me or whatever it was, was coming from a place of, “she’s doing things that maybe I want to be doing, or she’s talking about things that maybe I want to be talking about, or maybe there are things that I’m so uncomfortable talking about and I don’t want to dive into, so she’s now someone that I hate”.
But you see how that happens? It wasn’t about me. It was about their own interpretation of what I was talking about.
What I want you to do and really an important part of handling rejection and hate is knowing who you are. This is a safe community, so comment below with one really amazing trait that you have, because the more that you’re able to take pride in who you are and what you do, the less this stuff is going to bother you.
# YOU ARE YOUR OWN BEST ADVOCATE
Tip number three is you are your own best advocate.
There is good in each and everyone of you and you have to celebrate that and it will outshine the negativity or anything anyone else is going to come and throw your way.
One of the things that I do is that I have actually started repeating and reprogramming loops in my brain.
What I mean by that is I mentioned a book a few videos back called “Mind Hacking”, and mind hacking is all about treating your brain kind of like a computer and hacking a computer. Something that you have to do when you’re coding is create loops.
What I’ve done is created positive loops in my brain.
Reiterating things that I want to believe about myself or create in my life, and whenever I have downtime I’m repeating these five sentences every single moment.
My five sentences are probably very different than what yours would be, but they can be things like, “I am the pinnacle of a happy, healthy relationship and coupled with my partner, and our friends and the people in our lives admire us for that.”
Even if you’re not there in the reality right now, reprogramming that loop in your brain will actually help you start to work towards that.
You can also say things like, “I’m a multimillionaire entrepreneur and I’m creating massive impact in this world.” Write down a few sentences, five sentences maybe about what you want to create and your life is going to actually help you visualize it and achieve it.
Be strong and steady in your own beliefs about yourself as opposed to listening to what other people have to say.
#4 – REJECTION IS PROTECTION
Number four – rejection ultimately is protection.
I know that might sound really weird because it hurts, it doesn’t feel good, but sometimes when you’re rejected from things or sometimes when people leave your tribe or leave your circle or whatever it might be, it’s the best thing that has ever happened to you.
It might not feel like it in the moment, but a lot of the times when rejection shows up it’s actually protecting you from something.
Whether you know it, whether it shows up later it’s usually always the case.
So when you can look at rejection as a sign of protection as opposed to this hurtful, mean-spirited thing, it’s a much easier thing to deal with and it takes the emotionally out of it as well.
#5 – IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE ARENA GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED, I’M NOT INTERESTED
Number five – if you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked I am not interested.
This sentence came up in my life when I was going through a really challenging growth spurt and some growing pains both personally and professionally.
I remember sitting at this conference, it was at South by Southwest and I believe it was 2016 and I was listening to Brene Brown on stage.
If you don’t know Brene Brown, she’s got one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time on vulnerability.
But the reason this is impacted me so much is because it’s really easy to put weight into what other people say, and especially if you’re just starting out.
If you’re watching this and you’re just starting your business or your career or you’re just starting to put yourself out there in a really new way and you’re feeling vulnerable and fragile about it, I’d love to know, and I would love for you to put thoughts in the comments below, because this is when you need the most support and this is when you really need to hear this sentence and it’s when I needed to hear it.
I remember tears streaming down my face going, “Oh my gosh. I’m in the arena. I don’t need to give a […] about what other people are saying who are not.”
Prime example – I get comments left, right, and center about my videos on YouTube.
A lot of it is positive, but oftentimes also I have people saying to me, “Oh, you might want tweak this shot,” or, “You might want to change the imagery,” or, “You might want to fix the audio.”
Then I’ll go and look at that person and they never posted a video in their life.
They’re not in the arena, so I’m really not interested.
If you are someone who is creating videos on the regular and you have so much experience in this, I’m going to listen to you and I’m going to take that because there’s always something to learn. But if you’re not in the arena, not really interested.
That quote actually came from Theodore Roosevelt and a speech he did in 1910. I want to read it to you because it’s really, really impactful.
Whatever you’re doing right now, pause it and take these words in because they could probably change the trajectory of where you are right now if you truly take them to heart.
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could’ve done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error or shortcoming. It is he or she who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt.
Because, like I said at the beginning of the video, if you’re not playing the game, you’re neither winning, nor losing.
Seems like a pretty boring way to live your life.
So, you’re actually doing the things, you’re actually in the game. If you’re receiving any kind of backlash or negativity, know that it’s probably because people are a little jealous that you’re actually putting yourself out there.
And you right now, I hope you’re giving yourself a pat on the back. It takes a lot of courage to do what you’re really meant to do in this life, so you should stop and pause and recognize that and know that a lot of the negativity is coming from a place of jealousy.
Thank you for watching and for commenting!
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Thank you so much for watching!
-S
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