Overcoming Obstacles and Rejections

Life can be quite strange and complex. You keep finding closed doors; maybe that is a sign to look elsewhere or maybe to knock harder on them. If only “going with the flow” instead of “swimming against the current” always led somewhere worthwhile…

First of all, if you want to get anywhere far, you have to get used to things not always being in your favor - to encountering obstacles and facing rejections. Don’t take it personally and don’t assign meaning to it. There is more going on in life and life does not revolve around you alone. You have to understand that, at all times, you are competing against different and opposing forces coming from and going in various directions. And it’s on you and your will to get through them regardless.

There are countless lines, frequently quoted and shared, stating or claiming this or that about such a phenomenon, but many, if not most of them, are oversimplifications that won’t always accurately apply to specific situations and circumstances. So, be wary of relying on them as they may lead you stray. See if they truly resonate with where you’re at or not if you will take them in.

In any case, it may be worth reflecting on why things aren’t running smoothly when they aren’t. Maybe there is something that you must change in yourself or in what surrounds you.

Often, obstacles are there to show us our shortcomings. To test us and challenge us to overcome them, to go around them, over them, or through them. And similarly, rejections can teach us about criteria. About which principles, values, preferences, and attitudes entities are governed by. They have something to do with you, not everything. Basing your sense of inherent worth on how you measure up against these will probably be off, as this is situational and circumstantial rather than universal and doesn’t quite factor in your potential, as well as counterproductive, for it could gravely discourage you.

When it is as though the whole world is against you, there are a few possibilities:

a) You are a catalyst for change,
b) your kind is going extinct,
c) you are indeed rotten,
d) other.

May God and the universe be with you if ‘a’ or ‘b’. Work on yourself if ‘c’.

And remember, internalizing failures to wallow in them doesn’t serve you. Take a moment to properly process them as you must, but ready yourself to get back up and keep going, knowing there will be more. Fearing obstacles and rejections, and avoiding them, is a surer path to failure. You are not powerless.