11 Inspiring Quotes and Poem About Dealing With Rejection

Check out this mind food when you need to pick yourself back up from rejection.

From Denny:  Rejection is one of the toughest situations people do to each other. It's inevitable. You don't get that job. You don't attract that person for romance. Even the family dog doesn't want to know you some days. Bad days happen and happen for a reason. Look at it this way. It sure makes those good times we experience that much sweeter because we have a stark comparison against which to measure it.

Like anything, Life gets easier if we take the time to reflect upon disappointments and rejection - but in a positive way. I was reminded recently of some people who rejected me when in college, though I accepted them wholeheartedly. Yet, all these years later it is just now these fellow women have realized they were being petty and insecure.

While I was sad at the time about what appeared to be rejection for no good reason it was these years later they revealed to me why they did what they did. Turns out it was jealousy, fear and insecurity. They had put me up on some imaginary inner plateau, assuming I was something I wasn't.

The short explanation is they really didn't have good people skills and could not "read" people well to properly assess my offer of friendship. Today they regret their rejection of the many good people in their lives, a pattern they found themselves repeating far too often. They now realize the source of their terrible unhappiness for so many years is because they rejected the good people capable of long term friendships in favor of the shallow mean-spirited people who later abandoned them to rejection.

I've always been blessed with an uncommon ability to see into people's hearts. I saw the best in them; I saw their talents long before they did. I also knew they had low self-esteem and the chances were high they would reject the friendship. I offered it anyway to give them the opportunity of choice and decision.

Lately, on the web, I've been running across many sites where people have been lamenting rejection, stuck as how to deal effectively with it. Their pain was palpable, weeping on the surface and interfering with living day to day. So, I sat down and thought a while about it and wrote a poem. There are also several favorite quotes listed about how famous people have learned how to rethink rejection and benefit from it.



Quotes

Life's blows cannot break a person whose spirit is warmed at the fire of enthusiasm. - Norman Vincent Peale, Preacher and Author

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. - Jimmy Dean, Actor, Singer and Businessman

I think that you have to believe in your destiny; that you will succeed, you will meet a lot of rejection and it is not always a straight path, there will be detours - so enjoy the view. - Michael York, actor

Don’t Take Anything Personally. Nothings others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering. - Don Miguel Ruiz, New Age Author

Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Author, Poet and Philosopher

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself. - James Lee Burke, American Author

Dear to us are those who love us... but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Author, Poet and Philosopher

True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful. - Paul Sweeney, Author

An objection is not a rejection; it is simply a request for more information. - Bo Bennett, Businessman and Author

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. - Marcus Aurelius

Do not waste yourself in rejection; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Even God has a sense of humor about how to handle repeated rejection. Take a look.






Poem From God


How many times have you lamented the experience of constant rejections in life?
How many times have you dreaded getting up in the morning to face more rejection?
Writers, artists, actors, sales and customer service people intimately know rejection.
So do the unemployed know rejection, especially those without jobs for months, years.







Do you ever sit down in an emotional puddle and roll in the misery of getting rejected?
“Who hasn’t?” would be a more accurate question. Everyone has visited the Pity Party.
People advise you to “Get over it!” but you can’t seem to pull yourself out of the dark pit.
Others tell you to quit being so sensitive but the hurt of rejection lingers with a stench.







You wonder to yourself how to deal effectively with the sting of repeated rejection?
It’s good to look at rejection from a completely different perspective: God’s.
How does the Creator of the Universe deal with repeated rejection? What’s His take?
God has a great sense of humor, for, after all, we are made in His Image, right?







One day I sat down to listen to what God had to say about dealing with rejection.
And God said, “Do you think I don’t know rejection? Every day I go to work.
“Half the people on this planet wake up refusing to have anything to do with Me.
“I go to work anyway. The song of Love calls to their hearts and I await their answer.”



Denny Lyon
Copyright 8 Oct 2010
All Rights Reserved


*** Check out this related post:

Inspiring Quotes About Dealing With Rejection - Some great advice from famous people about handling rejection.




Photo Credits - Flickr provides this new code that also links the photo back to the photographer's page when you click on the photo. Here are the page links too:


Discarded roses on the street photo by Todd Huffman @ flickr

The Deepest Pain - rejection words in the sand photo by juliejordanscott @ flickr

Empty glass or full glass photo by Princess K8 @ flickr



*** THANKS for visiting, feel welcome to drop a comment or opinion, enjoy bookmarking this post on your favorite social site, a big shout out to awesome current subscribers – and if you are new to this blog, please subscribe in a reader or by email updates!

*** Come by for a visit and check out my other blogs:

The Social Poets - news, politics
The Soul Calendar - science, astronomy, psychology
Visual Insights - photos, art, music
Beautiful Illustrated Quotations - spiritual quotes, philosophy
Best Spiritual Posts - my own best as well as links to other spiritual posts from all viewpoints
Poems From A Spiritual Heart - poetry
The Healing Waters - health news
Dennys People Watching - people in the news
Dennys Food and Recipes
Dennys Funny Quotes - humor

How Is Your Relationship With Your Inspiration Muse?

*** Views Today: 8,406 - Thank You!




From Denny: Today there was an online conversation with fellow poets about the subject of muses. Some had them; some didn't. All the muses seemed to be female in gender.

Several of the poets were lamenting how life's little distractions get in the way when inspiration pays an unannounced visit. They were frustrated of how many interruptions they experienced every time they tried to revisit the inspiration and write, only for that awesome inspiration to fade quickly.

We have all experienced moments like this. For creative people it's especially difficult because we can grasp the importance of what we were offered and it too quickly slipped away, seemingly elusive.

What a lot of people are unaware of, and our inspirational muses are trying to tell us, is that these moments are actually spiritual moments. The way to interact with those moments successfully is to develop a discipline of cultivating them.

Well, just how do you go about developing this discipline? When inspiration knocks on your inner door just make a mental note of where you left off when the interruption occurred so you can return to that moment. What is happening here is that it is lucid dreaming or a waking vision where your spirit is talking clearly to your waking mind - and your waking mind is aware of this conversation.





Pelikan fountain pen by David Blackwell @ flickr



A quick mental note of how you feel in the moment and maybe scribble a couple of words or phrases down on a piece of paper ( heck, the wall will do when the inspiration is fading fast - you can paint over it later). This hand-mind coordination works together to help your memory so you can regroup later and return to the inspiring moment. It's just like returning to a room you left a few moments ago.

The mind can be trained to remember your dreams, your waking visions, your inspirations. It just takes time to train yourself. Develop the structure, the obvious cues for you. For instance, always using the same pen and notebook. You could try always writing in the same place like a corner of the kitchen or your bedroom. The goal is to create familiarity and comfort which, in turn, will stimulate your memory to flow quickly and easily.

It will take a few times, maybe months, depending upon how much you practice to develop this discipline. If you practice it every day for a few minutes at the same time of day and place you will develop the habit rapidly and easily. A little bit of constant effort to create your best structure you respond well to is well worth the time to capture inspiration sublime!

As to the subject of gender for muses, well, mine has always been male. And this guy can get downright demanding and a bit of a pest at times. :) Of course, the crazy spiritual relationship with this spiritual energy is well worth it for what I've learned about the spiritual world and myself over time.

This is an amusing poem I wrote in response to a writers group recording their muses. They were all romantic and serious and my account was quite different - a bit shocking for some - for I recorded reality as I live it: always with a wry grin.







Dreaming Words



Warm



Comfortable



Drifting




Toggling between this waking world
And the world of dreams symbolic
Sheets, those delicious summer skimmers
Glide as bodies turn side to side in repose




Gently





Quietly



Softly, the growing silence
Easily falling down to fade



*Wake up!*
Comes an unwelcome startling voice
Eyes closed tight, tighter
Face grimacing a frown
*Wake up!* that voice insistent, repeats



Ascending the dark stairway of knowledge
Rubbing my inner mind’s eye
Flinging open the huge door to light
Asking an irritated *What?!*
About to fall teetering backward
Into the comforting quiet dark



*What?!*

*Write it down* he says

*Now?* comes the complaint:

*It’s the middle of the night!*



Aware it’s a losing battle
Dutifully returning to the waking world of dark
Reaching out, fingers fumbling for bedside notebook and pen
Scribbling on lines overrun from hands half asleep
Too large is the messy handwriting
Next morning tough to decipher



Words tumble down onto paper out of the inner dark
That vast library of knowledge, universal to all
Opening the heavy tall thick door
Written words enter, marching out onto now
The waking world bathed still in eerie moonlight



Fulfilled the bleary-eyed scribe’s task
Tumble backward to welcoming sleep
Covers pulled high over weary, oh, so tired, body
Descending the long narrow stairway



Down






Deeper







Arrived



The loving library of inner knowledge
Infinity to yet explore
Artifacts of knowing to drag home
And leave quietly on some welcoming doorstep




Denny Lyon
Copyright 22 June 2008
All rights reserved



*** THANKS for visiting, feel welcome to drop a comment or opinion, enjoy bookmarking this post on your favorite social site, a big shout out to awesome current subscribers – and if you are new to this blog, please subscribe in a reader or by email updates!

Pollen Storms poem

*** Views today: 15,130 - Poets are especially grateful when you read our poems so a huge double THANK YOU! :)






From Denny: It's been a tough three weeks with all the pollen in the air around here. The worst was the tiniest pollen you couldn't see but managed to infiltrate your brain like some Nature terrorist, smother your entire body and color your car and your life entirely yellow. :) It was slowing me down so much that this week's Libations Friday poem did not get out in time. In fact I actually wrote this poem a week later to plug back in here for this segment.

What's even more funny? As I was running this poem by my husband a few minutes ago for a critical ear, he had the back door open and in drifted - and floated lazily upon the warm air - all that dandelion fuzz as if to say, "You called us? We're available!" I think pollen "treats" are the new yard cats...

To keep your sense of humor during the pollen onslaught this season, read on... :)











Pollen Storms


Thinking about those Winds of Change,
Watching them swirl furiously in the air,
Pink and yellow stinging blizzards:

Beauty.







Everything was in the wind:
Drifting cherry blossom petals,
Dropping white dogwoods to flutter:

Seductively.








Those Winds of Change scratch our skin
They tear up our eyes, stinging, itching,
The pollen blizzards swing around corners:

Assailing.







Nature is on the move this Spring.
The glaciers melted rapidly, warming the earth,
The plants ramped up pollen production:

Gleefully.







Overwhelmed temporarily,
The Winds of Change will calm,
Washing Rain will drench the land:

Bliss.










Denny Lyon
Copyright 16 April 2010
All Rights Reserved


*** For more poetry, amusing to serious, and news and funny quotes, please visit The Social Poets!









Photo Credits


California wind surfing by kevincole @ flickr

Dandelion fuzz furball by Martino! @ flickr

Cherry blossoms by t_a_i_s @ flickr

I Heart Pollen by brookenovak @ flickr

Dogwood blooming by hlkljgk @ flickr

Afternoon rain by Sids1 @ flickr

Singing in the Rain by 1Happysnapper (photography) @ flickr

Spring storm in Buenos Aires by Irargerich @ flickr


*** THANKS for visiting, feel welcome to drop a comment or opinion, enjoy bookmarking this post on your favorite social site, a big shout out to awesome current subscribers – and if you are new to this blog, please subscribe in a reader or by email updates!