Today someone important to me sent me a clip of an amazing man who worked hard at embracing rejection and has gone on to inspire may others with his message. You might even have read about him in the Huffington earlier in the year (I somehow missed the story!). You can watch it here.
It's half an hour long, but I promise you it will be one of the most thought provoking 30 minutes you could have this week. As I watched it really got me thinking about how so much of what we do is all about keeping feeling safe, and about how restricting that is to our personal happiness and success.
Without even thinking about how we are approaching life we often take the route that keeps us feeling secure and protected. Many people just keep things the way they are because they are familiar. Our brains like familiar - familiar feels safe. Of course, this is the default of our unconscious mind and overall if this strong safety mechanism weren't in place we would experience some real difficulties in staying alive! The trouble comes in that the protection instinct doesn't just get us quickly out of the way of a passing bus if it's about to hit us, but translates into the everyday fears that significantly hold us back.
I love the message of Jia Jiang in that it was only by embracing his fear of being rejected and by turning it around, that he reached such positive experiences and ultimately changes in his whole belief system. The lesson: That it is only by putting yourself right in amongst the 'Nos' that you open yourself up to the 'Yeses'. And it's in the yeses that the excitement of life resides.
Earlier this year the someone special who sent me that clip above, put themselves out there in a way that for them was wholly embracing what they thought was the certainty of rejection - really opening themselves up to the world of 'No'. It was an emotional risk but it paid off in ways that have led to incredible things happening. A wonderful opening up of experience and potential.
I see it with my coaching and therapeutic clients too - such an exciting journey to share, as together we work on how they can get to a place where they can feel comfortable with putting themselves out there, opening themselves up to the possibilities of life and becoming successful in being the best they can be. Because life is an amazing thing - when we fully participate, magic happens. When we fully take part we open up to a real and deep happiness.
So I invite you to participate a little more in life today then you might have done yesterday. What can you do to embrace rejection? How can you gain new experiences? What fears can you embrace? How might you reach for the stars? How would it be to open up to the possibility of collecting a whole trophy cabinet of Nos? Because in amongst them you might just get the most exciting 'Yes' you could ever imagine.