Self-rejection

Sometimes as we are scrolling mindlessly through Instagram, we can get our minds rocked. Yesterday I saw a post about inner bullying and self-rejection. I consider myself a fairly confident person and I assumed I didn’t deal with this. But then I read one of the questions he posed: “Don’t think the article is good enough? Publish it anyway.”

I am totally not a perfectionist, except for writing. I wrote for a magazine for over five years, and every single article was painstakingly time consuming. I would do a rough draft and a final draft. And then maybe another 10 revisions. Every word needed to be right.

It’s been the same with blogging. This whole “building the blog” thing is challenging. I can work really hard and not see results, and so I decide to stop writing. There…problem solved.

But when I realized this process was self-rejection, I had to stop and sit with it. If I give myself the first vote of rejection, then there can’t be others. He states the obvious result of this thinking: 100% of people that don’t apply for a job, do not get the job. This holds true across the board for every situation.

So today I am going to give myself a vote of confidence. Maybe I’ll “get the job” and maybe I won’t. But there is a 100% chance nothing will happen if I stop writing. Self-confidence isn’t about validation from others. It’s being willing to take a chance on yourself, be proud of yourself, accept yourself whether anyone else does or not.

So as I get back to writing, I’m going to remember why I write. Writing for me is a way of processing life, getting clarity in my thinking, and finding encouragement in whatever I am going through. Of course, I always hope that others can relate and be encouraged as well, but that can’t be my primary motivation. “Do it for yourself” is the advice I would give to anyone in similar situations.

What else might the inner bully be saying and what can we do to silence that noise?

Send the text, write the email, apply for the job, look into school, take the trip, set the boundary, have the hard conversation, end/begin the relationship, write the book, share the story, set up the Instagram account, or the second. We do whatever it is we have been wanting to do and don’t allow the fear of rejection hold us back.

Today, let’s be brave and believe in ourselves. Today, let’s not self-reject.

“A great deal of what we don’t accomplish is because we’ve allowed our inner bullies to convince us that the probability of us achieving some goal is very low.” Stevon Lewis, psychotherapist