By Aaron Lloyd Castillo-White
Rejection is a natural part of life, particularly in the realm of writing, advancing in one’s career, or fellowship applications. Whether it’s a rejection for a job or a fellowship program passing on your application, facing rejection can be disheartening.
Simply telling someone to persevere or be tough offers the same moral equivalent of the “hang in there” poster of the 80s- an empty gesture. And while rejection is never fun, it offers many opportunities for learning and growing, in your applications and personal growth.
Framing Rejection
It’s essential, ultimately, to understand that rejection is not a sign of any personal failure or dislike of you or your work but rather an opportunity for growth. When you’re able to distance yourself or depersonalize rejection, it becomes easier to accept it and move on.
In Los Angeles, there’s a prestigious fellowship program in the Jewish community for rising leaders interested in civic engagement and the possibility of entering politics called the Rautenberg New Leaders Project, or NLP for short. This project, one of several leadership development projects of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, is fairly competitive. I applied to the program and responded to the questions about what I thought the program was looking for. Ultimately, I was rejected. Even though I might have initially felt angry or sad, embracing rejection allowed me to learn from my mistakes.
Building Resilience – Building Community
Perseverance in the face of rejection builds resilience, a crucial trait for success in any field. And yes, it can often be difficult to face rejections, but there are a few steps you can take to move forward.
- Focus on your strengths and revisit your application.
- Ask for feedback and reach out to alumni of the fellowship program
- In the short term, reward yourself. Do something you enjoy to get your mind off the rejection.
- Celebrate small successes where you find them, even if the final result is unsuccessful.
After being rejected, I proactively sought feedback from the program staff to pinpoint areas for improvement and refine my approach. Instead of allowing rejection to deter me, I used it as fuel to intensify my efforts and approach my goals with greater strategic insight.
In my second year of applying to the NLP program, I reached out to current cohort members and alumni, soliciting their perspectives on the program and requesting their assistance in reviewing my application. To my surprise, many of them not only responded promptly but also generously offered their feedback, time, and insights.
Incorporating their feedback, I revised my application to emphasize how I envisioned contributing to my community following the fellowship rather than focusing solely on how it could benefit me. Despite these improvements, my application was rejected once again. Undeterred, I persisted, exploring new avenues to refine my approach and enhance my chances of success.
Building resilience enables individuals to bounce back more swiftly from setbacks, explore alternative strategies to overcome challenges, and maintain an unwavering focus on their long-term goals. Simply put, it’s about keeping sight of the prize and persevering despite the obstacles encountered along the way.
While everyone’s experience is different, it is worth recounting one example of how resilience led to success. Frank Herbert, whose now famous Dune series is once again capturing a generation of viewers’ imaginations. It didn’t start out that way. Herbert, undaunted by rejection, received 22 of them before being published by a firm best known for its car manuals. And speaking of vehicles, Robert Pirsig’s now classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times!
Success In Maintaining Persistence
Persistence is key to achieving your goals. In the face of rejection, it’s important to stay committed to your aspirations. It is in persistence that you find and develop the tools for long-term success in your career or other endeavors.
While it can be difficult, especially when you’re just getting started, trust yourself and remember to lean into your support network, friends, and family.
Ahead of my third year applying to the Rautenberg New Leaders Project, I reached out to programmatic staff and asked if I could speak with them about what they were looking for. I also mobilized the connections I had built from alumni of the program for a reference. And finally, through perseverance, I found success.
I hadn’t realized that I was missing a key component of my application, myself. Like many others, I have a hard time including or owning the work I actively do in my community. I see myself as part of a community, and I am. However, in applications, whether for a fellowship or a job, reviewers want to see more of who you are through your work.
In my case, it was a matter of learning not just to embrace rejection but to work to rid myself of impostor syndrome, doubting my skills, experience, and own leadership. In both these matters, it’s an ongoing battle but one that gets easier with time.
Persevering through rejection is an opportunity to try again, to find alternate means to get to your goal, and above all, to learn how to grow from discomfort. By embracing rejection as a natural part of the process and building resilience, you can turn any setbacks or rejections into opportunities to build community and grow
toward success in your career and fellowship pursuits.
So when or if you find yourself facing rejection, take a break, go for a walk, or reward yourself with something small. And after giving it a little thought and a little time, reach out, reframe, and find your way to your next application being a success.
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Aaron Lloyd Castillo-White is a Los Angeles-based consultant and Founding Executive Director of Kultur Mercado, a nonprofit exploring our shared cultural connections. He has worked in policy, fundraising, and programming across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Aaron holds bachelor’s degrees in Politics and Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz and a Master’s in Environmental Policy from Tel Aviv University. In his free time, he can be found translating from Yiddish or Spanish, making art with his wife or going out with friends at a park or trail.
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