The Contrarian Mindset: Resolving the Fear of Rejection

In a world that praises visibility, success, and certainty, few things feel as personal—or as painful—as rejection. Whether it’s a job application, a creative project, or simply speaking your truth, rejection can stir up self-doubt, silence our voices, and leave us questioning our worth.

In this week’s Bite Size Fridays episode of It’s an Inside Job, we explore how to build rejection resilience through the story of Aisha—a talented young writer who feared that her voice, rooted in her cultural heritage, might not be welcome in the publishing world. When rejections came, they felt deeply personal. But through the contrarian mindset, she shifted her lens and transformed rejection into growth, clarity, and creative freedom.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How to separate your identity from outcomes like rejection or criticism
• Practical tools to reframe rejection as information—not judgment
• Why your self-worth must be rooted internally, not externally
• How community and connection protect you from isolation and shame
• How perfectionism masks fear—and what to ask instead to unlock creativity
• Ways to turn obstacles into growth opportunities, not emotional setbacks

This episode is especially helpful if you’re navigating creative risks, pitching ideas, applying for jobs, or sharing your voice in any vulnerable way.

Contrarian Strategies from This Episode

• Focus on reality, not emotional reality
  Rejection hurts, but the story we add to it often stings more. Ask: What actually happened—and what am I making it mean?
• Practice internal self-worth
  Don’t tie your value to yes or no. Anchor it in your effort, honesty, and willingness to show up.
• Build social bridges
  Rejection thrives in silence. Connection—especially with others who’ve been there—dissolves its grip.
• Progress over perfection
  Perfectionism is fear in disguise. Replace “Is this perfect?” with “Is this better than yesterday?”
• See rejection as a teacher
  Every “no” contains insight. Look for patterns. Learn. Adjust. Keep going stronger.

Perfect for You If You’re Asking:

• How do I bounce back after being turned down or dismissed?
• Why does rejection feel so personal—and how do I stop it from defining me?
• What can I do when my self-confidence takes a hit?
• How do I keep creating when the world doesn’t seem to notice or care?

Additional Resources

This is Part 10 of our 15-part Contrarian Mindset series—helping you shift your perspective and strengthen your inner core through life’s challenges.

Catch up on previous episodes here:

1. Facing the Fear of Vulnerability
2. Breaking Free from Perfectionism
3. Moving Through Imposter Syndrome
4. Overcoming the Fear of Not Being Good Enough
5. Replacing Reactivity with Response
6. Embracing Change Instead of Resisting It
7. The Fear of Deviating from the Known Path
8. Finding Peace with the Path You’ve Chosen (FOMO)
9. The Fear of No Keeping Up

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Podcast
• 1:42 Practical Tips for Everyday Challenges

Transcript

0:00

Music. Well, welcome to Bite Size Fridays on It's an Inside Job, your weekly dose of resilience and perspective to carry you into the weekend. In our last series, we focused on the 12 core skills of the contrarian mindsets, tools to build real, lasting resilience. But mindset isn't just about what we grow, it's also about what we face. This series dives into the fears and mental habits that quietly hold us back, like perfectionism, imposter syndrome, or the fear of conflict and failure. Most advice teaches you how to sidestep these fears. Well, this series, it helps you meet them head on, one mindset at a time, one breakthrough at a time. Music. Well, this week on Bite Size Fridays, we are going to apply the contrarian mindset to the fear of rejection. Now, have you ever held back from putting yourself out there? Whether it's your ideas, your creativity, or your voice, because you were afraid of being rejected. Well, today I want to share a story about Aisha. She's a passionate, talented young writer who came face-to-face with that fear. Through her journey, we'll explore how we can separate our identity from rejection and why embracing authenticity over chasing approval, well, how it can change the way we live, lead, and create. Now, let's come back to Aisha. She had always been drawn to telling stories rooted in her cultural heritage. Writing for her, well, it wasn't just about fiction. It was personal. It was how she made sense of her world and how she hoped to connect with others. But the more personal her writing became, the more vulnerable she felt. The stakes were higher. This wasn't just about rejection ads from publishers. This was about the fear that her culture, that her identity, and that her voice weren't welcome. She had just completed a manuscript, a novel that wove together her family's traditions, her own upbringing, and the voice that was undeniably hers. She began submitting it to publishers. And then came the silence, or worse, the rejection. Each note to her felt like it wasn't just about the book. It felt like it was a personal dismissal, a quiet confirmation of the voice in her head that whispered, maybe your story doesn't matter. When Aisha and I began working together, that was the weight she carried into every session. She just wasn't battling the gatekeepers of the literary world. She was fighting her own growing belief that her work, and maybe even she herself, didn't belong. We started by addressing the emotional storm tide to each rejection, the gut punch, that self-doubt, the voice of shame that we've all heard. One of the first shifts we worked on was separating the emotional reality from the actual reality. Her emotional reality told her, they're rejecting me. But the actual reality was far simpler. The manuscript hadn't found the right fit yet. That difference may seem subtle, but for Aisha, it was a turning point. She started to understand that rejection wasn't a statement of worth. It was just information, feedback, a mismatch, not a verdict. So now I want to shift the conversation to talking about the specific skills Aisha and I worked on of the contrarian mindset to battle that fear of rejection. And so let's dive into the first one. Strategy one, focusing on reality and not emotional reality. This is one of the hardest things to do in the moment, especially when the sting of rejection hits. Most of us just don't feel rejected. We interpret it. We create a story around it. And that narrative often sounds like, well, you know what? I'm not good enough. They don't want people like me. I'll never make it. But the contrarian mindset invites us to pause. And instead of reacting, observe. To separate emotional reality from the actual reality. And for Aisha, the emotional reality screamed that she was being personally rejected, that her manuscript being turned down meant her voice was unwelcome. But the actual reality, simply a publisher said no, that's it. No to the manuscript at this time for their reasons, which may have had nothing to do with her or her talent. So we worked on this reframe. So instead of saying, I'm not good enough, It's, this wasn't the right fit, yet. That one word, yet, is subtle, but powerful. It leaves the door open. It creates room to grow, instead of shutting everything down. When Aisha began to use the word intentionally, she stopped seeing rejection as the end of the story, and started seeing it as part of the plot. So whenever she felt rejected, she started asking herself, what actually happened? And what story am I adding on top of it? Strategy two, practicing self-worth. One of the most damaging patterns that rejection can trigger is tying our self-worth to outcomes. For Aisha, her identity as a writer, her confidence, her self-respect was tied to one thing, being published. If she got a yes, well, she felt validated. If she got a no, well, she felt like a fraud. And that's a dangerous loop because no matter how talented you are, rejection is inevitable and if your worth is riding shotgun with your achievements, you're going to be in for an emotional roller coaster. So we began to do the deeper work, separating who she is from what she creates. Aisha had to come back to the core truth that her value wasn't based on external validation. It was based on the fact that she had something meaningful to say and the courage to say it. She started anchoring her self-worth in her effort, not just her outcomes, her honesty, not just her successes. She started asking herself, and quite often, if I stripped away all the titles, all the recognition, all the praise, what's still true about me? And then she realized each time she has that question that's where my true real worth lives. Strategy three, building social bridges. When we feel rejected, the instinct is often to withdraw. Aisha did exactly that. She stopped sending work to friends. She avoided writing groups. She hesitated to talk to mentors. She isolated herself. And in doing so, the rejection became louder and more believable. That's what rejection does. It thrives in silence. It amplifies in isolation. So I intentionally challenged that tendency. I encouraged her to reach out, to reconnect, not to ask for validation, but to find community. She started having coffee with other writers. She joined an online forum where people shared their rejections as patches of honor. She realized she wasn't the only one receiving no. In fact, some of the authors she admired most and being rejected dozens if not scores of times before finding the right match. That insight, that feedback, well that changed everything. She began to see rejection not as a failure but as a shared experience. Strategy form, focus on progress and not perfection. Ayesha's writing process used to be defined by a single word, perfect. Every sentence had to land. Every page had to shine. She'd spend hours polishing one paragraph, terrified it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't be good enough. But perfectionism, at its core, is a defense mechanism. It's fear. It's fear trying to protect us from rejection, to protect us from shame and judgment. So she began to shift that mindset. instead of asking is this perfect she started asking is this better than yesterday instead of seeing a rejected manuscript as a failure she began to see it as a stepping stone every draft every revision every risk while all of it was part of her evolution as a writer she celebrated moments and movements and not mastery and that made space for creativity again so anytime we Moving forward where she felt that perfectionism kicking in, she would simply switch to a question. What does progress look like today? And let that be enough. Strategy 5. Embracing obstacles as opportunities. Over time, Ayesha began to see rejection not as a door closing, but as a teacher showing up. She started reading rejection letters more closely, extracting insights when feedback was offered. She noticed patterns. Maybe her synopsis needed more punch. Maybe the opening chapters needed more tension. Maybe she hadn't pitched to the right genre. She also reflected personally was she being too cautious in her writing was she holding back emotionally rejection instead of being a brick wall became a mirror it gave her direction it helped her grow stronger clear and braver and that's what transformed her most not just in her career but in how she saw herself how she related to herself the narrative that would pass through her head. And she would consistently ask herself two questions. What if rejection isn't something to fear, but something to learn from? What lesson might be hiding inside my latest no, in my latest rejection? So where does that leave us? Well, Aisha's story isn't just about writing. It's about something all of us wrestle with, whether we're leaders, creators, entrepreneurs, or just people trying to live honestly in a complicated world. We all want to be seen. We all want to be heard. We all want to be accepted. And when we're not, when we're met with silence, criticism, or outright rejection, well, it's easy to start questioning everything. Am I enough? Was I wrong to try? Should I even keep going? What's the point? What's the point? But what Ayesha discovered, and what I hope resonates with you, is this. Rejection is not a reflection of your worth. It's feedback from a moment in time. It's a mismatch, not a moral judgment. And more often than not, it has more to do with timing and context or someone else's lens than it does with your value. When we start seeing rejection through a contrarian lens, we free ourselves. We stop letting external outcomes dictate our internal stability. And instead, we start to anchor in what actually matters. Are we telling the truth? Our truth? Are we showing up with integrity? Are we growing even when it's uncomfortable? And simply said, well, that's resilience. It's not about becoming rejection proof. It's about becoming rejection resilient. So as you move through your own life, Whether you're pitching an idea, leading a team, applying for a job, or expressing something close to your heart, I want to offer you three questions. Number one, what story am I telling myself about this rejection? And is that story actually true? Question two, where's my worth coming from today? Is it tied to someone else's opinion? Or to the fact that I'm brave enough to keep showing up? And question three, who can I connect with right now so I don't have to walk this road alone? Because here's the truth. Your story, your voice, your experience, it bloody well matters. Even when it's not validated right away. Even when the outcome feels disappointing. Even when it's hard and difficult. So let rejection be part of your story, but not the author of it. Well i hope you found this episode of some use and if you know someone else who you think it could benefit please share with them and i'd also like to know how you personally deal with rejection because i would like to collect those thoughts and share them in some future episode, if you're curious to know how to build a contrarian mindset for greater resilience patience, fortitude, tenacity, psychological strength, and a sense of well-being, or you'll find the links to the other episodes in this series in the show notes. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational episodes on Monday, and the latest Bite Sites episode on Friday. And have yourself a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend. No. Music.