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How to handle rejection

Dear Creatrix,

One of the most beautiful things I’ve recently learned is that hate is only the other side of love.

Do you remember the rice experiment by Dr. Masaru Emoto?

He would say nice words to a glass of rice, spoke harshly to a second one, and said nothing to the last glass of rice.

The one he said nice words to fermented nicely, the one he spoke harsh words to turned black and the one that received no words had rotted.

His idea was to show that even when we receive harsh words, that is still nicer than being completely ignored.

And you can just check in with yourself and see how it feels to you when someone says something mean to you or when they ignore you altogether.

So when we realize this, we can also see that when someone hates someone else, that is still better than being indifferent.

Because they do care.

I think it was Teal Swan who said: “Hate is love+hurt,” or something like that.

And I think, when we see things that way, on a personal level as well as on a political level, this world makes a lot more sense.

Somebody who shoots their peers in a school, had love + hurt. People in Israel and Palestine have love + hurt. Even Putin has love + hurt.

It’s so easy to say someone is evil or doing horrible things, which leaves us feeling disempowered, but there’s always a reason, which shows us how we can intervene and therefore gives us our power back.

The Jews were persecuted everywhere, so they just wanted a place to call their own, where they would be safe, but they weren’t.

Putin loves Ukraine and Ukrainians so much that he wants them to be one, united with the Russians, one big family, but they rejected him.

It’s not an excuse, the same way it wouldn’t be OK, to do this on a personal level, e.g. to force someone to be with you who doesn’t want to be or to take somebody else’s house because you never had one.

It never works.

But we all need to heal.

And to turn hate into love, we can heal the hurt.

Everyone involved is suffering.

On a personal level, love+ hurt could actually look like: I hate maths.

Or is it really: I used to love maths until somebody said I wasn’t good at it, or I couldn’t figure things out fast enough the way the teacher explained it = love + hurt?

When you hate your ex, is it love + hurt?

You can take this game wherever you please, and it will show you that if somebody cares enough to hate someone, or something, it still means that they care, but they also hurt.

When I first learned about marketing, one of the most mind-blowing things I learned was that any attention, no matter if it’s positive or negative, is good attention.

This was at a time when the idea of somebody speaking or thinking badly of me scared me, and I really didn’t feel like I wanted any negative attention or would be able to handle it.

But I also saw the truth in it, and so I grew with this idea.

If the people speak about you, that’s always better, than if they don’t.

Trump used this very well.

Knowing this also allows us to act more wisely.

For example, being against something or someone still fuels them and gives them energy. I would never go to a demonstration against a party or group of people (because that is incredibly violent in itself), but only for something or a common goal.

I decide where my energy goes, and I wouldn’t want to fuel something I don’t want.

I think, you know me well enough by now, to expect a reason, for why I’m telling you this.

The reason is, that if we change, people will reject us for it.

Especially, when we’ve been around people who haven’t figured out their own sh** yet.

If we begin to set boundaries, if we start doing things that are good for us (maybe by not doing everything for them any more) people can get upset.

But when you can see that them being upset and maybe getting mad or angry at you, is love + hurt, you can ask them what hurts, if you feel stable enough yourself, and care about them enough.

Because most likely, what they are getting upset about, isn’t even you, it’s their own shadow, which they now see so wildly reflected in your new self.

You overcame limitations that they are still caught in.

So be gentle and kind (if that’s safe) and maybe, just maybe, you can still grow together (if you want to).

The choice is always yours.

But there’s another thing I’d like to discuss today, that also has to do with handling rejection well.