Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
dealing with 'rejection'
questZENer
Veteran
I'm currently involved in a job search. It's likely I will not get the job. I'm gearing myself up for disappointing news. However, in general, I'm wondering how others--my beloved forum members--deal with rejection and disappointment.
I'm currently cultivating the ideas:
-"same taste" and "everyday is same day"
-treat everything as your teacher
-no fruits for effort (i.e., abandon hope)
Are there others?
Peace as always
I'm currently cultivating the ideas:
-"same taste" and "everyday is same day"
-treat everything as your teacher
-no fruits for effort (i.e., abandon hope)
Are there others?
Peace as always
0
Comments
So, basically I try to see it not personal, but rather look at it this way, while trying to find someone or something else who accept what I have to offer, or where i can apply my skills.
Palzang
Remember why your friends love you, remember how that beautiful singing bird is totally content rigth there near you, remember how you bring a smile to a lovely face, inspire some without even knowing it, . . .
And it alweays helps to remmeber that everyone else is feeling the same way.
Good luck getting the best match.
Greetings after many moons, LM! You also remind me that, despite the ego/body blows, getting a good match is, in fact, the goal. This had escaped my attention.
In addition, you've reminded me not to take it all so SERIOUSLY. Reality goes on regardless of my delusion; my karma deals me what I need.
Smiles to you, LM. Thanks for the gentle shove to stop feeling sorry for myself.
Peace,
Well, just curious as to what you mean by "same taste". While everything has the qualities of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, & non-substantiality, I would still say that things have different tastes. Some things make us feel pleasant, others unpleasant & still others stimulate a response of indifference. I think that cultivating an attitude that everything is the same can turn into a sort of sickness (as they say in Zen). Honestly, I think this 'no picking, no choosing' thing (compliments of the third patriarch) taken too far by many practitioners & seems to actively cultivate a sort of numbness. I've been there & done that, and frankly it sucks. I'd rather just deal with the hopes, the fears, the elation & the dissapointment as they come at this point. This reminds me of a brief Zen story that I heard a while back. I don't remember the details, but I do remember the point being conveyed. Anyway, here goes:
Took me awhile to really get this one, but the point to me is that we don't bother choosing how we feel about things. We just notice it, see where the feeling comes from & move on to the next one. Trying to suppress our responses actually creates more karma. All of those feelings are rooted in past causes & there is only a small degree to which we can hope to avoid them (as we cannot change the past). For me, the key has been noting the amount of investment I put into these negative experiences. Also, when I have this attitude that I'm not allowed (or supposed) to be disappointed or upset, I tend to berate myself for caring about outcomes & my own state of affairs. While, ultimately, we must move beyond such concerns, this attitude of 'looking down upon' such desires is itself unwholesome as it does not lead to the end of suffering and is (therefore) straying from the eightfold path.
Additionally, I would prefer to consider your approach of cultivating 'no fruits for the effort' as abandoning expectations of all sorts, not just hope. I say this because it is easy to cultivate a negative, hopeless, (and even less beneficial) attitude of self-denial. This may not apply to you at all, but I feel it is important to be aware of.
Anyway, i'm not discouraging the approach you have listed, but I am concerned that you might take some of the wrong turns I have made (and I have seen others make). It is all too easy, imo, to turn skillful means into yet another habitual, karma-creating activity.
Regardless, best wishes in your pursuit of employment.
metta
_/\_
As for abandoning hope, that also is related to the same idea. When you have hope (or no hope, same thing), then you are attached to the goal. So the correct view is to abandon all hope and simply live in the moment.
Palzang
metta
_/\_
Palzang
First, let me say what a loving, generous post! I really appreciate your thoughtfulness.
For me and my practice, cultivating "everyday is the same day" (also "same taste") helps me to remember: I'm alive now. Now is real, this moment. For me, everyday is the same day is a reminder exactly for what you say: notice and move on. I coined this saying to help remember not to get too caught up in the dramas inside my head. As for numbness, I've experienced that as well. For me, that numbness is cyclical. I work from home. I'm an academic. I do the same tasks over and over and I don't have a lot of contact with other people, day after day, week after week. The idea of "same day" helps me to notice, expand, and appreciate the differences of my daily life.
QUOTE=not1not2]For me, the key has been noting the amount of investment I put into these negative experiences.[/QUOTE]
Point noted. I'll have to think about this one a little.
My saying used to be "Abandon hope--it's the only chance we have to live". As both you and Palzang-la unpacked this, it does have to do with "no fruits", but more radical. Hope stands in for all the future, and thus, un-real, expectations. I understand 'hope' to be equivalent to 'promise of fruition'. By "abandoning hope", I am reminded to live for now, to give without expectation to receive, to love without condition of being loved, etc. It sounds quite severe, but "abandon hope" has helped me be a much more hopeful person. Ironic, eh?
And for this I thank you, many times for your thoughtfulness.
The job I applied for is a tenure track position at a local university in the same city where my partner and I live. She's just received her job in the last year and she really loves her position. This is a great opportunity for two academics to live in the same city yet work at different universities, a very difficult thing to manage in this day and age. The stakes feel very high. If this job doesn't come through, it's likely that next year I'll have to do a full job search country-wide, which may mean moving, potentially living apart, taking a much less attractive job in the same city, etc, etc.
I must remind myself that these thoughts are not real, but projections of hopes, and especially fears. Come back to now, this moment, this breath.
BTW: I could use a good 'whack upside my head'. Anybody willing to help me outt?
Peace,
Palzang
Usually I use the one-word mantra: Meh.
Didn't get the job? Meh.
Just kidding. :buck:
With girls for example, in my dating days I remember getting rejected all the time, but looking back, most of them really weren't my type afterall. I was just lonely.
I suppose with jobs it's kind of similar. If you didn't get the, then you probably weren't the right fit. Where I work now, I applied her 5 years ago, 3 years ago, and didn't get a job. This time around, I was more experienced, and was the right kind of fit.
It'll work out one way or another.
I thought I'd mention again something I posted on another thread. Whether good, bad, wonderful, catastrophic, it's all really "No big deal", right? Whenever I seem to get caught up in the world and all it's dramas and silliness, I think of running to a wise teacher like Chogyam Trungpa and telling him all about my hopes and fears and what I've been going through lately and then I picture him smiling peacefully and saying "But remember, no big deal, eh?"
yea you're right brigid, but its hard to realise this at the time, thats the key i guess first looking at urself and realising that your thoughts are problem. For me, i can usually do this, but sometimes its hard you know.
Yes, that would be my 'luck' too!
When you're up to your armpits in alligators, it is often hard to remember that you set out to drain the swamp.
Peace,