Positive or negative, always learn from your experiences. Experience comes at too high a price not to get something from the effort.
Now lest you think you’re above rejection, rest assured that I’m not just talking about the bozos you work with or the clowns in your extended family here. I mean you and me, too. Yeah, I know your kindergarten teacher told you you were special. And you are. You’re just not perfect.
I won’t lie, learning from rejection isn’t easy. You can’t cry sour grapes, claim “you can’t please all the people all the time,” or hide behind an excuse like “I don’t know what that Mr. Cucumber-Head‘s problem was today.”
When you want to learn, you need to take full responsibility for the bad outcome.
Most likely, Cuke-for-brains either didn’t understand what you were saying or didn’t see how he would benefit from it.
In those cases, rework your approach, and like Tommy Boy selling brake pads, keep at it until you can get your message across successfully.
There is also the possibility that Pickle Nose just didn’t like you.
Who knows, maybe he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t like doing business with people who compare his cranium to oblong fruit… vegetable… gourd… things.
A great way to get people to like you more is to find things to like about them. Or at least, stop putting yourself above them. We have a name for people who do that, and the name is not “leader,” “partner,” “boss,” or “vendor.” It’s “ass hole.”
(Want to guess what happens when you behave this way?)
Make yourself likable, keep at it, and the rest’ll come easy. Well, relatively speaking.
