How to Handle Rejection
And, paradoxically, get more enjoyment from life by pursuing more opportunities for rejection.
The ‘Neuroscience-based Tools’, ‘Lead to Win’ & the Le Monde Élégant social skills sections are companions for The Stoic Manual to enhance your overall health, vitality, stress resilience, discipline, focus, motivation, and refine your people skills, relationships & leadership skills for a distinguished life—by Dr. Antonius Veritas.
"Some things are in our control, and others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing."—Epictetus
White Nights—A Short Story (Wittier than Dostoyevsky)
I sent the message at 7:14 p.m. The three dots appeared. Then disappeared. Appeared again. Then—nothing. Silence. My bowels growled. I considered the possibilities. Perhaps she had been kidnapped. Perhaps her phone had exploded. Perhaps she had thrown herself from her building rather than engage in one more exhausting conversation with me.
But no, the explanation was much simpler. She was just not interested.
By 9:00 p.m., my heart had descended into my stomach, where it sat like an undigested meal. I refreshed the chat. Checked my WiFi. Turned my phone off and back on again—that would definitely increase my chances of receiving a reply. I told myself to be patient. Maybe she was busy. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe—
Then, at 9:46 p.m., a notification. A response!
I opened the message with the enthusiasm of a man being handed his newborn child, only to be met with one devastating word:
"Lol."
Ah.
I thought we had a connection.
Well.
Naturally, this was the beginning of my villain origin story.
I tried to be rational. Really, I did. But by midnight, I was lying in bed, phone gripped in my hand, staring at the ceiling with all the grace of a quadriplegic awaiting death. My brain insisted on playing an uncut director’s edition of our relationship, carefully replaying each interaction to pinpoint exactly where I had ruined everything. The possibilities were endless. Had I texted too much? Too little? Had my laugh been too enthusiastic? Had I made the fatal error of being myself?
Morning brought the answer. Not from her, of course—her silence was now a permanent fixture in my life—but from her Instagram story, where she had posted a blurry photo of cocktails, tagged at some rooftop bar.
I zoomed in. An arm. A male arm.
My stomach twisted into knots. I was suddenly a world-class detective, a forensic analyst of heartbreak. I checked timestamps, scoured her likes, cross-referenced previous posts for patterns. Was this a new man? An old one? A brother? Unlikely. Statistically speaking, no woman has ever gone on a glamorous rooftop date with her brother.
And so began my descent into the many stages of post-rejection self-sabotage.
Step one: Isolation.
I told myself I didn’t care. Besides, I had just known her for a few weeks. But my brain had other plans. It interpreted this as we must now dedicate every waking hour to thinking about her. I stopped responding to friends. They assumed I was busy. I was not. My schedule was entirely dedicated to overanalyzing a ghosted text message from every conceivable angle, as though solving it would earn me a PhD in Emotional Forensics.
Step two: The Digital Spiral.
Social media? Deleted. Texting? Muted. The only interaction I engaged with was from the most loyal and unwavering companion a man can have: pornography. A time-honored tradition among the romantically unsuccessful, it was a temporary escape, an illusion of control. Of course, I didn’t enjoy it—I simply needed it, much in the way a man lost at sea needs to drink seawater.
Step three: The Reluctant Return to Dating.
Eventually, I re-entered the field, armed with all the confidence of a man handing out his résumé to employers who are not hiring. But, dear reader, I kind of always went after girls that didn’t like me thinking they were just acting hard to get. Conversations fizzled out. First dates did not lead to second dates. The ones who stayed a little longer still left. At this point, I began to suspect that my romantic appeal was limited to women who were in the process of leaving me.
Dostoyevsky’s words echoed in my mind at vulnerable moments,
"My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man’s life?"
But, of course, rejection was not content with destroying my love life alone.
The fear crept into everything.
Starting a business? I thought about it. I even had ideas. Good ones. But the thought of putting myself out there—of working on something only to watch it be ignored—was paralyzing. What was the point? I could already imagine the failure.
Medical school networking events? Absolutely not. Nothing like standing alone in a crowded room, clutching a drink I didn’t want, pretending to text a friend who did not exist. Every time I tried to make conversation, my mind reminded me: You are deeply, profoundly uninteresting. And so I remained where I was most comfortable—on the outskirts of life, spectating.
The worst part wasn’t the loneliness. It was watching others live. People were falling in love, starting businesses, traveling, making friends with an ease I could not comprehend. They navigated life as though it were a well-written script. I, meanwhile, was improvising a deeply unfunny sitcom that had already been canceled.
And yet, in the rare, unguarded moments when I wasn’t numbing myself with distractions, a more horrifying thought crept in:
What if this wasn’t just a phase?
What if this was simply who I was?
Something had to change. But, unfortunately, I had grown quite comfortable in my misery, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to evict myself from it—until I came across a virile way of living that values rationality, self-respect, power, clarity, confidence, love, strength, and beauty.
Applying this philosophy to overcome my fear of rejection has helped me get my now beautiful, loving and sweet girlfriend, enjoy the company of the coolest friends, start this publication without the fear of sharing my ideas and vulnerability to tens of thousands of readers, sculpt a beautiful body, get great mentors for my medical career, and reach out to hundreds of clients for my ghostwriting business.
I’ve never felt more alive.
Join 20,000 other readers.
Previously,
Valentine’s Date Resource:
How to Handle Rejection
“We have the power to hold no opinion about a thing and to not let it upset our state of mind–for things have no natural power to shape our judgment.”—Marcus Aurelius
Below is a short practical essay on how to handle rejection.