Areas › Worry and anxiety › Living with uncertainty
A no is usually information about fit rather than a report on your worth. Some of them have to happen before you can tell which places are right for you.
This is a real reframe rather than a comforting one, because a rejection does carry usable information: about what they were after, about what you actually want, about whether you would have been happy there. Ask what it told you and write the answer down. Done consistently it makes a run of them survivable, which matters, since trying things out is how this stage of life works and trying things out means being turned down.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you (Quran 2:216). That leaves room for the door that closed to have been the useful one.
كُتِبَ عَلَيۡكُمُ ٱلۡقِتَالُ وَهُوَ كُرۡهࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تَكۡرَهُواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ خَيۡرࣱ لَّكُمۡۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تُحِبُّواْ شَيۡـࣰٔ ا وَهُوَ شَرࣱّ لَّكُمۡۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعۡلَمُ وَأَنتُمۡ لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not.’
Qur’an 2:216read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of 114 studies found that rumination, avoidance and pushing feelings away had the strongest links with anxiety and depression, while acceptance, reappraisal and problem solving were more weakly protective. So what you do with a disappointment matters more than how hard it hits, and going over it endlessly keeps the worst company. The protective side of that picture was weaker than the harmful side, so treat reframing as a help rather than a cure.
Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
An outcome you can learn something from is much easier to carry than one you have to take personally.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
An exam is a task with requirements. It is not a ruling on whether you are capable, however much it feels like one while you are sitting inside it.
When something feels unbearable to risk, follow it downwards. If that did happen, what would it mean, and what would happen after that?
Listen for the condition you have attached to acting: I will apply once I know I will get it, I will go once I know I will like it. If that condition could never actually be met, it is not caution, it is a door you have quietly locked.