Weekend Engagement - Handling Rejections

Good day to everyone, it's the weekend and hope all of you are doing well.

Today's prompt surrounds the topic of handling rejections.

Introduction
To me, at some point of life every will encounter rejections, it can occur in many ways such as rejection from work opportunity, desired school to attend or even rejected by girl of your dreams. Like what Tony Robbins say, "No one's life is smooth sailing, we all come into stormy weather."

My Encountered Rejections
So with what was mentioned above, I have my own fair share of rejections. How did I handle them? Let me share one particular rejection which really left a deep impression.

In this episode, I was leading a team of young adults including myself to Cambodia for a Youth Expedition Project, which is an Overseas Community Involvement Project. There is a requirement that every project team needs to be supported by a local Non-government Organization (NGO) for accountability and also to ensure the work/funding injected is put to good use.

It is not straightforward as my buddy and I did a pre trip in order to secure a NGO whom will be willing to work with us. In my mind, I came here to give help to the locals so it should be an easy task to find a partnering NGO.

Unfortunately, I was so wrong. My buddy and I visited many NGOs but to our horror, the NGOs actually rejected us because we were relatively nobody or wanted a bigger funding from us to collaborate. And now we are stranded, we had everything prepared but we lack the partnering NGO. It felt frustrating but being the leader of the team, I cannot give up.

I came back to Singapore after the pre trip and seek out help from my mentor. Little did I know, he told me that his classmate is from Cambodia and introduced me to his classmate, Sarou. After speaking to Sarou, things took a 180 degree turn. Sarou's dad is actually the principal of a school in their village and had been registered as an NGO because the school gives free education to the villagers. My jaw dropped, what seemed like a potential fail expedition was brought back to life with Sarou's help. Sarou touch base with his dad and gotten his dad's consent to partner us.

Everything from then on was amazing, from the multiple rejection from many NGO to finally able to embark on the trip. To make things even sweeter, Sarou joined the team and become the team's translator. The trip was fruitful for both the team and the local villagers. Everyone had fun, learned about one another's culture and made friends with one another. Sharing 2 photos taken in Cambodia (I have blurred the image in photoshop to protect the identity of people in the photo especially the village children)

My Reflection On The Rejection
That rejection from the NGOs did really made me lose hope and at a certain point, I was so close to telling my buddy to just disband the team. However, I persevered and seek help from my mentor whom introduced Sarou to me to make this trip happen. If I just gave up, the experience and friendship forged that happened during the trip would not have happened. And this is why, from this rejection experience, it tells me that giving up will rob us chance of having things turn for the better. So we should not let setbacks pull us down but to persevere and seek help from larger network whom might just lead you to the right person to overturn the situation.

Closing
I hope my sharing encourages you to not give up when things are just not looking good when being rejected. In the quote I mentioned about by Tony Robbins, there is a 2nd line, "But it is this adversity and our resilience that make us strong and successful."

Wishing you an awesome weekend and see you in my next post.