Your Income Depends on How Well You Cope with Rejection

Your Income Depends on How Well You Cope with Rejection To make money as a freelance writer you cant just play offense (networking, learning how to pitch, improving your craft, finding new markets, negotiating). You also have to play defense. And that means developing something researchers have identified as crucial to financial success:   a  higher threshold for failure. The eminent psychologist Dean Simonton, in his masterpiece On the Origins of Genius, investigated personality traits of highly successful creative types. What exactly made them successful? With all had talent, discipline, creativity and intelligence, why did some succeed and others fail? It turns out that the most successful had a high threshold for failure. They owned a coping strategy for rejection.   The unsuccessful tended to give up sooner, approaching their work with more fear and trepidation and, hence, could not raise their creativity to the level it needed to be. Whats your coping strategy for rejections? I realized I had to change after a series of painful rejections threatened to derail my writing career. So I studied up on the latest research on resiliency and interviewed a host of grit experts. The centerpiece of my coping strategy, and the one I teach fellow writers, revolves around purpose. Why do you write? If its to see your name in lights, impress people youve never met, and have your calls answered But if you write to help solve other peoples problems, shed light in darkened areas, and maybe ease someone’s burden with a little laughter, you have a purpose-driven response to rejection. The kind that leaves you empowered instead of gutted. My friend, Lisa McLeod, a thought leader in performance, likes to ask her CEO clients this question:   Does your company have a purpose or does it just sell stuff? Lisas research shows that if, for example, a pharmaceutical company operates strictly out of revenue goals, it will generate x number of sales. If it emphasizes purpose (i.e. selling a drug that saves the life of a young mother so she can see her daughter grow up) then it will generate significantly more revenue than x. Lisas work found that selling to achieve a noble purpose produces more income than selling to meet revenue goals. Why? Because you become more resilient, more hopeful, more resourceful, more determined to succeed with that loftier purpose. I applied that to my writing and in a matter of months my income exploded, my hit rate increased, and I was in high cotton as they say in the south. The rejections didnt stop (they never do), but now they dont paralyze me. Of course, operating out of your purpose rather than your ego isnt the only thing needed to develop a coping strategy, but its a great place to start.   They say the proof is in the pudding, but in this case, look in your wallet. A coping strategy for constant rejection is almost guaranteed to fatten it.