This weekend, exactly a year ago, I experienced a special kind of rejection. A rejection that was first of all, unexpected, and secondly very painful. This experience happened when I was in the middle of the most difficult grief after the loss of my 27 year marriage. It took me a good month to stand back up and that’s when I decided to face rejection head on. For the following months, I decided to do everything I could to get rejected. I wanted to feel the rejection. I wanted to know people. I needed to find my people. I wanted to know I was being judged. I was looking for people’s responses. I spoke, I reached out, I texted, I did YouTube videos, I did a podcast on Spotify, I felt everything I needed to feel to desensitize myself from the pain of rejection. During that time frame, I also listened to various books including Becoming Bullet Proof, Educated, Strength in Stillness, Read Your Mind, Detached, The Diary of a CEO, A changed Mind, and Rejection Proof. I also did a good amount of research on the topics of neuroscience and the laws of physics, especially on metaphysics and quantum psychology. I did all this because I needed to find answers to the pain and suffering I was experiencing.
According to Google, the law of metaphysics on human behavior “explores the fundamental nature of reality, asking whether our actions are the result of free will, biological determinism, or underlying conscious awareness. It provides the philosophical foundation for how we interpret mental states, agency, and what fundamentally drives human decisions.”
In physics, the Newton’s law of motion, inertia, explains that “a body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion. In human behavior, this explains the status quo bias. People will continue on their current path or maintain existing habits until a significant external force (e.g., a life event, a major incentive) disrupts the pattern.”
In quantum cognition, there are some core principles, one of them is “superposition.” Superposition suggests that a person’s mental state is usually ambiguous or unsettled until it is forced to pick a definite state. And because of superposition, it comes “interference.” In interference “an individual’s previously held beliefs can “interfere” with one another, sometimes leading to irrational or paradoxical choices.” And lastly it comes “entanglement.” In entanglement “a person is deeply conflicted, their internal belief states interact and influence their ultimate behavioral output in ways that defy classical cause-and-effect models.”
After doing all this work, I still don’t have the answers for pain and suffering, but I can see how day by day I found new meaning, new joy, new experiences, and the best part, I found my people. Rejection is painful, but being rejected means that I tried, and even if the outcome was not what I expected, it definitely brought a new perspective for my life.
