Hi friends, sorry for being MIA a bit too long. I hope you are healthy and well during this pandemic. I know epidemics can be stressful for some people. There’s a lot of fear and anxiety involved. But our concern helps us cope, while uncomfortable – it can be a good thing right now, of course, if we manage it well. Focus on what you can control instead of what you cannot control. We can maintain our positive attitude, kindness, grace and limiting the news and social media.

Today I want to talk about “rejection.” That word used to give me a lot of anxiety cause I hate rejection. Through 8 years of my career, I went through a lot of rejections. Why am I mentioning this all of a sudden? Because a lot of people only look through the good side of my life, which is my social media, and think that my life journey is comfortable. There are a lot of things that I don’t show on social media, not because I don’t want to, but because it is a limited platform.

You may see that I work with different brands and go to fashion weeks frequently. But behind that journey, I got rejected by a lot of brands too. There’s a lot of time when we had our final meeting; I poured out my ideas but then suddenly, I open my Instagram and see that the brand decided to go with another person. The other time I went to New York for fashion week, I’m excited to watch this brand for the first time. I went for a fitting, and I bought their bag to wear to the show; I spent so much time, energy, and money to make everything work. But suddenly, a day before the show I received a text saying that I’m not able to attend the show. My world shattered in just a second. But that is how the industry works. Sometimes the adult life is full of uncertainty, and we have to accept that. Yes, sure, the PIC of the brand is not handling this professionally, but there’s also no use to blame things that we cannot control. If you are wondering why it happened, I couldn’t give you a definite answer. But there are many possibilities such as; they decided to give my seat to someone more famous or influential, the PIC had a miscommunication with the headquarter office, or they suddenly don’t like me.

Rejection’s number one goal is to reveal our insecurities. It hurts. It made me feel that I wasn’t good enough for someone or something, leading to many other negative thoughts or feelings about myself, and I started to question my self-worth. Throughout that journey, I decided to learn how to control that and not let rejection win. You know they say the one who wins is the one you feed the most? Are we feeding our insecurities, or are we feeding our grace and confidence?

Right now, you might be going through a romantic rejection, social rejection, career rejection, or family rejection. Whatever that is, I know rejection hurts because we put a lot of energy into believing that things are supposed to go a certain way. Or you think that one thing you want is necessary to make you happy. But having that mindset can cut us off from other unexpected or exciting possibilities. Take time to cool off, let yourself feel all the emotions, process them with someone you trust, and focus on your strength to build your self-esteem.