After a Rejection You Did Not Expect
For the hours after a no you were not braced for, from a job, an application or a person. It helps you get through the first evening, keep the no from spreading into a verdict on you, and work out what, if anything, to do next.
Setbacks · Self-Esteem · Resilience · 8 items · whenever you need it
The checklist
- Say the sentence plainly to yourself once — vague bad news keeps growing in the dark.
- Hold off replying for a day — the first draft is written by the sting.
- Tell one person the same evening — a no kept private gets bigger overnight.
- Write what this no is actually about — one decision by one person is not a verdict on you.
- Name one thing you did well regardless — the outcome does not grade the effort.
- Eat and sleep as normally as you can manage — a bad night makes tomorrow's version worse.
- Ask for feedback once, then let it be — one ask is useful, three is picking at it.
- Pick the next small step for later in the week — not tonight, and not nothing.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it whenever you need it, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.