Jennie was tall, slim, good-looking, had lovely, long hair and was articulate and charming. So I just could not understand it when she withdrew from a beauty pageant being organised by our club. It was a contest I thought she would win hands down. ”Because I may not win,” she said when I asked her why, she was withdrawing. “I just couldn’t face that failure, that rejection.” I was taken aback. Had she not heard the proverb about failure being the stepping stone to success? And why had she used the word rejection? ”Failure means rejection. For instance, if a participant isn’t crowned beauty queen, it means that the judges have rejected that person,” she explained. “And rejection is far too painful to tolerate! Yes, rejection is painful and it does deal an often unbearable blow to our self-esteem. We remember each small phen375 rejection for years – often all through our lives. But, as it did in Jennie’s case, fear of rejection often prevents us from taking chances and this could well prevent us from achieving our full potential. But both failure and rejection need not traumatise us, if we know how to deal with them. They can be, if handled correctly, blessings in disguise and can lead us to successes we could have never achieved otherwise. For this to happen, we have to learn to cope with failure and rejection. This requires some introspection and will-power, but it is really something all of us can do.Failure and rejection Jennie had equated failure with rejection. But rejection is actually something personal while failure is not. Rejection is painful because we take it personally, but failure need not be painful if we don’t take it personally.