CHAPTER 6 WHAT IF I’M REJECTED?
The Paradox of Caring
My son Caleb is an avid Goodwill shopper. He’ll visit our Goodwill several times a month, and on most of our family trips his stop of choice will be the local Goodwill. I confess that I don’t have the patience to thumb through rack after rack of clothing to find a diamond-in-the-rough shirt like he does. Throughout high school, Caleb developed his own unique and quirky style. Most of the time, his style didn’t make sense to me, so I’d buy him something from Old Navy—only to see it sit in his closet with the tags still attached.
For many years, I’d think, You’re wearing that? Some days I’d even voice it—only to be met with the teenager response of, “Uh, why? Is there a problem?” I worried that he wouldn’t fit in or he’d be made fun of for clothing choices I didn’t understand.
Then, at senior awards night, Caleb was voted “Best Dressed Male” by his entire class. Caleb’s style had evolved, and others would comment about how he dressed so cool. Still, the award surprised me! And then I thought about it—Caleb cared more about his own style than he did about fitting in and dressing in the “acceptable” style, and as a result, he stood out. He was seen in a world of sameness. When Caleb was younger, kids would tease him, but that didn’t make him pull the jeans from Old Navy out of the closet and rip off the tags. He kept following his heart, his style, and on that muggy May evening, his authenticity was rewarded.
I wouldn’t have had the guts to be as bold as Caleb when I was in high school. I either fit in, or I stood out and was picked on, which meant I spent more time caring about the opinions of others instead of caring about figuring myself out. Caring became linear, black and white, either-or, and there wasn’t much wiggle room.
Caring requires both-and thinking. Both-and thinking is a newer philosophical approach to decision-making that isn’t rooted in either-or determinations (also known as dualistic thinking). Either-or thinking is binary and results in two outcomes. Either you win or you lose. Either you succeed or you fail. Either you have friends or you are alone. Either I’m right and you’re wrong or you’re right and I’m wrong. Either you wear the trendy clothes or you’re picked on.
By design, either-or thinking has been essential to the decision-making that has led to many of the technological, medical, and industrial advances in our lives. There are also times when dualistic thinking is critical—either you stop at the stop sign and prevent an accident or you blow right through and cause an accident.
This thinking is rooted in choosing one or the other—there is no in-between. Back when I decided I wanted to go all in on my life, I knew I needed to make a strong, unbreakable decision, one that I couldn’t back out of. Either-or thinking is what it looks like to go all in on your life. You care so much about you that you either pursue this or you don’t—no middle ground. You don’t cut corners and give yourself a pass. Either you set and complete goals or you don’t.
Even with all the benefits of either-or thinking, it can limit our ability to see the nuances in life, the spaces in between, especially in the creative and entrepreneurial processes. A decision needs to be made, but there also needs to be room to adjust the decision or see new possibilities. I call this the paradox of caring.
Aerospace engineer Jeffrey Bolognese’s description of the paradox of light can inform our approach to caring:
Up until the beginning of the 20th century, science held an either/or understanding of the nature of light. Some scientists believed light was a particle because it demonstrated characteristics of a particle. Others said light must be a wave, because it demonstrated the characteristics of a wave. Experiments could be conducted that demonstrated either of those views. However, neither of those theories alone could fully explain the behavior of light. It took the radical notion that light could be both a wave and a particle for a more complete understanding.
That both/and view not only gave us insight into light, but opened up the study of quantum physics. And, of course, without quantum physics you wouldn’t have that computer or smart phone you’re using right now to read this fine article.
In that case, both/and thinking allowed for a change in our fundamental understanding of the universe. While most of our decisions don’t have such ramifications, when we apply both/and thinking to our decision-making process, we open up many more possibilities.8
This both-and approach to how much we care about something demonstrates the paradox of caring—you need to both care about your life, your heart, the hard things and not so care so much about what others think. You can both care about being a good human and not care if others see you as a good human. You can both care about going all in on your life and not care if others question your life choices.
I’m not using the concept of “not caring” as meaning that you can be a jerk and cut someone off on the way to church or the grocery store. Not caring means that you refuse to allow someone else’s actions or words to dictate your response or influence your identity. If someone cuts you off, you choose to not take it personally and you also don’t ride their tail in a fit of road rage (chances are, that guy will be waved into the parking spot next to you at church (or buying bananas next to you at Kroger). Not caring means you don’t allow another’s external choices to define your internal worth. The guy who cut you off might have had a valid reason (or maybe not), but you don’t have to care enough to create a hypothetical reason to allow that experience to trickle into the rest of your day or to be a commentary on your identity.
The person in the car doesn’t have the authority to override your identity. However, when our caring paradox is out of balance, those outside acts can make us vulnerable to accepting the actions (or words) of others as truth about ourselves. Even though people teased Caleb for years about his Goodwill style, he didn’t allow their words to chip away at his identity.
Caring is a both-and situation—with a need to both care deeply and also care less. See the paradox? You need to both care enough to continue to say yes to yourself, which might make waves, and also to not care about what people might be saying about said waves.
The waves, by the way, aren’t a negative outcome of change. They’re just the visible outcome. People talk about whatever is happening (or about you) because it’s something they see, which can make them wonder, Do I need to make waves? or Why is my life the way it is? And sometimes, after a while, the person who created the waves ends up being seen and rewarded for not caring that they made the waves. I know because there is a little gold plastic statue in my home honoring my best-dressed boy, who didn’t care if he made waves and looked different.
Have you seen the episode Friends where Rachel and Phoebe decide to start running in Central Park? Rachel runs how I hope I run—composed, with a good stride, and confident. Phoebe, on the other hand, runs without rules—legs flailing, arms all over the place, laughing the entire time. At first, Rachel is mortified by Phoebe’s “style” and boldly remarks how she can’t be seen running with her. Rachel’s reason? She disliked that others were looking at them like they were quite strange.
“Why do you care?” Phoebe responds.
“Because they’re people!” Rachel says.9
Ouch. How often do we care so much about the opinions of people who might see us stepping outside the expected that we douse that spark that made us want to try in the first place? Probably far too often. We care because if someone says something, it means they’ve been observing us and coming to conclusions, and that person’s potential criticism can feel like a big warning for us to get back in line so we don’t look like what society might deem as foolish.
No one has it all together. But we inherently care so much about other people thinking we have it all together. This collective caring results in a culture of people constantly trying to act like we have it together to avoid attention or impress others—because underneath, we’re afraid we’re not enough. But enough for whom? What? No matter how much television, social media, influencers, and others may try to convince you that you need to be thinner, healthier, and wealthier in order to be happier or find your spark, none of those things truly matter when it comes as an expectation from others. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to have it together—except that often it means we care too much about what others think and not enough about what we think. We sacrifice our authenticity to fit in, or we adopt a lifestyle that doesn’t fit our ethos.
Phoebe ran that way because it was fun and free, a lot like how a little kid runs. She didn’t care what people thought and even told Rachel that the opinions of the people Rachel was so worried about were people they would never see again. How many times have you not done something because you were worried others might see you? And is it really about seeing you? Or is it about seeing you not at your best? Is it about not fitting in?
And therein lies the caring paradox—we care about a lot (people, events, etc.), but we get to decide what and who has power over our emotional state. Phoebe wasn’t a robot. She cared about things! She cared about running and cared about Rachel’s opinion of her running. She didn’t like that Rachel was embarrassed by her running style. Now, even though Rachel’s opinion of her bothered her, she kept running her way. She didn’t care what random people in Central Park thought. In other words, she didn’t give strangers the same amount of weight in the caring paradox as she gave to Rachel.
You can’t go through life caring about everything. You’d be crushed if every honk, flipped bird, evil look, teenage sigh, or grumbling from strangers had that much power. If you take stuff personally, you’re making it about you, not the other person. Let’s revisit our road rage example. Say you make a bone-headed move on the road. Another driver honks at you, probably to warn you to stop or watch out.
Most likely, the other driver isn’t cutting you down as a person. They may be ticked off by your driving, but they’re not judging you personally. And even if they’re the biggest jerk in the world and are bashing you for making a mistake, you still don’t have to care. You don’t have to take it as a commentary on your worth. You can (and should) care enough to fix your driving but not enough that their words about you remain part of your identity.
Just not caring sounds like it should be easy, right? But we humans make it complex. Let’s say you stop at Starbucks before a critical work meeting. Not only is it busy, but they changed the menu boards. Again. You’re trying something new (because you’re stepping outside your box), so you ask the barista, “What’s awesome?” The barista begins asking what you like and sharing about their newest ice drink. Well, the gal behind you is in a rush and makes a snarky comment about how long it’s taking, and then the guy behind her chuckles in agreement. You’re annoyed and a bit embarrassed.
Do you allow this random interaction with a random person to cut away or chip at your confidence or your mood? Are you slamming your $6.55 iced latte and God-forbid spilling some of that precious elixir on your desk later? Are you complaining about it at the water cooler?
That’s caring in the wrong space.
Let’s say your best friend is in the car with you and points out that you missed a stop sign. You’d care what she says because she cares about you and your safety. If your spouse comes to you and says he’s worried because you’ve been a bit short-tempered with the kids, you’d likely listen—because you want to interact positively with your kids.
The paradox of caring can be resolved when you delineate what is worth caring about versus what is worth letting go.
PROTECTING YOUR EMOTIONAL RESERVE
Remember the adviser versus the critic? The adviser will give you info; the critic will take it as a slam on self.
Caring gets messy when we allow all events to have the same effect on our psyche. If the stranger who flipped you the bird or grumbled at your Starbucks experience can affect your mood as much as your best friend talking to you about needing to let go of a past hurt, more than likely you haven’t developed a strategy for what you allow to affect you and for how long.
In a quest to understand the paradox more, I asked someone who beautifully lives out this duality (to be both caring and not caring) about his strategy: my husband, Dan.
Dan is friends with pretty much everyone. He knows all the cashiers at Kroger and most of our neighbors, and he has a ridiculously large digital Rolodex of connections. People who have met Dan know one thing about him: he shows up. Whether it’s helping our neighbor Jason build a basketball half-court in his backyard or hauling groceries in for another neighbor, Dan will be there. He cares a ton about helping people. But he also does (and says) what he wants. You might think he doesn’t care about social norms or keeping the status quo, and while there is an element of truth in that, Dan really cares about his heart and his family.
He will say the hard things instead of sugarcoating them to make others comfortable. Dan would run like Phoebe and laugh and have a great time and not worry what anyone thought. He will take on projects that others might say are too hard or too risky, but because he has the inner drive, he won’t let their words or worry stop him.
Dan’s strategy? He knows his heart, his capabilities, and he loves who he is and his family. That’s the caring fence for him. Anything outside of that boundary doesn’t necessarily affect his mood or capabilities. He might have a moment when he’s annoyed at someone who rejects an idea. He’ll even assess whether the idea has merit. But ultimately, Dan chooses to do what he needs to do.
Your strategy for deciding what is worth expending your emotional energy on won’t be exactly like Dan’s, and it shouldn’t. You know your limits and the boundaries where you need to put down your foot and the areas that are worth letting slide in order to protect your peace. Protecting your peace is a form of caring. It’s different than avoidance. It’s the boundary you’ve created that others don’t get to cross.
Caring can get messy when the people you care most about don’t agree with the path you’re on. It might be your folks, your partner, your kids, your coworkers, or your best friend. When they aren’t on board with your choices or boundaries, it can feel like you’re disappointing others, which might cause you to back down in order to avoid upsetting the balance. It’s a difficult balance of learning to hear the perspectives of those you trust but also being able to call on your inner wisdom to stand up for your choices. Respect your perspective enough to create your own caring boundary.
For decades, we’ve heard about the importance of boundaries, yet the work of actually establishing those boundaries often takes a backseat. Boundaries can be tricky because while they protect us, they affect the lives of others. We can’t assume that others, especially family or friends, will agree with every boundary we set. We can adapt and learn (both-and), but at a certain point, our boundaries need some rigidity—otherwise they’re just suggestions, not boundaries. A caring boundary could be as simple as Sunday is family day or as complex as turning down invitations that don’t align with your beliefs.
Later in the Friends episode, Rachel is doing her normal not-bringing-attention-to-herself safe run. As she stops to catch her breath, she looks around, shrugs her shoulders, and starts to run Phoebe’s free run. With flapping and flailing arms, she and Phoebe (who was also running) cross paths.
“You’re right! This feels great!” Rachel exclaims.
“See?” Phoebe responds. “And you don’t care if people are staring because it’s just for a second and then you’re gone!”10
THE FREEDOM TO BE YOURSELF
When I was in third grade, it was the height of the Cabbage Patch craze. This was the era of stampedes and brawls in stores over a doll with fancy adoption papers. Despite the craze, I have never owned one. I’ve never asked my parents why I didn’t get one, but I also didn’t really care that much—until the Cabbage Patch birthday party incident. The party was on a Saturday in May, and we were told to dress up for a tea party and to bring our Cabbage Patch dolls with their adoption papers so we could share stories. The presupposition was that we all had this famous eighties icon.
That was one of the first times I remember caring about fitting in … and realizing I didn’t.
My never-back-down mom found one of her old dolls, made it an outfit, and got it ready for the party. She told me the doll didn’t matter and that I should be proud. I walked into the party with this doll, which unlike a Cabbage Patch doll was stiff and didn’t bend, proud that it was once my mom’s. The party was uncomfortable, and on that day I adopted two inaccurate caring beliefs: that I needed to care enough to fit in, and that I needed to care enough to make others happy.
We all gathered in the wood-paneled family room and shared adoption papers. I didn’t have adoption papers, just the story that my doll once was my mom’s, and several of the girls began to comment on that with loud-enough-to-be heard whispers and eye rolls. I remember sitting in my chair and taking their words so personally, as if something was wrong with me for not having a Cabbage Patch doll. That was the moment I thought, You must care enough to fit in, or else you will be teased.
There’s a picture of this party somewhere in the childhood memorabilia my mother has saved. In this picture, the party participants are all standing in front of a pond, holding our dolls. Although little Rachel is smiling, adult Rachel can see the sting of rejection in my young eyes. I smiled for my mom so she wouldn’t be hurt, but behind the smile I was embarrassed and heartbroken.
That event had a bunch of caring moments all pushed together. First, I didn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings—my mom who cared enough to spend time getting the doll ready for the party. I remember not wanting to make a fuss about not having the Cabbage Patch doll and relenting to bring the other doll.
Second, I don’t think I was ready for the level of drama that me not having the right doll created. Instead of my doll just being accepted, I was singled out and made fun of—and not just by anyone but by girls I considered my friends. At that age, I didn’t have the skills to cope with that.
Third, I didn’t know how to handle the complex and dichotomous emotions this situation brought about all the caring stuff—the pressure of not wanting to hurt my mom while also being hurt myself—so instead of caring, it was the first time I remember saying, “I don’t care.”
But I did care. I was hurt. I said I didn’t care as an act of defense, as if I could trick my heart into not caring and deflect the attention of others. I really did care, and the proud, independent part of me flickered. Instead of confidently being me, I became deflated. That moment, at such a formative age (I clearly still remember the details of that day all these years later), taught me to believe that it was risky to stand out, risky to run with my arms flapping, risky to show up differently—because not only would I be seen, but I might also be rejected.
At some point, most of us learn to care about other people so we don’t have to deal with the pain of being rejected. Instead of rejection having a caring boundary (strangers or friends or family)—we allow it to define our worth and abilities. Rejection cuts deep. It unearths primal thoughts, What is wrong with me? Rejection makes us take those negative statements and thoughts inward versus examining the outward influence.
And we learn, just like I did in that moment, that we don’t want to look foolish in front of others, so we work to stay within the bounds of what we think is acceptable. We don’t want to rock the boat, so we try to keep the status quo. We don’t want to be judged, so we minimize our dreams. The result? We find ourselves letting people walk past our boundaries; we shy away from doing the hard or different thing; we live life as if we aren’t in control.
What about you? I’m sure you’ve experienced moments like mine when your spirit had a box of rejection thrown on it. And if you were young, without the resources and mindset tools you have now, that rejection likely made a deep wound and could be the unconscious reason why you might ration your emotions to care more about fitting in versus standing out or being yourself. Perhaps instead of expanding who you are, you shrink to fit in. You decorate with trendy colors even if you don’t like them so your home matches your friends’. You learn not to ask questions because at some point your questions were made fun of.
Many of us stop caring in hopes that we can avoid others’ criticism of our dreams or cutting down our progress or laughing at our stumbles. Instead of creating boundaries about what to care about, we tell ourselves we need to constantly worry about fitting in, to be aware of when we don’t, and to be ready to justify and explain when we diverge from the norm.
The paradox of caring is the tension found within both either-or and both-and. You need both. You need to absolutely care and to care so much about your own heart that you go all in. But you also need to not care about the hypothetical views others might have about you going all in.
The moment you realize how much you want the freedom to be yourself is the moment you finally give oxygen to your soul’s dreams. Until you can acknowledge that you’ve kept yourself small in some ways, that you’ve avoided boundaries to the detriment of your dreams, all under the guise of caring about others’ opinions, you will miss out on opportunities.
Care enough about you. Don’t fear rejection! When you care so much about not being rejected by others, you are, in some ways, rejecting yourself. Fear rejecting yourself, abandoning yourself, more than you fear the rejection of others. Your soul needs you to care about you.
If you are living from a place of healthy boundaries and honest intentions and humility, whatever you choose to pursue will bring with it possibility and hope. You can follow rules and still speak up when the rules discriminate. You can be rejected and still realize that rejection doesn’t define you. You can reframe caring.
You can run like Phoebe, carry your own doll, dress like Caleb, and not care what anyone thinks. You are dynamic! You are worth being your own quirky, wonderful, authentic, fabulous self.
Don’t let the opinions of others box in the spark that is you.
FIRE STARTERS
Care enough to try. And then be okay with uncertainty. Caring doesn’t mean you can control the outcome. That might mean someone laughs at you as you run like Phoebe through Central Park. Can you survive that? Absolutely. In the next week, find something that you’ve put off and try it. Maybe it’s meeting with a friend or going through the big pile of mail on your desk. Once, when I was still dealing with creditors, I was freaked out about calling about my student loan because I was afraid they’d judge me. I realized I cared more about being judged than fixing the situation. When I understood how out of order I had this, I made the call, and to my surprise the individual on the other line was grateful (and proud) that I had taken the step to call. Instead of judging me, they went out of their way to help.
Care enough to take care of yourself. Get adequate sleep; eat healthy; take care of your mind (again, why I meditate). If you’re depleted, others’ critiques or opinions will have a higher chance of sticking. But if you’re mentally strong, you’ll have the capacity to identify what is actually helpful and then say, “Nope. Not today.” And care enough to have fun! Create moments of fun in your day, times when you laugh, times when you feel carefree. Laughter is a beautiful way to invest in your soul.
Create a hierarchy of importance. I tend to over-care or spread my caring too thin. I once was the person going into a meeting with thirteen “pressing” issues to address. Because my list was so long, none would get resolved. To address this, I created a hierarchy of importance for caring. If I were to attend that hypothetical meeting now, most items on that list would be relegated to “not that big a deal” so we could focus on priorities. If you get bogged down in caring about every minor thing, when you bring up big issues, your voice may be diluted by too many prior instances of not identifying what was really important.
Differentiate between caring and worrying. Worrying eats away at our time as we mull over what might/could/should/didn’t happen. Worrying may feel like you’re caring, but if you’re not seeking a solution and are instead fixating on what-ifs, it’s best to table that topic and stop worrying. Care about the situations and responses you have control over.