Perception is reality. I was not able to overcome some objections in a recent pitch. If you read my personal profile you’d learn I take rejection personally. This latest one has given me laser like focus. My emotions have always betrayed me, and I think that hindsight is taking this latest “rejection” to another positive level.

I see what they mean when they say the most successful among us have had a plethora of rejections and failures. I knew when I left that house on Friday I wouldn’t be going back, and sure enough the text came on Monday to confirm my intuition.

On my way home Monday my wife called about some IRS complications, so Monday got even better. I met with my accountant this morning, and I waited on the phone for over an hour with the IRS, but thankfully the issue is being resolved. I write a lot about putting one foot in front of the other, but there’s a tremendous amount of wisdom in that. We got home from my daughter’s cross country meet, and we ate dinner, but as you might suspect I didn’t want to do dishes because I was feeling down. It wasn’t that bad once I got started, and I actually finished the dishes, took a shower and sat down to write some drivel.

Drivel is amazingly cathartic. It lifts you out of the mire of rejection to show you that it’s a numbers game whether you’re in sales or not. If I go out here to my driveway to shoot 10 free throws I could hit all 10, but more than likely I’m going to miss 2. That’s life. There are things that happen in life that cause me to miss all 10, and many other times I’ll miss more than 2. Baseball analogies work too. If you bat in the middle to high 300’s you’re doing well, but strikeouts are more likely than homeruns. Getting back out there to shoot, swing the bat, wash the dishes, make a sales pitch is what separates winners from losers. The rejections, miss shots and miss hits hurt, but not getting back up hurts even more.

Not everybody is going to like or appreciate what we bring to the table. Let’s not let that keep us from shipping our art. I’m glad I stood up from the dinner table to take my plate to the sink. I stood there looking at the dishes not really wanting to deal with them, but I pushed through, and now as I write the soothing sound of our Kitchen Aid dishwasher washes over me a peace I can’t describe with words. I realize it’s the Holy Spirit moving about me, but God most certainly can work peace through anything inanimate. Remember He spoke to Balaam through a donkey, and had people not praised Jesus coming into Jerusalem the rocks would have cried out.

If God is for me nothing and no one can be against me.

I believe that with all my heart.