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Good morning, thanks!

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Good morning. I have to say I handle rejection better than being ignored. If I take the time to apply somewhere and don't get any response from it, I tell myself how hard is it to send a form letter that you didn't make the cut. Ultimately, if the places you apply to fail to see what you can bring to the table, it's their loss. I have felt this way since a young age. I remember telling this to my hairdresser in my 20s, a comment she passed along to her daughters as it impressed her I felt this way.

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People take rejection personally. I've always believed that if I didn't get "that job", there was someone who was a better fit. I may have thought I was perfect for the role but I'm not arrogant enough to think the world revolves around me. And I also didn't lose anything. I didn't have the job before the interview.

And my Dad used to say a recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. (I'm pretty sure he didn't come up with this).

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Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022

Bill,

I love how you make seemingly mundane topics interesting and relevant with gems of new information and takeaways. The Acton and Koum stories fit right into that pattern. So inspirational!

This topic hits home. I was rejected as a law student from 150 law firms, including two rejections from the firm where I would ultimately make partner. Those rejections propelled me to become an author and career coach to law students and young lawyers. So, I can relate (at least on some level :) ).

Bill, thanks for bringing it Every. Single. Day.!

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Love the picture of the black pug, Bill. Today’s focus is both enjoyable and mystifying. Some people are just wired to bounce back and are able, as Monty Python once famously sang, to “always look on the bright side of life!” I admire that so much. And while I’ve had my teeth kicked in a few times (proverbially speaking) and bounced back, I have never been able to just get back up, dust myself off, and move forward feeling chipper about the sun coming out tomorrow. Of course it’s in large part a case of who each of us is en toto, and for me in my constant struggle with melancholy, I recognize it’s okay that I’m not wired that way. But I’m thankful for stories like this one about Brian Acton. It encourages us to keep keeping on. And for me, it’s a reminder of the many times God brought beauty from ashes, and set my feet on firm ground after pulling me up out of the muck and mire.

Again, thanks for sharing this story, Bill! God’s blessings on you and your family!

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August 2, 2022

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 3

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Today, voters in Kansas overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to their state constitution that would have stripped it of protections for abortion rights. With 86% of the vote in, 62% of voters supported abortion protections; 37% wanted them gone. That spread is astonishing. Kansas voters had backed Trump in 2020; Republicans had arranged for the referendum to fall on the day of a primary, which traditionally attracts higher percentages of hard-line Republicans; and they had written the question so that a “yes” vote would remove abortion protections and a “no” would leave them in place. Then, today, a political action committee sent out texts that lied about which vote was which.

Still, voters turned out to protect abortion rights in such unexpectedly high numbers it suggests a sea change.

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Bill, what's the message in the dog photo? Is it a metaphor for your over-exertion? Or a portrait of a negative response to rejection?

Pardon me, but although you love this kind of story and I love you, I don't pay much attention to most get-rich-quick or stick-to-it rejection stories. As I see it, more often than not they simply demonstrate the influence of the significant variable of good luck in the equation of success.

Hooray for the Kansas electorate!!

Permanent jewelry? At least it's removable when the mood (and fad) changes.

The world is watching nervously as China does its thing by going after Taiwan's presidential website with a Distributed D-O-S attack and also surrounding Taiwan with a "military exercise" force. "Obvious" ploys by a regime that is in great fear of appearing weak! It is a fiercely threatening but impotent paper tiger! IMHO, the Chinese don't want to be the nation that starts WW3. A cowardly bully nation! Its government will do whatever it believes it can get away with, AND WE'RE "UNCONSCIOUSLY" PLAYING INTO ITS GAME.

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I thrive on stories such as this Bill. Keep them coming, please. In my humble opinion I believe we could use far more optimistic stories than the opposite. We humans can get down ourselves if we aren’t careful. I think that’s why the CHICKEN SOUP series of books had such a good run. I have yet to read the rest of your letter so I’m off of here. Later “old man” 😂.

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Hi Bill, I found it!!

The “tiny typo” I mentioned earlier…

Your paragraph below should begin:

“Anyway, I’ve been ruminating on…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(and my apologies for mentioning your “column” in my earlier comment; I’m now aware that it is a Newsletter)

Regards, Ines Swaney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway, I’ve ruminating on something lately, about how some people manage to handle rejection much better than others. It hit me first after Curt Scheier wrote about James Patterson last week, who said he wasn’t discouraged by getting 31 rejection letters—and having Stephen King call him “a terrible writer.”

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Love reading Understandably .

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Where’s your joke today?

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