I was rejected. Why it helped. I’ve been studying psychotherapy for over thirty years. I had years of training, therapy, analysis, and 25 years of weekly individual supervision. Having trained earlier in life to be a blacksmith by my father and later trained to be a professional musician, my dream was to teach psychotherapy as well as my father taught his craft and my teachers taught the art of music. To that end I wrote my book, Co-Creating Change: Effective Dynamic Therapy Techniques. People have offered lots of congratulations for the book. It sold more copies in the past 18 months than my previous book did in ten years. It’s in its third printing. It has won the first prize in psychiatry from the British Medical Association. It has been translated into Polish and Farsi. It has received numerous rave reviews. People congratulate me, but the success of my book wasn’t due just to my work and faith. It was due to the faith and work of my teachers and supervisors and to you, the students, therapists, and trainers out there who care about making therapy more effective. Without your support, none of this could have happened. But here is what you don’t know. My book was turned down by six publishers. Two publishers offered me a possible contract, but I would have had to cut the book by two thirds. Nor would they commit to a three volume series, so the entire book could come out. Mind you, no one asked me, “Jon, in your thirty years of teaching and supervising, what do you sense therapists want in a book?” So I had a choice: I could believe in my vision and my knowledge of what you want, or I could take their offer and abandon my heart. What would you do? I left the contract on the table for a few weeks. But every time I thought of signing it, I got depressed. So I chose to fight. I decided not to chop up the book for them. I believed the psychotherapy world was ready for a different kind of book, something that was written simply, but conveyed a complex theory. Something that would put forward theory, but also how to put it into effective practice. Thats why I spent four years writing it. Those publishers did not agree with me, with you, with the foreign publishers now printing the book, or with the British Medical Association. So here is what I learned from being rejected. Never let someone tell you that your dreams are impossible or not ‘good enough’, especially when they have no experience or knowledge of your true capacity. When others reject you, that is their problem. If you join them and reject yourself and your vision, that is YOUR problem. Have vision for your life and therapy. It’s your vision. It’s why you are here. Sticking to your vision is sticking to you. Stick to it through your doubts and fears, and through all the doubts and fears of others. Believe in your ability to figure things out. Anything worth doing takes hard work. With enough time and effort you will learn the skills necessary to achieve your goal. Work hard and give yourself the time the task requires. Have fun. Achieving your goals in the face of opposition takes time. So enjoy the process of learning and growing. Then you can enjoy your growth and cherish the journey. As the Hindus say, “The elephant keeps walking even when surrounded by barking dogs.” Every step forward on your path makes you stronger. If others want you to take the path of doubt, let them take that path while you stay on your own. Be patient with yourself. You will not achieve your goal today. But you can take a step toward it. Go easy on yourself and work hard toward your dreams. Remember that patience is the ability to be where you are now in this phase of your journey. Respect and love others. The publishers who rejected my book want to make the world a better place by publishing great therapy books. They made what they thought was the best choice based on their markets and their fears for the book market. Who among us has not made mistaken choices? Who among us has not been ruled by fear? Even though they rejected the book, they made it better because I realized I would have to make this into the best book I could if it was going to succeed. Which leads to the next thing I learned. When critics reject your work, learn from their criticisms. There is almost always a kernel of truth in their criticisms. If you can find those kernels of truth, your greatest critics will make you and your work only better. I am very grateful to my harshest critics. They have made me grow. So when you are rejected, remember: so was I, and so was everybody else. But we can learn something from those rejections: how to grow.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:44:33 +0000
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