Welcome to Episode #20 of The UN-Perfect Podcast, where I continue my conversation with Jessica Van Roekel, author of Reframing Rejection: How Looking Through A Diferent Lens Changes Everything.  It contains many powerful truths, insights, and strategies for living a life free from the chains that imprison us by rejection and its accomplices—people-pleasing, perfectionism, selfishness, and pride.

As we seek to reframe rejection through a lens of grace and truth, Jessica leads us through the answers to the following questions:

How do we cause others to feel rejected, and how can we seek to affirm them instead?

• Dismissing others' opinions and insights - We must stay curious about others' thoughts, positions, and experiences.
• Focusing on ourselves more than others - Practice being an empathic listener. (For more on Empathic Listening, check out episode #8 here).
• Excluding Others - We should move out of our comfort zones with eyes wide open to those around us. Our past rejections can be tools to enable us to remember what it was like and help others avoid that scenario.

How does a disordered view of rejection show up in our lives?

1. People-Pleasing (discussed at length in episode #19 - listen here).
2. Perfectionism (discussed at length in episode 19 - listen here).
3. Manipulation - for fear of being vulnerable, which could lead to rejection, we only show up as our "best." 
4. Control - we control how much we let others see, but we also try to hide things from God and others. Hebrews 4:12  gives us great insight into allowing the word of God to penetrate the deepest part of us, remembering that nothing is hidden from God, but He is the one who desires to carry us in the midst of weakness.
5. Fear of Failure - This impacts our life of faith and trust, our ability to trust God and believe that He is for us.

How do we break the cycle of rejection and move forward in freedom?

* We must be aware of what we're thinking and how we're responding.

* We must stop the thought.

* We must replace the thought.

Four lenses to replace our thoughts and reframe rejection:

1. Humble Awe: A healthy fear of our amazing creator and God who cares intimately for us. Seek HIM and HIS opinion first.
2. Mutual Delight: Belief that we bring Him pleasure. The Hebrew word for delight denotes bending toward. It's a picture of God bending towards us and us towards Him.
3. Dependable Trust: We say we trust God, but do we truly believe He is dependable?
4. Aligned Surrender: Not a begrudging, "FINE, God. we'll do it your way!" But acceptance with a heart truly submitted to His current will for us at this moment.

Jessica concludes our conversation by remi

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