So You Didn’t Get Invited? 4 steps to cope with feeling left out
I never in a million years thought that I would be the one being left out and asking myself why I wasn’t invited to the party that everyone else is going to. The first time it happened, I was shocked, angry, and felt something that I had never felt before: rejection. The truth is, for over a decade, I was the one doing the inviting. It was my job to entertain during the day and host international businessmen and women to recruit into the doctoral program I ran. I would finish up work on Friday evening and without skipping a beat, host dinner parties for my boyfriend at the time, attend galas and spend beach days with friends in Malibu that went well into the night. Then something happened: I moved. I left the life in Los Angeles that I had so carefully crafted to come back home to the south. I had created (unknowingly) in my mind a picture-perfect image of where I had grown up and daydreamed about throwing the same parties in a different, slower-paced setting complete with a front-porch and a southern breeze. Ha! What really happened was a far cry from that image.
The first time (of many) I was scrolling through Instagram and saw it: a group of girls that I had tried SO hard to be friends with, smiling with their little girls as they celebrated Christmas. I justified it by telling myself they aren’t my “real friends” and that it was likely just an oversight. I pushed aside the fact that my own daughter was excluded too. Then a week later, it happened again. Same group, same feeling. This continued until the Fourth of July when we were all sitting together and they posed for a picture right beside us…and did not include myself or my daughter. My husband at the time noticed and even confronted them, but it didn’t matter…the damage was done. I decided right then that it was on me to deal with this feeling. I delved into what I know best: research on the subject and these are my four biggest take-aways:
Ask yourself, do you REALLY want to be there?
Seriously take a second and jump into this scenereo with me. Imagine there were no social media posts bragging about the “good time” they had and no insta-worthy pictures being taken or posted. Take your ego and pride out of the equation too. Are these people you would call if you needed someone to talk to in the middle of the night? If you knew this was your last day on earth, would you want to spend it with them? The last time you were around them, did you have an amazing time and feel connected? I am betting you are thinking that is a little extreme, but the answer is probably no. People who really care about you wouldn’t ever want to make you feel that way, so why are you wasting your time worrying about it?
Understand it is not about you (really)
Do something you love
Practice the “Let Them” Theory