Jamie Kern Lima is a pro at rejection—getting rejected, that is. Each time an investor or potential business partner said no, it felt like proof that her dreams were not worth it. But at her lowest moment, she realized that she could choose to celebrate those rejections instead.
With her company on the brink of bankruptcy, Ms. Kern Lima began doing research on successful entrepreneurs. “Every person I admired most, who’s built great businesses or changed the world or impacted humanity, … every single one of them has gone through so many rejections. They’re just the brave ones, willing to keep going forward anyways. And I decided to create this new definition of rejection,” she said. “I trained myself to celebrate … and go, ‘Oh, this is a reminder, I’m one of the brave ones willing to go for it. I’m not sitting on the sidelines of life, living in regret.’”
Today, she teaches others how to transcend their setbacks, drawing from her own experiences of building her cosmetics brand IT Cosmetics, which eventually got sold to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion in 2016, the French beauty behemoth’s largest acquisition at the time. Her forthcoming book to be released in February, “Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life,” teaches concrete steps to build strong self-worth: something she believes can give people the ultimate sense of fulfillment. She wants to pass on these lessons so that people don’t miss out on valuable experiences.
“What has self-doubt already cost you in your life? And go by category: in your career, in your relationships, in your joy of simply looking in the mirror? … We are worthy of love and belonging exactly as we are—not as we achieve, not as how much of the world’s definition of success we have, but exactly as we are,” she said.
She illustrates the point with an anecdote. Years ago, after her company had already become successful, she had the opportunity to meet media personality Oprah Winfrey. After having lunch together, Oprah left her phone number and said to Ms. Kern Lima that she could call her anytime. But it took Ms. Kern Lima more than four years to get the courage to reach out to Oprah.
“I would tell myself stories like, once I think of the right thing to say, then I’m going to call her, or everyone probably just wants something from her, I’m going to prove I don’t need anything.” Then one day, she realized the real reason she hadn’t called her. “Deep down inside at my core, … I didn’t think I was worthy of being her friend. And so I sabotaged the opportunity,” she reflected. This was the moment she began digging deeper into the topic of self-worth.
Ms. Kern Lima outlines ways to reframe one’s thinking. Many people struggle with letting their past mistakes define them. “They’ve gone through past failures and rejections, and they’ve assigned a meaning to them that is so painful, they just stay stuck.” She urges people to remove that emotional association and instead look at each situation rationally. “What is the meaning we told it? What is the story we told ourselves about it? What’s actually the truth about it?” She suggests then finding a new definition to the meaning of rejection: something you must believe to be true. For Ms. Kern Lima, it was her belief that each rejection was just God’s way of protecting her from something that was not part of her destiny.
Another common fallacy she’s noticed is that people draw their self-worth from external sources. Oftentimes, people then begin to set goals for themselves, only to find that they still feel unfulfilled when they achieve them. “Whether it’s a job, or a white picket fence and a house, a partner and kids, or six-pack abs, or a certain number in your bank account, a great car, whatever it is—how many times have you finally gotten that thing, and then you’re happy for like, a year, a month, a week, a minute? And then all of a sudden, you go right back to that feeling of unfulfillment, like something’s missing.”
Those skills and attributes we seek, while helpful for building self-confidence, draw meaning from the outside and will constantly change based on our degree of success. Building self-worth, on the other hand, is internal. When pursuing goals with strong self-worth, “you become actually a lot more ambitious and a lot more resilient,” willing to work hard but no longer hoping for a particular outcome or thinking your worth is tied to that outcome, she explained. For ultimate fulfillment, she believes one must find a way to serve and contribute to something beyond oneself; with strong self-worth, finding that purpose becomes a much more rewarding journey.
For Ms. Kern Lima, faith also played a big part in changing her mindset. She believes that this can apply to anyone who has a spiritual belief. As a Christian, she was taught that all were made in God’s image. “What I realized is when I have self-doubt, I’m actually not having self-doubt, I’m actually doubting God’s word,” she said. Now, whenever she starts having thoughts of self-doubt, she’ll stop herself. “No matter what room I’m about to walk into, or what situation I’m about to have happen, … I instantly will intercept it, and I’ll ask myself, ‘Am I going to believe me? My thoughts? Or am I going to believe God’s word?” This gets rid of the negative thoughts immediately. Whether the struggle is about weight and how you look, or whether you have imposter syndrome and fear you’re not capable, she hopes this can be “a powerful tool that helps a lot of people just instantly know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are fully worthy and enough exactly as they are right now and exactly as their Creator made them.”
Even when things don’t go as planned, she urges us to see the experiences as part of the learning process to get to the next step. One day, that lesson can help another person who’s struggling. “So many people struggle with feeling fulfilled, and one of the secrets to fulfillment is to ask yourself, what are some of the things, even the hard things, that you’ve been able to make it through, and then how can you use that experience to help others make it through those same things?”
