Downside Up by Tracey Mitchell

How do you view rejection?  Do you see it as a negative thing that you try your hardest to avoid?  Or have you ever considered that rejection can be a good thing? Author Tracey Mitchell, invites her readers to look at rejection with a positive twist.  She sub-titles the book:  “Transform Rejection Into Your Golden Opportunity”.

We all face rejection in one form or another all our lives. It just cannot be avoided.  What we do with it is important though.  Do we let rejection send us into a downward spiral of defeat and despair, or do we learn from it, move one, and turn it into something positive. Tracey takes the subject of rejection and explores what it can teach us about a variety of things including our relationships, dreams, the truth, and most importantly about ourselves. 

At the end of every chapter, there is a summary of the “Chapter Principles” which I found to be handy.  The next section is “Words of Wisdom” which gives a verse of Scripture.  Following that, there is a “Power Quote” by a famous person, and then to finish it off, she provides a “Plan of Action” – something positive you can do the help you deal with the issue of that particular chapter.

Overall I felt the book was helpful.  It allowed me to see some of the root issues like fear or abandonment, or unhealthy relationships that contribute to the feelings of rejection.  Each chapter takes on a different issue, so the book does not necessarily “flow” from one chapter to the next, except for the fact that it also describes a person struggling with rejection.  It is not a depressing sort of book, but rather a book of hope.  Learn from your rejection, fix what you can, avoid the things that you should, and go on with your life in a positive way.

Though it was not a “can’t put this book down” kind of book, I think it could be helpful for people to discover that life isn’t over simply because someone rejected you or your ideas!

I received a complementary copy of this book from BookSneeze, a blogger review program, in exchange for my honest review.