The relationship between the rejection of self pity and meaning is that the first enables the formation of the second. There is no linear connection, but there IS between feeling self pity and being UNABLE to form a useful meaning system. Rejecting self pity creates the possibility of success, whereas failing to do so ensures failure. All one can do is create fertile soil, and work regularly to find suitable seeds to plant and nourish.
I am going to quote from Viktor Frankl’s excellent “Man’s Search for Meaning” (page 86 in a very old paperback addition):
And there were always choices to be made. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision that determined whether you would or would not submit to those power which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom, which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must be seen as more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though such conditions as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it became clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even in such circumstances, decide what shall become of him, mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevsky once said: “there is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
…An active life serves the purpose of giving man an opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment, and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.