
The Rejection Therapy Challenge: Final Review - jasonshen
http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/the-rejection-therapy-challenge-final-review/
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moron4hire
I did something similar to this a few years ago. Specifically, I forced myself
to talk to women in open social situations (bars, art galleries, etc). Yes, it
gets easier to handle rejection when you've "been through it and lived"
before. But one factor that I haven't ever seen mentioned anywhere else: when
you have so many concurrent "rejection" opportunities, you start to care less
and less about the rejection itself, because it represents a smaller and
smaller proportion of your open "prospects" (I hate to word it that way
because it's incredibly objectifying, but can't think of any other way to put
it). At a certain critical point, it almost becomes a relief to get rejected.

And I found that this ease with the situation helped me be more successful in
general. People can tell when you're nervous. The more anxious you are about a
situation, the more likely you are to fail at it. That's basically true for
anything, not just chatting up girls. You worry too much about non-critical
issues. So, when I wasn't worried about picking up a date, I could more easily
pick up a date.

For me, that critical point came when I had three separate first-dates
scheduled in the same week. By the rules of my challenge, I had to attempt to
follow through on every introduction. I "luckily" hit a dry spell at that
point, didn't pick up a 4th date, and quickly whittled it down to just 1
regular relationship in the few following weeks. By that point, I considered
the challenge over and successful.

I think there is a lesson here for sales. I've worked at a lot of contract
development companies that were forced to bend over backwards for their
clients specifically because they failed to "date around" for new clients.
When a client asks for a major, out-of-scope feature, telling them "no" is a
lot easier when there are 5 more waiting to replace them. Now, threats from
clients to drop vendors are often way overblown, but it's still important to
not end up with all your eggs in one basket.

~~~
guiseppecalzone
I agree completely. I think this also applies to networking. There are a lot
of people that can give valuable feedback to my startup. These people are
super busy. But, because I'm seeking out so many people, rejection by a few
isn't such a big deal.

You ultimately need to be looking at your conversion rate. If I ask 10 people
to meet, how many will follow through? Then, you try to improve it. When you
think of the process that way, it doesn't seem like rejection anymore, but
rather a necessary part of finding the right people.

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cwp
I once did the reverse of this: I made a rule that I would never decline an
invitation, no matter what it was. At the time rejection wasn't even on my
radar. I was new in town, and without an established social circle, my
tendency toward introversion could have lead me to completely isolate myself.

It worked out really well. I found myself doing things I would otherwise never
have considered. Join an ultimate frisbee league? Well, uh, I'm not much of an
athlete, but... ok. Go to a non-alcoholic dinner put on by a church? I uh,
well, religion's not my... ok. Dance the funky chicken? <wince> ok.

Later on, I followed up by focussing on initiating things myself, rather than
just accepting what others proposed, but I never thought of explicitly looking
for rejection. Neat idea.

~~~
jasonshen
This is awesome - yeah, I think that's a great idea too. Kind of like the
improve concept "Yes, and..." <http://greenlightwiki.com/improv/Yes_And>

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saturdayplace
What's interesting about the way he's written these, is that getting rejected
became his goal. _He started hoping for rejection_. Which seems totally
backwards until you realize that he wins in every interaction - either he gets
rejected, or he gets what he asked for.

And I'm assuming that's the whole point of this exercise. Once you can re-
frame rejection, it disarms the sting entirely.

~~~
jasonshen
Yup - you got it. =)

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wallflower
> I walked down my street a couple days and said "Good Morning!" to everyone I
> walked passed. A lot of people totally blew me off.

One of the best ways, even for the most socially recalcitrant individuals to
get warmed up or even fired up, is to say 'Hi' with a real big smile to
everyone en route to a social event. The first twenty or even forty people
might suck. But once people start acknowledging or even reciprocating, oh
boy...

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TamDenholm
Ye know, after thinking about it, i honestly think that this is also doing
good for other people, "rejecting therapy" if you will.

There are loads of people in this world that absolutely suck at saying no and
really should do it more often, so going through this not only can help
yourself but also the people you are interacting with.

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spaceghost
"Ultimately the challenge has helped me take things less personally."

Couldn't agree more. Life should not be lived in fear.

~~~
jasonshen
Or lived with the sense that you are constantly being judged for everything
you say and do.

(my bad - I thought I double posted and deleted one...)

~~~
philwelch
This is a known HN "quirk". If you double post, one post gets autokilled. If
you delete the wrong post, you end up with one duplicate deleted and the other
duplicate autokilled.

