I know, I know the title seems to be an oxymoron. It doesn’t make sense, and it wouldn’t have made sense to me either until I attended the Global Leadership Summit last week. One of the speakers, Jia Jiang gave a most interesting talk on overcoming the fear of rejection. He called his project Rejection Therapy and undertook 100 days of trying to get rejected. He was actually trying to desensitize himself by getting rejected over and over. Interestingly enough he had mixed success as many of the people he hoped would reject him would not. Click here to see one of the most interesting non-rejections.
These “mixed results” led Jiang to begin research into how to make himself and other “rejection proof”. Some of his findings include:
- Defining what rejection is
- Contrasting rejection vs failure
- Rejection is a human interaction that often says more about the rejector than the rejectee
- Rejection is an opinion
- Rejection has a number. If you try enough times, a no can turn to a yes
There are many more, but he can tell the story better than I can, so please visit his website and I strongly suggest reading his book:
Before I go, I want to give a shout out again to the Global Leadership Summit. If you book now to attend next August, you get a package of benefits worth more than $100. The package includes the ability to see Jiang’s talk, as well as all the others from this year and full attendence for next year. The conference is held in sites all over the world. Please try to attend, it will be well worth the time spent.
Until next time have a great day and get out there and try to get rejected. I’d love to hear about your experiences.