A friend of mine’s husband is a trained actor and a drama teacher and when I jokingly asked if he has any unique skills, like belting out Broadway musicals in the shower, I was surprised by her response.
“He can sing, yeah, but he’s amazing at taking rejection. It doesn’t bother him at all. Just water off a duck's back. He doesn’t take it personally and just moves on to the next thing, like it's nothing to do with him.”
What an amazing quality, I thought. Imagine if we could all deal with rejection better? Imagine the goals, jobs, dates and experiences we’d reach for. Not to mention the reduction of violence against women and girls, which is often born out of rejection.
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MRI scans show us that the parts of the brain that are stimulated when we experience rejection are the same parts of the brain that report physical pain to us. That's why it hurts so much to be socially excluded by friends or colleagues, or ghosted by a romantic interest. Our brains have evolved this way to protect us. We’re social animals that traditionally relied on tribes and community to stay alive. We’re wired to stay close to our caregivers, for food, warmth and protection.
So how can we rewire our brains and learn to accept rejection, as an inevitable part of moving through life, and use that resilience to become more successful? I began researching and came across the term 'Rejection Therapy'. A concept created by Canadian entrepreneur Jason Comely, who challenged people to approach strangers with weird requests that were unlikely to be granted, in order to build a resilience for rejection.
Comely recommended people serious about becoming more resilient, actively seek to be intentionally rejected every single day, for 30 days. Terrifying, right?
One of the most famous people to take on Comely’s challenge was Jia Jiang, a Chinese computer science graduate. Jiang was working as a marketing manager for a Fortune 500 company, but dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. A rejected application for investment triggered a realisation that he’s been terrified of rejection, ever since an incident in primary school. The teacher asked all the children to compliment each other, but when it came to Jia’s turn, the class fell silent. He’d never forgotten that day and had unconsciously moved to protect himself from feeling that way ever again.
Jiang acknowledged that people who are successful in business experience rejection every day and so he embarked upon Comely’s rejection therapy model and sought to be rejected for 30 days. On the first day he asked a stranger to lend him $100, and ran away when the stranger said no.
The second day he asked for a burger refill in a fast food restaurant. Jiang was rejected as anticipated, but he didn’t run away that day. Instead he spent some time chatting to the server about his request and why it couldn’t be fulfilled. Progress!
Jiang vlogged his attempts and when his third rejection went viral, it changed his life forever. Jiang walked into a Krispy Kreme store and asked for a donut in the style of the Olympic symbol (five donuts linked together). He did not expect the server to take him so seriously, and was surprised when he began to sketch out a prototype before going in to the kitchen and producing his exact request. Jiang carried on the experiment for 100 days and you can watch his TED talk about it on YouTube.
Many therapists agree that short-term avoidance of anxiety, simply leads to long-term maintenance of anxiety. Doing things to avoid anxiety might work in the moment, but it actually guarantees more anxiety in the future. Exposure therapy forces you to endure the uncomfortable and learn to tolerate the emotion, rather than avoid it.
Over the three months, many of Jiang’s requests were in-fact granted. He played football in a stranger’s back garden, got Santa to sit on his lap and ticked off a lifelong ambition of teaching a college class. Jiang realised it was possible to fulfil his life’s dream, by simply asking. In his TED talk Jiang said “We often expect the worst, but in reality almost everyone is nicer and less confrontational than we think.”
Should we all embark on 30 days of Rejection Therapy? Imagine if the little brains of our children believed that you have a right to ask for everything you want, and in return you’ll be granted some of those things. Just because you asked. Imagine the plays they would audition for, the confidence they’d have making friends, the help they could get in school, the activities they’d take part in and the goals they’d set. Just imagine!
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