Rejection Is Not a Bad Thing
Ever have the fear of rejection? I’m sure all of us can relate to the fear of being rejected be it at a job interview, asking permission from your parents, boss or loved one and even from babies. So how can we try to overcome this fear and be more confident?
One of my favourite Ted Talks is from Mr Jia Jiang, “Surprising Lessons From 100 days of Rejection”. He tried to recover from being rejected through 100 days of Rejection Therapy and then his life changed because of a box of doughnuts. Believe it or not he quit his corporate job just four days before his first child was born to pursue his dream to become an entrepreneur. However, four months later he found out that the investors turned him down.
How did he overcome this failure and get back up again? With the support of his wife who encouraged him to not live with regrets and reminded him that she gave him six months and not four months to try to pursue his dream he went back out again. However, the fear of rejection was still overwhelming so he searched for help and stumbled upon “Rejection Therapy” developed by Jason Comely which is a game where you go out and look for ways to be purposely rejected.
He tried this therapy for 100 days and started filming and blogging about his attempts. As expected, he got rejections but surprisingly enough, he also got Yeses from his bizarre requests. One of them was his request for specialized doughnuts to look like the Olympic rings. From that day he started researching about rejection and one of his goals as an entrepreneur is to solve the fear of rejection. He will soon release his book “Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible through 100 days of Rejection” whereby he writes about the techniques he learned regarding rejection and his ways of developing his confidence.
I hope this talk inspired you as much as it did for me.
