How to Become Rejection Proof

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In a recent podcast, I spoke about how important it is to ask for what you want. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. I devoted just one paragraph to dealing with rejection; I basically said, just get over it.

But of course that isn’t enough. Fear of rejection is too important to dismiss with just a few words, so I’m going to try to tackle it in this podcast.

But I’m not going to do it by myself. I have help, although he doesn’t know it yet. When I was working on my last podcast, I came across a fascinating video by Jia Jiang, What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection. I was so captivated by his message that I bought and immediately devoured his book, Rejection Proof, and I’m going to share some of his wisdom, mixed together with some of my own ideas.

The hardest door to open

If you have a great idea or special desire, who among all the people in your circle of influence is most likely to reject it, to say no, to squash your dream or strangle your aspiration before it gets a chance to see the light of day?

Let’s put it another way: if you’re in sales, who is the toughest gatekeeper to get around, the one who most consistently blocks you from talking to the decision makers? Who really keeps you from talking to high level decision makers?

I spent a year once in a sales job that required me to cold call on real estate offices and try to sell them on my company’s mortgage offerings. Those calls were never easy (it didn’t help that it was in an era when we charged 18% interest and 10 points), but I learned very quickly one fundamental truth about sales: the hardest door to open is your car door.  I remember times when it was literally true: I would pull into their lot, and then spend a few minutes mustering up the guts to walk into their office and ask for the broker in charge. Opening my own car door was always the toughest part of the whole activity. (And this is saying something since I was driving a car with a balky air conditioner in the South Florida heat.)

If you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll admit that it’s not your boss, or your colleague, or your significant other; it’s you. I don’t have hard numbers, but I’ll bet that the vast majority of us have self-rejected far more times than others have rejected us.

We think of a good idea, but then that voice in our heads kicks in to tell us it’s a stupid idea, or comes up with far more imagination to dream up reasons it won’t work than it took to get the idea in the first place. We just know that others aren’t going to like the idea, so why put ourselves through the pain and embarrassment of rejecting them, when we can so easily do it to ourselves?

So, we meekly file away the idea, get back to our day jobs, and forget about it—until the next time. But there never is a next time, because self-rejection gets easier and easier until it becomes a bedrock habit. We may even sink to the level of what psychologists call learned helplessness—we basically just give up.

As Jiang says:

I rejected my own ideas before they could be rejected by the world. Giving up at the first sign of rejection felt much safer than putting my ideas out there to be further criticized. It was so much easier to do the rejecting all by myself.

How to kick the door wide open

Deeply entrenched habits are extremely difficult to wrench out; just viewing a video or reading a book isn’t enough.  But one approach is to name it, tame it, and reframe it.

Step 1: Name it

The first step is to admit you have a problem, so here goes: I personally suffer from fear of rejection, which is kind of tough to admit publicly since I am supposed to be an invulnerable and infallible sales expert. In fact, to be perfectly candid, I am writing this just as much for myself as I am for any of my readers. But I think my readers will cut me some slack because they too suffer from it.

It’s natural. Fear of rejection is natural—just as natural as pre-speech jitters. So, if you fear rejection, it’s important to keep in mind that it does not contain any hidden meaning about your own personal worth. As a social species, our brains are hard-wired to fear rejection by our tribe, and that carries over to modern life in many different ways.

Step 2: Tame it

It’s not personal. Once you accept that it’s perfectly natural to fear rejection, you can then realize that your fear does not say anything about you personally. When we’re nervous about something, we tend to think it says something about us. But everybody is different, and there are unlimited reasons for why someone may reject your request, so the odds are extremely low that they are expressing a judgment about you personally. And even if they, are, so what? It’s only their opinion, and as Jiang says:

If I viewed other people’s opinions as the main judgment of merit— which is what I was doing when I took every rejection to heart— then my life would be a miserable mess. I’d be basing my self-worth, and even the course of my life, on the whims and judgments of other people.

There are no consequences. What is there to truly fear? If someone refuses to answer your email or LinkedIn message, have you truly hurt yourself? Are you suddenly on some cosmic blacklist that is going to keep you from ever working in that business again? Hardly. In fact, they most likely won’t even remember you.

You never know unless you ask. Jiang tells us that fewer than 45% of people have ever asked for a raise, which is a shame since statistically, 85% of people who do ask for raises get some sort of increase. (To be perfectly certain of my point I guess it would help find statistics on how many people got fired after asking for a raise—I bet it’s a tiny percentage.)

Step 3: Reframe it

For me, the most powerful words that Jiang writes are these:

Rejection is an experience that it is up to you to define. In other words, it means only what you choose it to mean. The relationship you have with a rejection can be negative or positive, and it all depends on which way you spin it for yourself.

The best way to conquer an enemy is to turn him into a friend, and that is exactly what Jiang demonstrated in his video and his book.[1] When you can view rejection as a positive, you can embrace it and get comfortable with it—even seek it out and make it a kind of game, as Jiang did.

There are at least three ways that rejection can be a positive:

Rejection makes you stronger. Rejection is painful and we all hate pain, right? Not always. When we work out, we willingly seek out pain because we know it means we’re strengthening our muscles. More reps mean more pain, but they also mean more gain. Similarly, you will be much more willing to knock on that door, pick up that phone or hit send on that email if you view it as a necessary repetition.

It may be counterintuitive, but if you go into it assuming you’re going to get rejected, you’re much more likely to make the attempt. And there’s always a chance you’ll get the added bonus of hearing a yes; it’s like suddenly being able to bench press 50 more pounds after a random rep.

Rejection provides feedback. Rejection can teach you a lot about what works and what doesn’t work, but only if you try to learn from it. That’s one reason that Jiang suggests always asking why every time you get a no:

There’s only an upside to asking “why.” After all, you have been rejected already. And the insight you might glean from the response you get could prove valuable. Indeed, asking “why” can even be a tool for turning a rejection into an acceptance.

Rejection fuels your motivation. Maybe this one isn’t for everyone, but I find that when people don’t reply to me, I get a little bit ticked off. Maybe that’s not right, and not too healthy for me, but when I get angry I tend to get more determined and more bold in my approach. One time years ago a high level prospect of mine asked me to call him at a certain time, but then ignored that call and two others. I finally fired off a polite but firm letter telling him he was just hurting himself by refusing to talk to me. I received a phone call within five minutes of hitting send and turned that call into one of my largest sales at the time.

In closing, you can conquer rejection fear, but it does take work. One of the best ways to work on it is to seek it out, by challenging yourself to make difficult requests of others. Here’s my next “rep” in my rejection workout:

I’m going to ask Jia to let me interview him for a podcast. He does not even know it yet; he doesn’t know I exist, so I truly don’t know what will happen, but there’s only one way to find out!

[1] You can see each one of his 100 Days of Rejection here.