The Rejection Therapy Challenge: Final Review

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.

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.

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.

> 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...

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.

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

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