Another curious soul experiments with Rejection Therapy | Hacker News Reader

Another curious soul experiments with Rejection Therapy

rejection.posterous.com

56 pointsbriannac61 comments

I could see this as being useful for the horribly timid, but it would be annoying if it was employed by the general population. There is the underlying idea that if you aren't being rejected, then you aren't asking for enough.

I know plenty of self-centered people who ask for too much and people oblige them. Do we really need to celebrate this? Every person doing this is putting at least 30 people into the somewhat awkward situation of having to reject someone. I know I don't particularly like having to tell people "no, you can't do/have that".

How about a therapy where instead of asking for our every whim to be satisfied until someone says no, we spend 30 days thinking about what the people around us would want? Perhaps we can call it Empathy Therapy and start a blog movement!

Although… on second thought, it would be good training for startup founders.

See above. I'm a startup founder as of the day before I started this posterous, and am counting on it to be excellent training.

This does pretty heartily violate Kant's categorical imperative.

That depends on how you look at it. In my philosophy, it is close to axiomatic that free exchanges leave both parties better off. Therefore, any commitment strategy which increases the number of exchanges is a win. If everybody simultaneously implemented it, it would just be a bigger win. The most obvious way to disagree would be to say that the psychic transactional cost involved in rejecting an exchange swamps the value of increased trade, which is almost exactly the pathology the therapy seeks to go after.

The world is an eighth grade dance writ large, where he's too shy and she's too afraid of being forward, and both parties are a wee bit worse off for having been alone in the corner when they could have been dancing.

In my philosophy, it is close to axiomatic that free exchanges leave both parties better off.

In externally quantifiable terms, that's something I think, too. However, there are so many personal examples where it's not really true that I'm beginning to wonder about it. For example, when a pretty girl comes up to me (as in the linked blog) and asks me for something I would be reluctant to provide her with, the very act of asking me has already made me worse off. At this point, it's true, I can make myself better off than I now am by doing whichever I would really prefer, but I would be better off still had she not asked.

In what way has the very act of asking made you worse off?

Because the outcomes available to me have reduced from the three: "continue as before", "disappoint [person] in front me", or "feel upset about giving someone X when I would have preferred not to", to only the last two. The first option, which could well have been the best outcome in my opinion, has been removed by the act of asking.

Edit: changed the other individual to "person" to be clearer.

Well the pretty girl wasn't going to sleep with you anyway...perhaps you just need more practice talking to pretty girls until you realize they're mostly just regular people, too. I say this as someone who used to have the same problem.

The "pretty girl" is just the example we're using from the post. I've changed this to make it clearer for you.

Thanks.

What about politely refuse and still feel good (or, feel as before) and let person take care of their own disappointment or not?

Because I do not want to become a person who doesn't care about his effect on others.

If you think your refusal makes them sad, do you think you have a kind of telepathy? Isn't believing you control the outside world with your mind an indication of schizophrenia?

Is this really the path you want to go down?

It's an illustration by absurdity that your thoughts are limiting you and making you unhappy, and that there are other ways to think which are still compatible with being a good person and a moral person.

For as long as you hold in your head the belief that your refusal is what hurts people then you are going to be unhappy about being asked questions.

If instead you held the belief that their expectations and demands in their head is what hurts them, then you would be free to accept or refuse politely and in good conscience, and still be able to be a person who "considers how he affects others".

The fact that you cannot consider saying no is what makes a joke out of your comment "I don't want to be a person who doesn't care about his effect on others". At the moment you are forced to accept regardless of whether you care or not. Caring doesn't come into it, they ask and you force yourself to accept, you don't get to choose or consider.

If you didn't force yourself to accept because you were no longer afraid that it was you hurting them, then you would be free to consider their request unpressured and respond however you felt like at the time, but still respond based on your morals and so on.

At the moment you say you are someone who cares, but you act in a way that you ignore your consideration and decisions and marginalise your caring making it subservient to a fixed instruction. You say you don't want to be someone who doesn't care, but changing that part of you would free you up to be someone who can care and isn't forced to act one way or the other.

You seem to be implying that there is no such thing as a bad attempt at a trade. This would probably be true if all trades were rational but I am saying that the very act of asking for a trade biases it to going through, even if it is a bad trade for the person being asked.

This is because there is a social pressure to comply. My point is that you shouldn't be afraid to ask for something, but you should be aware of the line when you're taking advantage of a person. That line is gray and usually culturally defined.

Kants imperative was never very useful in the first place - there is nothing wrong with lying to prevent a murder.

Another way of thinking about this is to ask about things that benefit the other person.

It gets complicated, because I might assign a utility of greater than $8 for a cab ride, if it appeared that I was helping a person that fit a particular stereotype of people I want to help. However, I think lying was probably taking that example too far.

The point here is not to get rejected, it just gives you a place to stop. The point here is to learn how to talk to people more than rejection.

You're iterating approaches until you build a set of rules on what works and what doesn't.

For me, I found something like this useful. I never aimed for rejection, I just aimed to be more and more social.

I like your sentiment. The thing is, it's a lot easier to shoot for a concrete goal "get rejected" than for a fuzzy one "be more social". Also, you don't know what your true limits are until you hit them. I think she's going for it in the right way (asking for things you want and not being cruel). - a 30 day rejection therapy survivor. =)

Also this is exploiting someone's inability to say 'no' and goodwill. Since I'm one who finds it difficult to say NO and would do things just for the sake of goodwill, I think this is too cruel to be done on purpose. Just how I think of it :).

"I know plenty of self-centered people who ask for too much and people oblige them. Do we really need to celebrate this?"

This is Steve Jobs in a nutshell. And, yes, we celebrate him enormously.

> There is the underlying idea that if you aren't being rejected, then you aren't asking for enough.

I don't think that's the underlying idea at all.

Rejection therapy is targeted at people who take rejection too personally. The idea is that if rejection is your goal, you can experience it in a way that isn't so debilitating, and stop being afraid to express what you really want.

> Every person doing this is putting at least 30 people into the somewhat awkward situation of having to reject someone. I know I don't particularly like having to tell people "no, you can't do/have that".

This is exactly the same problem, but from the other side! Just as a person shouldn't be so deathly afraid of rejection, a person shouldn't have such a problem saying "no" if the answer is no. If that didn't feel so awkward, then the self-centered people you mention would stop being obliged by weak people who are afraid to say no.

But then you're playing a stupid double bluff where on one side people want things but are too afraid to ask and on the other people want to refuse things but are too afraid to say no and both sides are unhappy, but at least they're both upholding some arbitrary ideal of politeness, that's the most important thing!

I think you might be missing the point. It's funny that she got a free cab ride or a forklift driving lesson, but the fact that men are caving to her is making her task harder, not easier.

Thanks, tptacek - I'd like to clarify my motivations behind this blog.

I'm not doing this to celebrate being rude, or being self-centered - it's about exploring my boundaries. I explicitly list in my rules that I shouldn't be cruel, or put people in particularly uncomfortable situations. My entire life I've placed rules around myself where there often are none (not talking to well-known entrepreneurs, for example, simply because I'm intimidated), and I'd like to change that.

As for po's other comment ("Although... on second thought, it would be good training for startup founders"), it's funny you should say that. I started this therapy the day after a partner and I decided to start a company, so this is an exercise not just for personal improvement but, in theory, professional improvement as well. I want to be able to take advantage of all of the opportunities ahead (talking to investors or reaching out to potential partners), instead of being intimidated or too timid upon approach.

And a couple of things to end this with: 1) I'll definitely try harder to ask for things from women rather than men, as the commenters pointed out 2) I should have / could have paid the cab driver at the end, to thank him for the help

Interesting discussion! These comments are in and of themselves continuing the rejection process (this life-on-display is a new experience for me, too) and I'm hoping for this to be a reasonably positive experience for everyone involved.

I commented before going to bed (I'm on tokyo time) so I missed a lot of the developing commentary here. As I said, I think this could be useful to overcome a specific personality flaw. I think a lot of us here can probably identify with growing up with too many rules and boundaries. I definitely have to push myself to be less concerned with what people think of me.

I'm happy to have helped by rejecting your idea. :-) Although it was online so it's was far too easy on my part. To be frank, if you had told me your idea in person, I would have either picked up that you feel inhibited by your boundaries or I would have thought to myself "What a self-centered jerk" and said nothing.

Maybe my opinion of this is being colored by living in Japan. Most Japanese will never outright reject you and you have to pay close attention to make sure you're not overstepping social bounds. I've seen so many foreigners who live and work here completely oblivious to these cues and it only serves to ostracize them. On the other hand, they have a completely different startup culture and that strategy doesn't cut it in NYC.

I guess my advice is to practice letting go of inhibition but also practice the other side of the equation: empathy. You're probably already good at the empathy part. It would be too easy to deal with rejection by simply putting on blinders.

All of this talk of rejection, empathy, letting go, etc… reminds me of buddhism.

(P.S. my sister is a reliability test engineer at a forklift company and she had to get licensed to drive them)

As an entrepreneur, perhaps not pay the fare at the end but pay ten times the fare, to compensate him for having taken a big risk with uncertain reward, which benefited you. Same idea as offering equity which multiplies the investment if successful to those who join your start up early on.

Those who take risks that are successful should not be rewarded on a 1:1 basis as if they had not taken the risk.

I don't think it should be uncomfortable to reject anyone, either. Being unable to reject inappropriate advances implies poor boundaries just as much as making the inappropriate advances in the first place.

The problem is, that the other person doesn't get to chose to participate in your game - regardless if he/she is comfortable with rejecting people or not.

If a person is walking around in the outside world, someone will sooner or later make some kind of large or small request of them. I can't see it as a terrible imposition for that person to be you.

I know plenty of self-centered people who ask for too much and people oblige them.

That brings on the next step: "rejecting therapy" - teaching accommodating people to say no.

I like this idea actually. I'm getting better at it after being forced into it in a way after getting frustrated with a few clients. Feature creep and all that fun stuff

such greedy persons like the blog author do take away resources they don't really need from people who may really need them.

For example, cab drivers' kindness to the people in need is a limited resource as the drivers just can't give free rides to everyone. The free ride the girl took may have been given to somebody who really lost wallet and/or may be in emergency, etc...

It bugs me when I read these Rejection Therapy stories and I see them using it as an excuse to be a jerk, like lying to a taxi driver and asking for a free fare.

In one of the other stories, they said that it's about making a human connection with people you otherwise wouldn't have. I think that's a beautiful idea, and makes me want to try it. But this "I'm going to try to exploit your goodwill and see if I can get away with it" thing? No thanks.

It's hard not to notice that 1) she's a young, attractive, and seemingly friendly female, 2) she only tells of approaching guys, and 3) she doesn't seem to be asking for anything outlandish or threatening. Small wonder she's had a hard time getting rejected.

You're going to make those types of generalizations based on a blog that just started and has two posts?

Hey, it's tough being an upper-class white male, y'know? ;)

Yes, and now she has a lunch date with a young, wealthy and attractive male who probably has few opportunities to meet an appropriate partner and yet who is perfectly staged to find a mate.

So seems that things are working precisely as they should.

isn't levchin dating/engaged/married to Nellie Minkova?

I agree with giardini, this seems to be the point. A lot of people are simply too shy to go after what they want, reframing these interactions where 'failure' is 'success' is enormously helpful for those people as it turns the interaction into win win. You've either got a date with someone or you're one step farther along in Rejection Therapy. I think for the people who benefit from Rejection Therapy it's a mistake to think they are celebrating narcissism.

Max Levchin's married (and, judging by his Quora questions of late, also has a kid.) The lunch is purely professional.

Duly noted. :) I'll be focusing on being rejected by women in the future.

Uh, the first person mentioned in the blog is the woman at the jeans store.

And she did ask to drive someone's forklift.

You know, I don't go around asking people for things, but I have noticed that men generally have better boundaries than women, not worse, and usually are better at setting limits. I get offered a lot of rides home (because I live without a car). Women routinely bend over backwards to offer to make permanent arrangements to shuttle me back and forth to work and ask me things like "when do you normally leave for work?" or "when do you typically get off work?" Men don't make offers like that. In fact, men will say "I can drop you a mile down the road at the next light" and thus only take me part way home, whereas no woman has ever made me an offer like that. Women typically feel compelled to drop me at my doorstep. In contrast, there are two different men who, when they pick me up, frequently drop me at the entrance to my apartment complex. I'm fine with that. There is only one woman who has started doing that and she is much more apologetic.

(And, yes, I am a woman -- not young but people routinely misread my age as roughly five years younger than I really am. As for attractive, er, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" -- some folks think 'yes' others clearly think 'no'.)

I started the 30 day challenge yesterday and I was surprised a) how hard it was to get out of my comfort zone and b) how hard it was to actually get rejected.

It wasn't until the end of the day when I finally got a headshake of disapproval and got my rejection.

I imagine it'd be even tougher for a cute and innocent looking girl to get rejected. Good luck to her!

Dont worry. Try asking the set of people a few more times for favors. They will quickly learn to reject your requests out of hand ;)

sometimes it is just easier to grant a small favor to a jerk than to spend any mental energy rejecting/arguing with him.

The most important safety rule on the road - "yield to the moron".

The cab thing is basically taking advantage of being a girl.

Maybe we need a 'Say No Therapy' too.

EDIT: I also think it's unfair to say the OP is taking advantage of being a girl. If the OP is being honest in her account, she legitimately believed the cabbie would say No. It's naive to think just because you think being a girl means she can get her way means the OP believes the same.

Yes I see your point. What occurred to me is that what she has learned in that specific case, of getting a free cab fare worth $30 or $60, is something that many attractive young women learn about men. Knowing how to work it and being able to can be a ego booster as long as one is young and attractive. It is not however necessarily something that benefits the world, nor is it necessarily good for the person in the long run as their beauty fades and they find men are not as accommodating. The lessons learned in this specific situation, while important, are not the same as the general lessons of "rejection therapy" where one learns to take more risks as a life hack. Once the learning branches into getting free stuff because one is a pretty girl, then it's really a different issue. My observation is that free cab fare just for asking is something that is not available to men. To make sure, I even tried it out last night and was told "GFY" by the cabbie. I'll keep trying on occasion, but I am pretty sure I am right that this one has a strong gender age and looks component to how it works.

Also, want to make clear the cab was the only one I felt this was the driving factor since it was a pretty expensive free gift for a businessman to just hand over to anyone. The forklift lessons were a pretty good and reasonable one since it's not a common request, you learn a useful skill, and the driver often will enjoy it as well so that all parties benefit. In my opinion, the sorts of deals one wants to work with their confidence and curiosity are ones that benefit all parties, and not only one sided.

Again, if we trust the OP in their account the only reason she asked for the ride was because she expected the cabbie to say no. I hope she doesn't see this as an indication that she deserves free cab rides.

Btw, not sure where you live but it must be McRichVille if a 20 minute walk is a $30 - $60 cab ride.

An interesting experiment done more than 30 years ago and the impact in their lives: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E4DF1130F...

That is extremely interesting, the experiment finding out that the effect on the person asking the favor was the most striking dynamic of all.

I still don't understand this whole thing - I get rejected multiple times a day all the time! For god's sake, what's a hacker good for if not for being socially inept?

Many shy people tend to avoid situations where they think they may get rejected. I think the point of the experiment is to show them that they could be happier / better off if they didn't take rejections so personally / weren't afraid of getting rejected.

This seems like a situation where the one would have to be very careful to adhere to the spirit rather than the letter of the challenge. The possible positive outcomes are really great though. I've often been pleasantly surprised (even overwhelmed) at how far people are willing to go to help me, often at great trouble to themselves.

because people think that you really need what you're asking for. By asking without need, you're exploiting the human species community safety net. Only a jerk would reject a request for help, and only a jerk would exploit that situation.

I suppose rejection therapy using internet personals every day would be way too easy!

Are you free for lunch on Thursday? Your treat,

Has anyone tried Feynman's not so subtle approach: "Will you sleep with me tonight?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility explains social rejections

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