By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear
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Or, to paraphrase many an artist and CEO: if I have not failed today, it means I have not been ambitious enough.
He makes the point that (IIRC) Michael Jordan made more last-minute, game-winning throws than anyone else on his team, but he also missed the most game-losing ones. He only excelled by overreaching.
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Willingness to fail is a precondition for learning and growth.
So here's my conundrum: one one hand, there's a fear of going beyond my comfort zone. On the other there's what appears to be (likely quite unjustified) confidence that I will not get rejected as I hope. And thus, stasis.
Was it Twain (or Groucho Marx?) who said "I don't want to become part of any club that will happily take me as their member"? That's quite a problem for me, and it's not as devastating as general fear of approaching people, but still quite annoying.
My philosophy on failure is a little different. I re-frame my actions as experiments. I come up with a hypothesis, and record the conditions and outcome of my experiments, then do a little mini-analysis on the results to try and understand it. Rather than view getting the outcome I wanted as success, I view learning from the experiment as a success, which is great, because you typically aren't in control of the outcome of events, but you absolutely are in control of how methodical you are. This also causes you to learn a lot faster than you otherwise would, which is great too.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they do, but then I wouldn't be if they were more than averagely depressed, either.
Surely someone must have looked into this.
Largely, my observation of them wasn't that they're particularly thick skinned, nor were they particularly desensitized to rejection. The thing that most of them had in common was that they weren't emotionally bound to the outcome. They didn't care if the person said yes or no - except for the endorphin kick they got when they saw their pay cheque get bigger. For most of them, it was a game they played against each other - in the same way you might enjoy a board game and you strive to win, but the real fun is the camaraderie of the players.
A rejection got a shoulder shrug and a "whatever, next" or a few choice curse words and the finger when the sales person wasted more time than necessary for a sale that never came before quickly moving on to the next call - the previous call forgotten as quickly as the next, unless the conversation was particularly humorous or worth sharing with their compatriots.
Those with no scruples learned to manipulate people really well and got the sales by whatever means necessary. Those that cared got sales by listening to the customer and understanding the customer's needs. Mostly though, almost without exception, those with the most sales were those that got through the highest volume phone calls in a day. The success rate could be skewed to have a higher ratio of sales to calls, but at the end of the day, that took emotional effort and didn't really yield any extra benefit to the sales person - of course, this potentially had a huge negative affect on the reputation of the company. I see the same thing with all the utility companies. Their sales teams are often the first point of contact for a customer. But the sales guys don't care about that, all they care about are the numbers. The rest is for customer service to figure out.
The lesson I learned from watching the sales guys in action is that all things considered equal, the greater the volume of calls, the greater your success. Don't be emotionally involved in the outcome before it's necessary to do so - at the end of the day, you're just asking her to come for coffee with you, you're not asking her to marry you. The more people you ask to go for coffee, the more chance you'll find someone that's got nothing better to do than go for coffee with you - even if you do think they're out of your league (that's another concept I don't believe in, but that's for another day and another post).
Of course, you can't really know what their qualifications are. Only they know, and they're going to run deeper than first impressions. So no, they're not out of your league yet!
Just because they're not your cup of tea, or vice versa doesn't make them out of your league, they just make that person different than you. People are people, we all eat, drink, shit and do what we have to do to survive. Even the most "successful" CEO, the Queen of England and the person living on the street has the same basic needs. Everything else is a by-product of our circumstance and the way we choose to live our lives.
Anyway, we're getting off-topic ;)
I think when people say that, it's typically along the lines of "that person is very [attractive|smart|rich|combo] and could have any of millions of partners at will. I'm unremarkable in all [perceivable|probably-important-to-them] ways, so it's an extreme longshot to pursue them."
Doesn't mean they're not wrong. Everyone has a chance, sure--Beauty and the Beast, right? But they might want to optimize for "people in their league," especially if the fear of rejection is in them like the guy in OP.
...back on topic!
I think folks should try not to worry about that too much: http://imgur.com/gallery/eo5oq
The real trick is to optimize what's important to you and realize that most of the stuff that society/the media would have you think is important is really just meaningless shit. What matters is your connection with each other, do you have complementary perspectives, goals, motivations, desires and dreams? Do you make each other laugh? Do you enjoy each others company? The rest is just superficial nonsense.
I was shaking the first time I did it, and trying to direct the person to the email address for support. But I was a lot better the next time.
I wasn't assigned to it, I was just nearest the phone, and the phone was ringing and had to be answered, so I answered it.
Yes. Martin Seligman has done research (or at least reported the reasearch) on this and there is a full chapter about people doing cold calls in his "Learned Optimism" book.
It worked surprisngly well. I got over my fear and was quite amazed at my success rate. IIRC it was around 25%, maybe even higher.
It was important to not be creepy, just friendly and withdraw if the situation became at all uncomfortable.
100% of the women he didn't ask did not give him his number. The exercise served the purpose of pushing him past the fear that would have otherwise paralyzed him during a real request.
Yes, the exercise anecdotally served the purpose of improving his confidence. But no, your assumption that he would be unable to ask for a number he really wanted is unfounded and has nothing to do with your false analogy.
Not if he has social anxiety.
More to brazzy's point, SeanDav doesn't get to decide how he comes across to people. Pretty young women get hit on constantly and it is really exhausting and demoralizing to be rudely interrupted every five minutes while out in public, by people who pretend to be friendly but clearly have ulterior motives. The girl - who was, by definition, interrupted for the umpteenth time that day - likely considered the interruption unpleasant and at least somewhat creepy. Withdrawing "if the situation becomes uncomfortable" is taking it many, many steps too far and is frankly wishful thinking - people in general, and girls especially, are not socialized to tell people to f--ck off right away so by the time the situation is so uncomfortable that the girl actually asks you to leave her alone, it is way past discomfort for her.
Not to mention that if all you really want to do is practice free-throws, you don't need to bust your way into the most elite basketball court to do it. Nothing wrong with practicing within your league. Why couldn't he get phone numbers from unattractive girls, or boys?
When women want attention, they dress attractively. When they don't want attention, they dress casually. It's just like birds. Ever wonder why they call it the birds and the bees? If you're a guy and you hit on women in sweatpants, you'll most likely fail, b/c those women are not signalling their availability and interest.
And before someone goes all "women should be able to dress however they want and not get raped," consider that I'm not advocating rape. I'm pointing out that the previous poster asked "attractive" women for their phone numbers, not every woman. Logically, this implies that he was asking women who were seeking attraction by dressing attractively and presenting themselves as available and seeking mates, just like birds who sing to signal their availability.
The reason everyone confuses attractiveness is that our media present it as a thing that you have or don't. "Movie stars have it, computer nerds don't." But the real truth is that attractiveness is something you do. When you want to "get out there," to signal your availability and interest in mating, you do attractiveness. It doesn't matter how fat or pimply you are: You adorn yourself, you clean yourself, wear fancy clothes, you grab attention, you impress people, try hairstyles. Once you're married, reproducing, dropping kids off in a minivan on Saturday morning, you wear sweatpants and other casual clothes and no one (except social retards, of which there are unfortunately plenty) hits on you. Or else if you miss that egoistic feeling of being attractive, you dress up a little bit and reject all the people that hit on you.
This is how it works. It's just one step advanced from non-speaking mammals. Political correctness is just an attempt to cover up the realities that not everyone understands, just like religion and the Republican party are shorthand behaviors/scripts for people to follow when they don't know exactly what to do.
Hm, the male gaze is heavy with this one. Has it ever occurred to you that people (of whatever gender) might like to put on clothes to please themselves? Because it makes them feel nice? Your assumption that the only possible reason to do that could be to "show availability" and that it was done with other people, and their regard, in mind, is awfully egocentric of you.
Incidentally, i agree with your thesis that attractiveness isn't a have/have not thing, nor is it about normative tastes with regards to appearance. This is, however, orthogonal to whether or not women exist simply to mate with, and that they signal this by clothing choices (which is what you're implying, by denying that anyone would dress a certain way for other reasons).
"Not doing anything at all" seems unrealistic, in a world where males are essentialized as the pursuers and women as the pursued, an unfortunate but for now real state of affairs.
"Simply will yourself to normalcy!" is almost offensive to me, since it simultaneously ignores the lived experience of the person feeling it and puts moral censure on the addressee--if there's some issue X in your life, it's entirely your fault. It's like telling someone that the only reason they aren't financially successful is that they're lazy.
I'm all ears, seriously, especially after the Scott Aaronson/Alexander debacle a couple weeks ago. It seems like a real issue in our society.
1) Do not limit yourself to only the prettiest girls. The whole beautiful girl/rich guy dichotomy is ugly. Do you want to be seen as a full-spectrum human being and not just a walking wallet? Then see girls as full-spectrum human beings and not just tits on legs.
2) For god's sake, do not set up a lose-lose situation for the other person. SeanDev's practice method has two possible outcomes: if the girl does not like him, well then he just added to the endless stream of go-nowhere "sales calls" that she has to answer all day long; but if she does like him, then she feels sad and disappointed that he didn't call for a date. The whole thing is just so... disingenuous and defeatist.
3) Practice in an environment where girls are actually looking to meet guys. Dating sites is one obvious example, bars is another. Ambushing women as they go about their daily business is problematic. Human interactions are complex and there are no scripts but the closer you can get to implied consent the better.
3a) It's hard for anyone to meet sexually/intellectually/temperamentally compatible people on the street. I am a conventionally attractive woman; I've been approached on the street probably over 10,000 times (a totally unscientific but conservative back-of-the-envelope estimate) and I can tell you that it's never led to anything. Bars and parties have better outcomes, and being out and about doing fun stuff has yet better outcomes. For example yoga and volunteering are over-run by women, at least in cities where I've lived.
4) The initial conversation with someone you want to get with is no different than the initial conversation with someone you have no interest in getting with. I think that's the hardest thing for some guys to wrap their head around, hence all the weird "cheat codes for women" floating about. Social anxiety is a real thing but there is no rule that you need to hit on the prettiest girl in the room to get over it. I've practiced my social skills on strangers that I have no interest in, and it's helped me a lot. Granted my social anxiety is not very high to begin with - if yours is debilitating, see a doctor, it's treatable!
Speaking of social anxiety. I don't want to re-open the whole Scott Aaronson debacle either but since you mentioned him I'd like to point out that he actually went to a physician to request castration as a solution to his social anxiety issues so we are talking about an exceptionally disturbed individual who attempted a full-on sexual suicide. The vast majority of people - men and women both - are not looking to "kill" themselves so I think it's superfluous to bring him into this discussion. I don't mean that as a jab, I just mean that it is unhelpful to mentally lump yourself in with someone like SA.
A charitable assumption is that he thought approaching unattractive women wouldn't sufficiently affect his anxiety when speaking to attractive women and decided the benefit for him would outweigh the aggregate cost for them. As for asking men for their phone numbers, I assumed he either never considered it or feared being attacked in response (reasonably).
Holy hyperbole. I have two sisters that are very pretty and their chief complaint growing up was that men were too intimidated by them and never hit on them.
As a 6'7" man I cannot walk anywhere without being "rudely interrupted" as you say by people bringing up my height. It's the same old thing - "Wow, you're tall!" "Did you play basketball?" "How tall are you?" "Are your parents tall?" "Hey Giant" "Hey Too Tall" "Hey Stretch". Unlike you though I don't think it's rude. I think it's an attempt to initiate a conversation.
I think you're taking those staged "street harassment" videos too seriously.
So since it's not hyperbole, let's figure you were in public an hour a day in your twenties. That is 1 hour x 365 days x 10 years. So you were in public an estimated 3,650 hours during that decade. There are 12 five minute increments per hour, so that means you were hit on 43,800 times in your 20s. And that's only if you were in public an hour a day which is probably a fraction of reality! It's much more likely you've been hit on by literally hundreds of thousands of men if you weren't just making "exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally" (i.e. the definition of hyperbole if you were unaware).
You poor thing, you must make Helen of Troy look like a hag.
Your Helen of Troy put-down has nothing to do with my comment. If I were to say that I get hundreds of spam emails every day, it would be a statement of fact, not a claim that I am so rich that I make King Midas look destitute. You don't have to look like the most beautiful woman in history to get hit on, you just need to be conventionally attractive and physically present.
Isn't it sad that the womens' fathers treated their mothers like inanimate objects when they courted them for marriage (or whatever level of relationship led to child-bearing that produced those women ) ?
Those mothers-to-be did not choose to participate in the fathers-to-be's practice, and it was not cost-free for them to be used and courted that way.
Those mothers-to-be were exhaustedly and demoralizingly and rudely interrupted, perhaps as often as every 5 minutes (although there are no sources to back this up) while out in public, by people who pretended to be friendly but had ulterior motives. Those mothers-to-be considered that interruption unpleasant and at least somewhat creepy, even though that awful inappropriate experience actually led to a couple who created a new generation of human beings for the world.
Those mothers-to-be were not socialized to tell those fathers-to-be to f-ck off right away, otherwise they wouldn't have had (at least some) lifelong relationships that produced children. Some of those mothers-to-be were certainly made extremely uncomfortable. How dare those fathers-to-be take action on their biological instincts?!?
Many friends of mine have met their significant others through spontaneous interactions like this. It's not as uncommon as you'd think.
Why couldn't he get phone numbers from unattractive girls, or boys?
Are you serious? This is rather insulting to so-called "unattractive" girls.
And how is that relevant in a thread about someone who collects women's phone numbers and then does NOT actually call them?
This is rather insulting to so-called "unattractive" girls.
Yes. Which is why I pointed that out. Read the whole exchange please.
Fear of rejection is fear of having what you already have, nothing (and maybe a bit of ridicule laid on top).
What he's really doing is using interaction with women as practice to be better at interaction with women.
I'm not really sure how else he should do it.
Maybe he could have established friendships with them, and "used" them even further?
Specifically, by learning to not care about the women in question or the interactions.
This is why comparing talking to people with shooting freethrows is goddamn weird. People are not basketball rims. The basketball rim lacks subjective experience.
e: The reliable indicator that you're weirding out some random woman is that you're not in a single's bar and acting like your trying to have sex with her.
Well, at least some fear of rejection is fuelled by caring too much. 'If I ask her out and she says no then she'll hate me and they'll hate me and I'll hate me and I'll want to die and I'll curl up into a ball and retreat from the world and die!'
Sometimes one does have to learn to care a little bit less, in order to get the chance start to learn how to genuinely care for the real person, not the made-up person in one's mind.
"Mark Moschel - 30 Days of Rejection Therapy"
Presented at the 2013 Quantified Self Conference
Now that I'm thinking about it, opposite is probably the wrong word...it's more of the reverse. Whereas the man in the story is using the game to condition himself to learn that there's no (emotional) shock where one is expected, the dog trainers use exposure therapy to train dogs that there is a shock where one isn't expected. They're two sides of the same coin.
I wonder how often it is successful.
But I guess to your point, if that happened then structures of society would break down. Still, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing necessarily since at the very least we'd start being completely honest with one another. Kind of makes me thing of the movie The Invention Of Lying.
The key to motivation is to make a psychological bridge between things that you don't want to do and the emotional state that releases neurological chemicals that in turn make you feel happy.
Your comment reminds me of myself when I used to claim marketing doesn't work on me, and that it even made me less likely to buy things. And then found out about the brown bag effect (a marketing technique which uses drab colors and minimal text to look non-flashy). Gamification isn't as developed a science as marketing, but it still works pretty well, and it's very unlikely that it doesn't work on you.
Fair play to him though.
Coming out of any multi-year relationship is normally a shock to the system. The wonderful whiff of want is the fiercest anti-pheromone.
Also, a good tip, put a rug on the floor.
I thought maybe it was a quote, but google has only indexed this page for "wonderful whiff of want."
You coined a phrase, anyway!
I don't have much fear of rejection nowadays. I consistently choose the most difficult life decisions because I like challenges.
Everyone does that to some extent (including me) but there are many levels. Some people don't think even at the most trivial levels...
For example, if someone identifies as a 'Geek' - They will often convince themselves that they like Star Wars, Legos, Sci-Fi, comic books, etc... But in reality, they really never actually gave these topics any thought based on their own individual merits.
Maybe I'm an asshole, but I genuinely prefer to just sit alone and think about things than talk to people I find boring, even if they have yet another funny story about something to do with fishing that's slightly different than the others.
This isn't to say I don't go to the bar and chat up people in small time windows, I just don't bother to spend several hours talking to someone I don't find interesting.
I don't see why I should use my time that way.
What is it you prefer to think about rather than reach out and make a meaningful connection with others?
Enjoying a challenge doesn't mean doing stuff you don't enjoy. You might like hanging out with people, but not everyone is the same. That's okay.
Sometimes the most difficult thing is to go out of our comfort zone. I'm guessing that's what you want to here from this community, and I'd say it's true. I did the same thing in high school, but I did have a core group of friends who got me (they didn't even attend my hs). My advice is to seek out people who's friendship will last beyond your current situation and who are easy for you to talk to. Difficult people to talk to are important but they aren't the ones we latch onto thought life.
Also, sometimes the hardest thing for me is to talk to people who I think are not as smart as I am, but everyone knows something you don't, even if that is what is fissionable. And who knows you might find someone with common interests, or who wants to talk to you about your game.