Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible

by Jia Jiang

When you are not afraid of rejection and it feels like you have nothing to lose, amazing things can happen.

I asked her to hire me as her personal assistant for one day.

learned that a smile and a positive attitude could be just as important to a person’s appearance as his or her natural looks.

Their responses reflected their own attitudes, sense of curiosity, and risk tolerance—which varied quite a bit among them. A lot of people—including my pre-rejection experiment self—might lose confidence in themselves after getting a few rejections. Every time they ask for what they want, they feel that the “universe” is making a unanimous judgment on their merits.

Their reactions to a certain request reveal much more about them than about the request itself. I started to realize that rejection is a human interaction, with at least two parties involved in every decision. When we forget this—and see the people who say yes or no to us as faceless machines—every rejection can feel like an indictment, and every acceptance like a validation. But that’s just not the case.

This job-seeking experience also sparked another paradigm shift. From that point on, rejection seemed less like “the truth” and more like an opinion.

Other people were simply processing my requests, then giving me their opinions. That opinion could be based on their mood, their needs and circumstances at that moment, or their knowledge, experience, education, culture, and upbringing over a lifetime. Whatever was guiding them at the time I entered their lives, these forces were usually much stronger than my presentation, my personality, or my request itself.

If I accepted every opinion equally and used it to judge the merit of something, not only would I change my mind constantly but I would probably eventually lose it.

The way someone feels about me, or about a request I’m making, can be impacted by factors that have nothing to do with me. If people’s opinions and behaviors can change so drastically based on so many different factors, why should I take everything about a rejection so personally? This simple but profound realization helped me to start taking the emotion out of rejection—and to look with new eyes at the decisions people make.

Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University. His bestselling books, Predictably Irrational and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty,

When I offered her an apple, she said: “OK, thanks!” She took the apple and walked away like nothing strange had happened. A couple of steps later, she bit into it. I almost fell to the ground as if I’d bitten a poisonous apple myself. How could anyone just eat food from a stranger without a second thought?

If a bad idea like eating unwrapped food from a stranger isn’t universally rejected, do universally rejected ideas even exist? And if not, maybe that means that the only reason you get rejected from things is because you haven’t met the right person to say it yet.

Through my rejection experiments, I began to realize that I could often get a yes simply by talking to enough people. Obviously, not every rejection attempt would ultimately yield a yes, especially some of the wackier ones. But I was surprised by how many times my persistence paid off—

But if acceptance is the only thing a person strives for, all she or he needs to do is to talk to enough people. Odds are that someone will eventually say yes.

authors who had believed so much in their work that they kept trying to find a publisher after so many painful rejections made me realize how important it was to believe in what I was doing. Rejection is human, is an opinion, and has a number. 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.

LESSONS 1. Rejection Is Human: Rejection is a human interaction with two sides. It often says more about the rejector than the rejectee, and should never be used as the universal truth and sole judgment of merit. 2. Rejection Is an Opinion: Rejection is an opinion of the rejector. It is heavily influenced by historical context, cultural differences, and psychological factors. There is no universal rejection or acceptance. 3. Rejection Has a Number: Every rejection has a number. If the rejectee goes through enough rejections, a no could turn into a yes.

The man rejected me not because he didn’t trust me or thought I was weird. He appreciated my offer, but it didn’t fit his situation. 2. He gave me a lead to another person who he knew might be much more open to my gift.

In the past, when I was rejected, I had automatically assumed that I’d done something wrong. But by spending a little more time with the man who initially turned me down, I’d discovered that what I was offering simply didn’t fit his situation. There was nothing personal about it;

There is a reason behind every decision that people make, whether it’s logical and well thought out or emotional and spur of the moment. Knowing the reason behind a rejection can help dissipate, or even dissolve, any of the pain one might feel otherwise.

Instead of setting my goals on only the specific thing that I’d gone in asking for, I reassessed my original request and asked for something less—in this case, something “like a McGriddles.” The clerk recognized my concession and met me halfway by offering a solution.

I had found (1) that if I kept insisting on getting what I wanted regardless of what the other person said, the other person would get annoyed and shut me down cold, and (2) that if I turned and fled, I would create a rout of my own making. In both situations, I would leave without getting what I wanted or needed,

If I could adjust my request and approach the “ask” from a different angle, something interesting and unexpected might happen—and it often did. For one rejection attempt, I tried to get a free room at a luxury hotel and was turned down flat. But after retreating to a lesser request, I wound up getting a tour of one of the hotel’s rooms and was allowed to take a nap on one of the hotel’s famously comfortable beds. During another rejection attempt, I walked into a local fire station and asked if I could slide down their fire pole. As it happened, the building had only one story, and there was no fire pole. So I again retreated to a lesser request—and soon found myself on a tour of the fire station, with the firefighter on duty as my personal tour guide. He even offered to let me ride on their fire truck.

In his classic book on psychology and communication, Influence, Robert Cialdini explains the effectiveness of making a concession and retreating to a lesser request after an initial rejection. He argues that because most people don’t want to feel like jerks, they are much less likely to say no the second time to the requester after the requester makes a concession. That’s why successful negotiations that result in win-win situations are usually the results of give-and-take rather than both parties digging in and refusing to compromise.

Every no is actually surrounded by a whole bunch of interesting but invisible yeses that it was up to me to uncover.

Looking back, the clerk had literally come out from behind the counter and over to my side so that we could share a common view of the situation. It wasn’t a you-vs.-me zero-sum game, but an us-vs.-them problem-solving game. Solving the problem was a win for both of us. Plus, he had given me an opening to create my own flavor if I met him halfway by bringing in my own ingredients. When

I feared rejection, it felt natural to view the people who hold the power to grant me a yes or a no as adversaries. But after I shifted that thinking and started viewing them as collaborators,

Arguing with a person who turns you down is probably the least effective way to change the individual’s response. In fact, it’s almost a sure way to get a rejection, because arguing always turns potential collaborators into enemies.

1. Ask “Why” Before Good-bye: Sustain the conversation after the initial rejection. The magic word is “why,” which can often reveal the underlying reason for the rejection and present the rejectee with the opportunity to overcome the issue. 2. Retreat, Don’t Run: By not giving up after the initial rejection, and instead retreating to a lesser request, one has a much higher chance of landing a yes. 3. Collaborate, Don’t Contend: Never argue with the rejector. Instead, try to collaborate with the person to make the request happen. 4. Switch Up, Don’t Give Up: Before deciding to quit or not to quit, step back and make the request to a different person, in a different environment, or under a different circumstance.

Since getting a yes involves persuasion, I vowed to not tune down the craziness of my request to make it easy. I didn’t want to get a yes by making a cheap, obvious request;

Instead, I wanted to see if I could uncover some principles that would make a yes more likely, no matter what kind of request it was attached to.

I offered the money to only five people. Here are the results: Person #1: She was very happy and kept saying, “That was very sweet of you!” She also offered to “give it to somebody, too,” when she saw a person in need. Person #2: She eyed me with some suspicion and asked me if there was a catch to my offer. After hearing that there was no catch, she smiled and took the money—but told me to come back and pick it up if I needed it. Person #3: He flatly refused the offer, saying, “I don’t need $5.” Before walking away, he pointed toward a nearby homeless shelter. “There are plenty of guys on the street who would die to have $5. Why don’t you give it to them?” Person #4: He asked me what the $5 was for. “Nothing,” I said. He walked away quickly. Person #5: She also asked me what it was for. Again, I said, “Nothing.” She laughed uncomfortably and walked away. In the end, two said yes, and three said no.

realize that asking people why after receiving a rejection helped me understand their reasoning and sometimes turn a no into a yes—or into an even more interesting offer.

explaining my why up front had a similar effect.

When she said, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?,” 60 percent of people allowed her to go ahead of them. When she added her reason, asking, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?,” her yes rate increased to 94 percent. In her third variation, she also gave a reason, but purposely designed it to be ridiculous: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” Shockingly, the number of people who accepted her request stayed about the same at 93 percent.

people’s responses to a request are deeply influenced by knowing there is a reason behind it, no matter what that reason is.

When I gave people a reason for my request, however far-fetched, I was far more likely to get a yes.

I offered wasn’t about me but more about them—the people to whom I was posing my requests?

If the why that I gave was more about meeting the other person’s interests and needs rather than my own, would that increase my chances of getting to yes?

“Yes, I’m sure you have cut hair from thousands of heads and you must be bored with your job and wondering what it’s like on the other side,” I said. “I can cut your hair and make sure you look good.” The hairdresser, who clearly took pride in her job, turned her smile into a frown faster than I could finish my sentence. “What do you mean I must be bored? I love my job!” she retorted.

But I hadn’t expected to be on the receiving end of a two-on-one confrontation. It was hard for me to keep calm amid all the name-calling and angry accusations. I tried to explain that all I wanted was to lighten the mood and make it fun, and I just wanted to cut even a strand of her hair.

But the real lesson was this: I didn’t really know the hairdresser’s interest and needs. Instead, I’d made some guesses in the moment that proved wildly incorrect. My manufactured reason had missed the mark by a mile.

realization that I hadn’t actually been thinking about the other person’s needs. I’d wanted this rejection attempt to be about her but really, I hadn’t proposed anything that might actually do her a favor. I was only asking to fulfill my own desire for a crazy request.

James Pennebaker, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, once conducted research on the way people use pronouns in their e-mails. He discovered that the more people use the pronoun “I,” the more likely they are telling the truth and

the more people use “you” or “he/she/they” as the subject of a sentence, the more likely they are...

When I’d asked to “borrow $100,” “get a burger refill,” or “play soccer in your backyard,” I hadn’t attempted to come up with reasons to demonstrate how saying yes would benefit the other person. People, in turn, said either yes or no, but no one felt upset or talked down to. By starting my request with “I,” I could ensure that others understood that I was asking them for a favor—not trying to do them a false favor that didn’t ring true.

But acknowledging what I was asking was strange seemed to put him at ease.

acknowledging other people’s doubts can help rather than hurt your cause. Demonstrating to Eric that I knew that my request was “weird” actually gave me a different kind of credibility. For one, it proved to him that I wasn’t crazy, and we were more or less on the same page. But it also revealed both honesty and empathy on my part, two feelings that are crucial to evoking trust.

But in most cases, other people’s doubts do not disappear by themselves. Instead, they can linger and are more likely to become the very reason for a rejection if you don’t take control of them.

bringing people’s doubt out in the open can be a powerful way to gain their attention, their trust, and often even their acceptance. It also has a way of diffusing the fear and the nerves that you feel when making a request. By being “real” and acknowledging the skepticism that other people might feel, you can help put them at ease, yourself at ease, and boost your credibility at the same time.

Of course, it is possible that if I do everything right to put myself in the right position, including giving my reason, starting with “I,” and acknowledging doubts, the other person could still reject me. Sometimes the other person will reject you no matter what, and sometimes he or she doesn’t want or need what you are offering.