1-Month Challenge
Read about Week 1 of Rejection Therapy and Week 2: Lessons in Rejection
On August 1st, I began one of my most daring experiments yet–Rejection Therapy. I first heard about Rejection Therapy from Jason Shen’s video at Ignite SF. The rules are simple: you have to get rejected at least once every day.
You’re probably wondering, “Why would anyone in their right mind actively seek rejection?” I gave this a lot of thought after I watched Jason’s video a couple months ago. It occurred to me that most often, we reject ourselves before we give anyone else a chance to reject us.
Life’s more fun when we take chances
I have definitely had these thoughts: “Oh, I can’t ask that.” “He probably has a girlfriend…I’m not even wearing makeup.” “I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable.” “I’m not good enough.” “I’ll look like an idiot.” And they often put my dreams or impulses on hold. Days turn into weeks, months, and shockingly into years.
To try and fail is perfectly alright, but I haven’t even tried on some of my biggest dreams and ambitions. This is my chance! I’m using August as a catapult for going after my dreams. I’ve rejected myself enough. Now it’s time for me to ask for what I really want. The worst they can say is no, and if they do, I’ve accomplished my goal for that day.
Will you join me? LET’S GET REJECTED!
I see one pitfall in your experiment. I think (and I may be wrong) for rejection to be real, you have to actually care. For example, I have the type of personality, where I can come up to anyone and say pretty much anything. So it wouldn’t really matter to me if someone rejected my advances. But it seems that it’s only therapeutic if it does matter. Seems to me it would be difficult to find someone to care about every day. I think walking up to strangers and starting a conversation at random is a good thing to practice (and it seems that’s what the experiment will entail), but I’m not so sure of the therapeutic effects of it.
On the other hand, stand on the street asking people to donate money for a cause, and you’ll fill your quota of rejection in an hour.
You bring up a good point, Vitaly. It’s important to care about the things you’re asking for during the experiment. If rejection doesn’t mean anything to you, then it would be moot point.
Most of the things I requested were directly related to dreams that mattered to me. As with all life experiments, you get what you put in. For most people rejection is a very real fear and by doing this experiment people can see that often times it’s an amorphous one and sometimes unfounded. Were you able to check out the post on what I learned from the experiment? https://6monthstolive.me/lessons-in-rejection/
That’s really interesting!
I like this idea~ I think I’ma use the rest of my August to try it out~
Awesome! Let me know how it goes! It’s officially been a week now, and I’ve had some pretty interesting experiences so far—will be sure to post them shortly!
This is great! It sounds terrifying which normally means it’s a must do 🙂
Haha. For sure! I’m a week in and have already had some amazing and at time “terrifying” experiences. Overall, it’s definitely worth it though. Will be writing a post soon talking about some of my experiences. Will you be joining us in getting rejected this month? 🙂
Awesome! So very excited to read about your experience!
This is a great experiment! One of my favorite quotes is by hockey player Wayne Gretzky “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Thank you! I like that quote! It’s absolutely true. Have you tried Rejection Therapy?
Not formally, but I faced it in sales and in dating if that counts. haha It’s always good to practice! What do we really have to lose?
it’s so hilarious, it takes the sting and fear right out of the matter…
Haha. It does indeed, Katie! Well, not all the fear. That still comes up, but you’d be amazed at how quickly you get used to it. I think I read somewhere once that if you’re not getting no’s, you’re not asking enough in your life.
What an interesting idea! Because rejection is something I still fear, daily. I’m going to consider trying this out…
How did it go for you, all in all?
It went really well, Laura! It definitely wasn’t always easy, but I was amazed at some of the opportunities that came from it and the top 3 lessons I learned: https://6monthstolive.me/lessons-in-rejection/ Let me know if you do it! I’m thinking of doing it again as a light to create some big dreams around the bend! 🙂