On Embracing Rejection

This Week’s Topic: Rejection Therapy

Before we jump into this week’s topic, I have good news and bad news 📰

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And now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

1 Strategy 🎯 

What is your earliest memory of feeling rejected?

For me, it was when I was 12 years old.

I was bowling with some friends, when a group of girls around our age showed up and started bowling a few lanes over.

There were four us, and seven of them.

At some point, the alpha female of the girl gang walked over, explained that she and her friends thought we were cute, and proceeded to hand her and her friend’s phone numbers to everyone in our group.

Everyone but me.

It stung 🐝

Now it’s just a funny coming of age story, but at the time it was an emotionally painful experience that I carried with me for weeks.

Rejection can be painful.

It’s also a requirement for personal and professional growth that can help you become a more resilient and confident leader.

Let’s talk about rejection:

• Why it hurts 🤕

• Why so many of us avoid it at all costs 🏃‍♂️

• How to buffer yourself against the negative effects of rejection when it inevitably happens 💪

An Evolutionary Perspective

There’s a common saying among anthropologists.

“A lone baboon is a dead baboon.”

This statement applies to you and I too.

Human beings are highly social creatures, and our very survival depends on our ability to build and maintain strong, cooperative relationships with others.

Throughout most of human history, to be shunned from the tribe was a death sentence. And when we experience rejection, it sends an alert:

⚠️“DANGER! YOU’VE BEEN SHUNNED BY THE TRIBE!⚠️

The regions of our brain that process rejection are not particularly sophisticated. They’re more like light switches than dimmer switches. And this primal area of our brain has not adapted to the complex social hierarchies of modern society.

It’s not uncommon for micro-rejections, like someone refusing to let us merge into traffic, to get interpreted by our brain as far more threatening than it actually is.

And it’s no coincidence that we use phrases like “a slap in the face” or “a kick in the gut” to describe how it feels to be rejected.

We know from the research that social rejection manifests as real physical pain - no different from the pain we experience when we stub our toe.

In one experiment, researchers invited three participants to toss a ball back and forth in a virtual reality environment, while the researchers measured their brain activity. The twist was that only one of the participants was being studied. The other two were research assistants.

After a few tosses, the two research assistants would begin tossing the ball back and forth among themselves, excluding the third person from the activity.

For most participants, a few minutes of being ignored resulted in increased activity in the same regions of the brain that light up when we experience physical pain.

Building Resilience Through Rejection Therapy

If you find you’re particularly sensitive to rejection, avoidance is the worst strategy.

Rejection is a fact of life, and the more you avoid exposing yourself to rejection, the more painful and disorienting it will be when it inevitably happens.

How can you build your tolerance to rejection?

Through Rejection Therapy 🧠

The idea of rejection therapy is simple. Desensitize yourself from the sting of rejection by intentionally getting rejected.

In the same way that a vaccine protects you from disease by injecting a small amount of the disease into your system, rejection therapy helps inoculate you from the pain of rejection by “injecting” small amounts of rejection into your life.

What does Rejection Therapy look like in practice?

There are an infinite number of way to playfully inject a little rejection into your life, and what I love about this strategy is the gamification and choose-your-own-adventure components.

Here are a few common rejection therapy challenges to get your creative juices flowing:

• Ask a stranger for a high five🙌

• Request a coffee refill at your local Starbucks 🍵

• Ask for a food item that isn’t on the menu 🍖

• Stop a stranger on the street and ask how their day is going 🙋‍♂️

• Share a wildly outside-the-box idea in a team meeting 💡

Take a moment to imagine yourself in these situations and notice what you’re feeling. Maybe a little anxiety?

The good news is that the more nervous you feel about making these types of benign requests, the more likely you are to benefit from this strategy!

Your objective is to dial up the difficulty of your rejection therapy challenges based on your comfort level, such that making the request feels uncomfortable, but not emotionally crippling. 

As you brainstorm your own rejection therapy challenges, there are a few parameters to keep in mind.

1. A rejection counts as long as you are outside your comfort zone.

2. A rejection counts if your request is denied.

3. Be sensitive to peoples’ feelings as you’re making requests.

In one of the most watched TED Talks of all time, Jia Jiang chronicled his experience and learnings from 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. It’s amazing.

And this doesn’t have to be a solo project. This can be a fun and engaging way for groups to build connection and psychological safety through the collective experience of stepping outside of their individual comfort zones, together.

From childhood memories to everyday snubs, we’ve all felt the sting of rejection. Practicing rejection therapy can be an effective strategy for learning to face rejection head-on, build our rejection resilience and confidence through the process.

Did this week’s topic resonate with you? Let me know by answering the 1-question poll below 🖱️⬇️

Or you can reject my request for feedback. You’re helping me either way😉

See you next Wednesday,

Darin

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