Rejection Experiment

Firstly, the idea for this experiment was inspired by Jia Jiang who wrote a book called Rejection Proof. He has a good TED Talk where he speaks about his own experiment where he sought out rejection 100 days in a row. You can watch that here: [video=youtube]

If you ever browse the miscellaneous section on here you may have seen my journal. For those who haven't seen it, less than two years ago I made a commitment to turning my dating life around and building my confidence. I would do this by going out to bars, nightclubs, shopping malls, university campuses etc, and cold approaching girls every week. To keep myself accountable I decided to document it all in a journal on here.

After approaching hundreds of girls and posting updates in my journal almost every week, I've made a lot of progress. Over the course of that journey I've met some great people, dated some really cool girls, grown in confidence and done a lot of things I could never do before I started that journal.

However, one thing that still continues to limit my progress is a fear of rejection. Since I started the journal, I have been rejected plenty of times and although I don't let a rejection bother me as much as I did in the past, it does still play on my mind and I try to avoid rejections. This fear of rejection holds me back from doing the things I should be doing like approaching the cute girl standing by herself at the bar, asking for phone numbers, persisting with the girl or customer I'm speaking to who shows any signs of resistance and pushing to close sales in my job.

Obviously I'm not the only person who suffers from a fear of rejection. Chances are most people on here fear rejection just as much as I do. A quick search on A Lonely Life reveals people's attitudes towards rejection:

"I finally just gave up rather than face constant rejection and heartbreak."

"I generally deal with rejection by not even trying and putting myself out there in the first place. Works wonders."

"I've been rejected so much I just don't even try anymore. It's easier to not try and then deal with the heartbreak when you get rejected."

"I have a preconceived notion that no woman would want to date me, so why bother since it will certainly lead to rejection"

"Sometimes I get extremely lonely and get sad about all the rejection in face regarding women."

People would prefer to just give up rather than face rejection. I guess that's understandable, rejection can make someone feel awful inside and diminish feelings of self worth. But maybe that's just a consequence of a person's attitude towards rejection. Which of the following outlooks on rejection is likely to be more fruitful in a person's life?

1. A rejection is confirmation that I am a low value person, or;
2. Rejection is an inevitable part of life and a rejection is more so a reflection on the person rejecting me than it is on me.

In his TED Talk, Jia Jiang talks about CS Lewis and Steven Spielberg who both faced rejection countless times before their success. Which outlook on rejection do you think they were more closely aligned to? I would think the latter.

I am hoping this experiment will help change my outlook/attitude towards rejection in such a way that rejection will no longer hold me back from achieving what I want in my life. Maybe it will have the opposite effect and make me even more rejection averse. We'll see.

Now for the details of this experiment. I have a target of 50 rejections that I have to reach. I'll try to get my 50 rejections in under two months. What is considered a rejection? This is somewhat subjective. It could be a girl saying 'no' to giving me her number, or bluntly telling me to **** off or it could be a 'no' when I'm asking for a sale at work. I'll try to persist until I get a firm 'no' before counting it as a rejection. I don't plan on doing anything too out of the ordinary to illicit rejections like Jia Jiang did in his experiment.

Hopefully in my efforts to reach my rejection target I will try to persist and push things further than I normally do and ask for things I'd normally be afraid to ask for. I will write something about each rejection in here.

While I applaud any attempt at self improvement and confidence building (hell I've had to do that myself enough times) are you not putting yourself at risk of a Self Fulfilling Prophecy - so when you do meet someone you like, your brain will be so conditioned to accept rejection that you might mentally sabotage the possibility of it being a success? Like the student who is so sure they will fail an exam that they don't bother revising, so when they fail for real their brain will say "I told you so".

Surely a better approach would be to believe that there's no such thing as failure - so that you see a rejection as a positive learning experience and a boost to your confidence ("I failed but at least I tried"), while leaving yourself open to the possibility of success. That way it's win/win. The book Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway has a whole chapter on this win:win approach.

Like I said I applaud your attempts of self improvement but personally I think life's a bit too short to actively seek rejection.

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

h3donist said:

While I applaud any attempt at self improvement and confidence building (hell I've had to do that myself enough times) are you not putting yourself at risk of a Self Fulfilling Prophecy - so when you do meet someone you like, your brain will be so conditioned to accept rejection that you might mentally sabotage the possibility of it being a success? Like the student who is so sure they will fail an exam that they don't bother revising, so when they fail for real their brain will say "I told you so".

From what I've heard from others who have done similar experiments, you get a lot of unexpected 'yes's' when you actively seek rejection. Jia Jiang did not expect a worker at Krispy Kreme to say yes to him when he requested a box of Olympic ring donuts but the worker happily obliged to his request. Perhaps if I was getting rejected 100% of the time it could become a self fulfilling prophecy but I suspect my rejection percentage will probably be lower than expected.

Surely a better approach would be to believe that there's no such thing as failure - so that you see a rejection as a positive learning experience and a boost to your confidence ("I failed but at least I tried"), while leaving yourself open to the possibility of success. That way it's win/win. The book Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway has a whole chapter on this win:win approach.

I don't see these two approaches as being contradictory to each other. My approach is a win/win. If I don't get rejected then great! But if I do, that's one less rejection I need to get and I can still learn something from it. It's not a failure at all.

Like I said I applaud your attempts of self improvement but personally I think life's a bit too short to actively seek rejection.

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ardour said:

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

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A salesman who never persists with his customer at the first sign of resistance isn't going to make many sales and a guy who never persists with the girl who shows any resistance isn't going to get many dates.

It's important here to distinguish between the level of resistance. If a customer asks you to stop contacting them or a girl yells at you and tells you to leave her alone then you should stop.

But lighter resistance than this often just means the customer is not yet convinced that your product is the best solution to his needs or the girl doesn't want to appear too easy to get. In this case, I see no reason not to persist. In fact you could be doing the customer a disservice by not persisting if he ends up going somewhere else and buying an inferior product.

ardour said:

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

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I kind of listen to what this Bender guy has to say. Have you read his say no to loneliness thread? The guy does things in there I can't even dream of. This post does make sense even though I probably would have a hard time doing it myself.

The idea of actively seeking rejection isn't new - here's my thread from earlier this year -
http://www.alonelylife.com/showthread.php?tid=33911

I think it's a great premise although I haven't tried it myself. On a side comment, I'm not a huge fan of TED talks (too new-agey, frictionless and touchy-feely) but I do like the idea of facing rejection - which happens to everyone, everywhere - instead of quitting before you start.

-Teresa

bender22 said:

But lighter resistance than this often just means the customer is not yet convinced that your product is the best solution to his needs or the girl doesn't want to appear too easy to get. In this case, I see no reason not to persist. In fact you could be doing the customer a disservice by not persisting if he ends up going somewhere else and buying an inferior product.

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Great point, it's important that you make that distinction.

I really wish I had anywhere NEAR the balls you have to do this. I can't even get myself to say hello to a girl (before she does, rather if she does) I see on the sidewalk or in the park or whatever. It's been years since I last said "hi" first, if I ever even did, to begin with (I can't even remember.)

My rejection sensitivity dysphoria is, quite literally, extreme. I don't know if this is a changeable thing..

ardour said:

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

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If someone's really adamant about telling you that they won't go out with you or anything like that, then yeah, I think one would learn how to back off. And I think that's also a part of rejection. It's also part learning how to take rejection. Bow out with grace instead of potentially turning into a bothersome creep who won't take no for an answer.

Rejection 1 - Went out to a club last night and the first girl I tried to talk to looked at me and ran off to her friends.

Not exactly sure how I'm going to decide what counts as a rejection. I approached about 8-10 girls last night and a few of them resulted in what could be considered rejections by some but didn't feel like rejections to me.

The other thing is it was still really hard for me to do things which could illicit rejections. Maybe I will come up with pre determined 'challenges' that will force people to give me a yes or no. Kind of like what Jia Jiang did in his experiment. Challenges like asking a girl to come to a different bar with me for example.

When someone rejects you, from my experience, you should move on and leave that person alone.

VanillaCreme said:

ardour said:

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

Click to expand...

If someone's really adamant about telling you that they won't go out with you or anything like that, then yeah, I think one would learn how to back off. And I think that's also a part of rejection. It's also part learning how to take rejection. Bow out with grace instead of potentially turning into a bothersome creep who won't take no for an answer.

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I think your point is valid but I recall watching a Kezia Noble video where she said that she would actually react negatively in a bitchy way towards a guy she was actually interested in just to see if he could handle her. Not sure if I could be bothered with that though.

Paraiyar said:

VanillaCreme said:

ardour said:

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

Click to expand...

If someone's really adamant about telling you that they won't go out with you or anything like that, then yeah, I think one would learn how to back off. And I think that's also a part of rejection. It's also part learning how to take rejection. Bow out with grace instead of potentially turning into a bothersome creep who won't take no for an answer.

Click to expand...

I think your point is valid but I recall watching a Kezia Noble video where she said that she would actually react negatively in a bitchy way towards a guy she was actually interested in just to see if he could handle her. Not sure if I could be bothered with that though.

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I don't know who Kezia Noble is, and that's fine if she reacts that way - that's all on her. But not every person is like that. I wouldn't go by one person's claim that she basically wanted to test a guy if he could handle her. People are not jokes or tests. And again, fine if she wants to do that, but we don't all do that. If someone said they were interested in me and acted that way, I'd walk away from them as quickly as possible.

VanillaCreme said:

Paraiyar said:

VanillaCreme said:

ardour said:

Not to rain on your parade, bender, but should you really persist with a girl (or a customer, or anyone) if they show signs of "resistance"?

Click to expand...

If someone's really adamant about telling you that they won't go out with you or anything like that, then yeah, I think one would learn how to back off. And I think that's also a part of rejection. It's also part learning how to take rejection. Bow out with grace instead of potentially turning into a bothersome creep who won't take no for an answer.

Click to expand...

I think your point is valid but I recall watching a Kezia Noble video where she said that she would actually react negatively in a bitchy way towards a guy she was actually interested in just to see if he could handle her. Not sure if I could be bothered with that though.

Click to expand...

I don't know who Kezia Noble is, and that's fine if she reacts that way - that's all on her. But not every person is like that. I wouldn't go by one person's claim that she basically wanted to test a guy if he could handle her. People are not jokes or tests. And again, fine if she wants to do that, but we don't all do that. If someone said they were interested in me and acted that way, I'd walk away from them as quickly as possible.

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Yeah, I agree not everyone reacts like that at all, my point was just that some do.

Paraiyar said:

I think your point is valid but I recall watching a Kezia Noble video where she said that she would actually react negatively in a bitchy way towards a guy she was actually interested in just to see if he could handle her. Not sure if I could be bothered with that though.

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I couldn't either, nor would I want to be with someone like that, so it doesn't matter.

I'd have to add a clause to that though - remove yourself from the situation gracefully even if they're rude to you, and if you see them again, be polite and respond to any greeting. Some people react to a perceived snub, even if it's someone they don't like, by trying to hurt that person, and in this situation they would have the means by claiming you were "creepy" etc.

ardour said:

Paraiyar said:

I think your point is valid but I recall watching a Kezia Noble video where she said that she would actually react negatively in a bitchy way towards a guy she was actually interested in just to see if he could handle her. Not sure if I could be bothered with that though.

Click to expand...

I couldn't either, nor would I want to be with someone like that, so it doesn't matter.

I'd have to add a clause to that though - remove yourself from the situation gracefully even if they're rude to you, and if you see them again, be polite and respond to any greeting. Some people react to a perceived snub, even if it's someone they don't like, by trying to hurt that person, and in this situation they would have the means by claiming you were "creepy" etc.

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Some guys might like it though. Maybe the OP is willing to try this.

Plus I remember when I tried to kiss a girl once and she pulled away and then kissed me about 30 seconds later. So sometimes a rejection isn't final.

I need to do this rejection campaign myself. But I wouldn't persist if she isn't interested, that would only make you a annoying person IMO.
What are some great places for a 36 years old man to try and pick up a lot of women within a short time?