Rejection ProofHow I Beat Fear And Became Invincible

Through 100 Days Of Rejection

By Jia Jiang

Jia Jiang was fourteen years old the first time he met Bill Gates. It was during the billionaire businessman’s first-ever trip to Beijing, Jiang’s hometown. Through that brief encounter, Jiang became obsessed with Gates and the origin story of Microsoft. He ran home and tore down all the basketball posters he had on his bedroom walls, and replaced them with Microsoft memorabilia. He pledged to his friends and family that he would become even more successful than Gates, his hero. He talked endlessly to anyone who would listen about his dream of becoming a great tech entrepreneur, and he pestered his family into buying him a top-of-the-line computer so he could get started right there and then.

A few years later, Jiang left China to study in the U.S. While Jiang was studying computer science at BYU in Utah, he found the entrepreneurial spark. In a sudden flash of creativity, Jiang started

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thinking about how cool it would be to combine a tennis shoe with a Rollerblade. He created some blueprints and built a working prototype. He set aside his schoolwork to perfect the idea. He was convinced that this product would be huge. “Just imagine,” he told his family back home, “kids could be walking one moment and gliding around with their friends the next!”

Jiang sent a few copies of his drawings to potential supporters and business partners, excited to get their reaction to his “shoes with wheels” idea while hoping for encouragement and venture funding. But instead of support and enthusiasm, all Jiang received was a great big dose of rejection. He felt so dispirited that he tossed his sketches into a drawer and never moved forward with the idea. For young Jia Jiang, giving up felt so much safer and easier than putting his ideas out there to be further criticized.

A year after Jiang finished school, a man named Roger Adams patented a very similar idea for shoe-skates, and founded the company Heelys. In 2007, just after its IPO, Heelys was valued at over $1 billion. When Jiang heard about this from a friend, he was shattered.

Jiang had a great idea for a product but instead of doing what needed to be done, he shelved his plan because he was too scared that people would say “no” to him. When he looked at himself in the mirror, Jiang saw a smart, ambitious guy. But he also saw a timid person who simply couldn’t deal with rejection. He knew that something had to give.

What Jiang needed was a way to cope with hearing the word “no” that wouldn’t leave him feeling like a total failure. And so he decided to embark upon a “100 Days of Rejection” experiment, during which he sought out rejection

on a daily basis by making outlandish requests of total strangers – like asking a flight attendant if he could make an announcement over the loud speaker. The inspiration for this crazy quest came from a game called “Rejection Therapy,” which was developed by a Canadian entrepreneur named Jason Comely. In this game, players purposely seek out rejection. When Jiang first heard about the game, it reminded him of the ancient “iron fist” technique in Kung Fu, where a person repeatedly pummels hard objects with her fists in order to gain resistance to pain.

And so, in an over-the-top move reminiscent of his teenage promise to become the next Bill Gates, Jiang made a vow not only to try Rejection Therapy but to do it 100 times, to video-record the entire experience, and start a blog on the topic. Jiang had never blogged before, but he liked the accountability that blogging offered (reasoning that if he managed to get any followers, then it would

be a lot harder to quit when the going got tough).

Rejection Proof shares the secrets of Jiang’s 100 Days of Rejection journey, distilling the key lessons into practical strategies that can be applied to just about any type of negotiation or sales pitch. Jiang’s fantastic story has been covered by countless news outlets around the world, showing that it is possible to force oneself to overcome fear and live more boldly.

100 DAYS OF REJECTION: Day 1Jiang decided to begin his 100 Days of Rejection experiment on a Monday. Starting off was tough because he didn’t know where to begin. Then, on his way home from work, as he was walking through the lobby of his office building, he noticed the security guard. Suddenly, a crazy idea popped into his head: he would ask the security guard – who he’d never spoken with before – to loan him $100.

With his iPhone held up and recording, Jiang walked right up to the security desk. “Excuse me,” he said to the guard, his heart pounding in his ears. “Do you think I could borrow $100 from you?” The security guard frowned a bit and replied. “Uh, no. Why do you need it?”

“No? Uh, okay, thanks!” responded Jiang. Then, he hurried away and left the building.

That night, as Jiang was editing the video before uploading it to his blog, he got a whole new perspective on the experience. Jiang could plainly see how terrified he was. In fact, Jiang was so visibly frightened that he had to wonder how the security guard must’ve also felt at that moment. The guard was probably scared too.

Then Jiang watched the next part, where he asked for the money and the security guard answered. He realized that the guard had said “no” to him, but then he’d also asked “Why do you

need it?” offering Jiang a perfectly fine chance to explain himself. But Jiang had been so frazzled by posing the initial question that he hadn’t actually listened to the guard’s response. All he’d wanted to do was ask the question and run away, regardless of the answer. But now, watching the whole conversation replayed on video in front of him, all Jiang could think was: What a wasted opportunity. It became obvious that his fear had a very negative impact on the result. So he decided then and there to go into the next day’s rejection attempt with a different approach. He’d force himself to be more brave.

100 DAYS OF REJECTION: Day 2On the second day, Jiang didn’t give himself a chance to psych himself out. He just whipped out his iPhone, hit record, and approached the cashier at the local burger joint.

“What can I do for you?” the cashier asked.

Jiang made direct eye contact and said: “My first hamburger was really good. Can I get a free burger re-fill along with my free soda re-fill?”

A free burger re-fill? Ha! Naturally, the cashier said no to Jiang’s bizarre request. But instead of running away this time at the first hint of rejection, Jiang forced himself to ask a follow-up question. “Okay, but how come you have it for drinks but not for burgers?”

“That’s just the way it is, man,” the cashier replied with a little chuckle. Suddenly, the whole encounter became a lot less tense and Jiang opened up with a little laugh as well.

A mere two days into his rejection journey, Jiang had already learned his first big lesson: the way you ask a question – and how you follow through in the conversation – can have a big impact on the result you get. Sure, it might not change the final outcome, but it can take a lot of the sting out

of hearing the word “no.” Projecting confidence, smiling and staying calm – rather than cowering in fear – can create a totally different rejection experience.

100 DAYS OF REJECTION: Day 3The third morning, Jiang was stuck in traffic and thinking about how to get rejected that day when he spotted a Krispy Kreme donut shop. It was the summer of 2012, the London Olympics were in full swing, and the Games were on everyone’s mind. So Jiang came up with an Olympic-sized rejection idea. He would ask Krispy Kreme to sell him five donuts, interlinked in the shape of the Olympic rings.

Upon entering the donut shop, Jiang took a deep breath and walked up to the counter with forced confidence. “Can you please link five donuts together for me like the Olympic symbol?” he asked the woman at the counter.

To Jiang’s utter surprise, the woman didn’t immediately say no. Instead, she looked briefly away, with her hand under her chin, and started thinking out loud. Then she pulled out some paper and a pen and started making a sketch. She disappeared into the back, fired up the deep fryer and about fifteen minutes later, Jiang was back in his car, smiling ear-to-ear with a box full of freshly made donuts linked together in the shape of the Olympic Rings.

That evening, Jiang uploaded the video to his blog, along with some comments expressing his perspective on the experience. “My entire worldview has been altered,” he told his followers, all of whom at the time were friends and family. “I feel like I’m a new person.”

While Jiang’s first and second rejection encounters had changed his perspective, the third attempt had begun to transform his mind-set. Before the

donut shop encounter, Jiang realized he hadn’t even considered the possibility that people might actually say “yes” to one of his crazy requests.

Then Jiang became a minor celebrity. His Krispy Kreme adventure turned up on YouTube, and it attracted hundreds of viewers. Then someone posted the donut video on Reddit.com. In no time at all the video went viral. His encounter in the donut shop was picked up worldwide. Yahoo! put the video on its main landing page. Gawker, MSN.com, the Huffington Post, and the UK’s Daily Mail quickly followed overnight, as did a bunch of other news sites. Suddenly, Jia Jiang had more followers than he knew what to do with.

Women, men and children from all over the world began writing to Jiang for help with their rejection issues. He soon realized that countless other people suffered from the same irrational fear of rejection as he did. A TV producer even offered

him a gig as a rejection expert (the working title of the show was “The Rejection Whisperer”). While Jiang turned down the TV offer, he was more committed than ever to completing his 100 Day adventure. Moreover, with a daily online following that had swelled to the tens of thousands, it quickly became clear to Jiang that if he was really going to grapple with the thorny subject of rejection, then he’d better do some proper research on the subject so he actually knew what the heck he was talking about!

REJECTION: Finding The Roots Of Our Fear

Through his research, Jiang discovered that when human beings feel physical pain, our brains release natural pain-killing chemicals called opioids into our systems to help us cope.

Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School wondered if our brains would also

release opioids after instances of social rejection, and they launched a study to find out. In the study, they showed research participants (all of whom were single) photos and fictitious dating profiles and then had them list which ones they’d be interested in meeting. Then they used a brain scanner to monitor participants’ brain activity while they were being told that the prospective dates weren’t interested in them. Fascinatingly, the study participants’ brains, having experienced a social rejection, immediately started releasing opioids, just as they would if a physical trauma to their bodies had occurred.

If the pain of rejection is actually a chemical experience in your brain, it’s no surprise that we develop a visceral fear of rejection. Since rejection pain mirrors physical pain – at least so far as our brains are concerned – it makes sense that people usually rank “rejection” so high on their list of fears.

“This University of Michigan study is even more reason why simply saying ‘don’t take it personally’ is useless advice for anyone feeling rejected,” says Jiang.

It turns out that many of our deepest fears, including our fear of rejection, actually have evolutionary roots. Back when our prehistoric ancestors were out hunting giant mastodons and living in caves, our survival depended on us sticking together. Being rejected or ostracized by our peers would leave us to face the wolves and the lions all by ourselves. In that situation, social rejection would usually equal death. It makes sense, then, that if some of that instinct is still lurking in our DNA, getting rejected can still feel like a fate worse than death.

That said, while our biologically hardwired fear of rejection may have saved many of our ancestors from getting tossed out of their social groups,

by and large it no longer makes sense in our modern lives. “Last time I checked, there were no mastodons roaming around downtown Austin,” jokes Jiang. “And a social rejection from my neighbors wouldn’t literally leave me out in the wild alone, or force me to confront a beast of that size all by myself.”

Some of our hardwired fears, such as fear of heights, still perform a useful biological function to this day (e.g. our natural fear of heights prompts us to be careful on ladders). But it could be argued that our innate fear of rejection is just a leftover piece of our biology that no longer plays a useful function. “If our fear of rejection was an organ, it would be more like an appendix instead of a heart,” says Jiang. Yet, as he points out, its lingering effect is much more damaging than appendicitis, because being deathly afraid of rejection can be quite serious. Just imagine the number of exciting and potentially life-

changing ideas that people around the world have abandoned simply for fear of rejection.

Persistence Is A VirtueIf you ask enough people for something enough times, will you eventually find someone to say yes? Is persistence really a virtue when it comes to beating rejection?

There’s no way to say for sure, but consider these examples from the publishing realm: The literary classic Lord of the Flies by William Golding was rejected by 20 different publishing companies before finally being accepted by the twenty-first. Carrie by Stephen King was rejected 30 times. And the list goes on. J. K. Rowling’s rejection story is especially fascinating. In 1995, she submitted her first Harry Potter manuscript to twelve British publishers, and was rejected by all of them. Then the head of one publishing company, Bloomsbury, handed the manuscript

to her daughter, who couldn’t put it down. Bloomsbury finally gave Harry Potter the green light nearly a year later.

“If you have an idea, no matter how good or bad it might be, there is no mathematical way for everyone in the world to reject it,” says Jiang. If you can get over the fear of rejection, all you need to do is to talk to enough people. Odds are that someone will eventually say yes.

Retreat, Don’t RunAnother simple but effective tactic for overcoming rejection is to “retreat, don’t run” when rejection’s staring you in the face.

Jiang discovered this little trick at McDonald’s, towards the end of his 100 Days project. As the project went on, Jiang’s online following grew even larger and he started getting suggestions from people daring him to try all kinds of wild and wacky things. One follower dared him to

march into a local McDonald’s in the middle of the afternoon and ask them to make him a McGriddles sandwich (a savory-sweet breakfast sandwich that at the time was only available in the morning). It was just after 2pm when Jiang asked the clerk for a McGriddles sandwich. As expected, he got a very quick no. After he asked her why, she explained that they’d already cleaned the apparatus that cooks the eggs and sausage. So he stepped away from the counter for a minute to regroup and switch tactics. After giving it a bit of thought, he asked the clerk if he could have a “plain McGriddles,” which turned out to be a honey-roasted griddle cake with cheese on it. The sandwich wasn’t quite as good without the eggs and the sausage, but as Jiang tells the story, it wasn’t really that bad either. Certainly, it was better than having no sandwich at all.

As he was enjoying the sandwich, Jiang realized that by retreating a bit, instead of completely

running away, he’d managed to come away from his rejection encounter with what felt like a small but important victory. “In military warfare, there is a crucial distinction between a retreat and running away,” explains Jiang. “Retreats are usually temporary. Troops retreat in order to regroup, consolidate their forces, or shift to a better position.” There’s no shame in retreating, he says. And by coming back to the situation from a slightly different angle, something really interesting and unexpected might happen.

There are countless real life applications for this technique. For example, if you’re job hunting and you get turned down for your preferred job, you could ask if you might be qualified for a different position within the company. You might just be invited to another interview. Or, if you’re selling office supplies and someone in purchasing shoots you down, you could ask for a referral to another department.

State Your “WHY”According to Jiang there’s a scientifically proven principle that will make a yes more likely, no matter who’s doing the asking. It’s called “stating your why.”

In 1978, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an experiment that shed light on this principle. In the experiment, Dr. Langer approached strangers waiting to use a photocopier, asking them if she could cut in front of them to make copies herself. She wanted to see if the way that she worded the request had any effect on their response.

When Dr. Langer said, “Excuse me, I just have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” 60% percent of people allowed her to go ahead of them. Then she added a reason, asking, “Excuse me, I have just five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?” By adding a

reason (i.e. “I’m in a rush”) her yes rate increased to an astounding 94%!

In other variations of the experiment, Dr. Langer gave other reasons, but purposely designed them to be ridiculous. One of them was: “Excuse me, I have just five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” Shockingly, the number of people who went along with her request went well above the baseline 60% rate, even when the reasons she gave were less than compelling. To this day, Dr. Langer’s experiment – dubbed “The Copy Machine” – remains one of the most widely cited studies in psychology. It demonstrates that people’s responses to a request are deeply influenced by knowing there’s a reason behind it, no matter what that reason is.

WorthinessAnother highly effective tactic for becoming more rejection proof is to flip the idea of rejection around in your head so that rejection is actually akin to praise. In the early years of Apple computers, it’s not hard to imagine someone like Steve Jobs making liberal use of this tactic when people were challenging his far-out ideas. “Of course my ideas are great,” he might have told himself. “It’s these other people that just don’t get it!”

“When we think of rejection, we automatically assume it’s a setback, a source of pain, and something we have to overcome,” writes Jiang. “We rarely allow ourselves to entertain the possibility that rejection, in some cases, is a very normal result of being ahead of the curve.”

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Jennifer Mueller is the author of The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative

Ideas. Jiang stumbled across Mueller’s book during his 100 Days project, and he says he only wishes he’d read it earlier on in life. Through her research, Mueller found that no matter how much human beings might say that we love creativity and novel ideas, we subconsciously despise and fear novelty because it presents a level of uncertainty. Humans crave predictable outcomes, and we have a strong tendency to cling to conventional wisdom. That’s why there hasn’t been a single world-changing idea in history that hasn’t been met with fear, ridicule or hostility.

So the next time someone thinks your idea is “incredibly stupid” you may just be on to something, says Jiang. Perhaps the question we should all be asking ourselves isn’t “How do I avoid rejection?” but “How do I come up with ideas that are WORTHY of rejection?”

ConclusionIf nothing else, the number of emails and letters Jia Jiang received from fans during his 100 Day rejection journey taught him that being afraid of rejection isn’t just one person’s problem – it’s more like an epidemic. Maybe it’s because of how we’re brought up as children, where conforming to our parents’ wishes brings approval and praise and deviating from them means scolding and rejection. Or maybe it’s due to our hardwired genetic tendencies to fear rejection passed down from our ancestors. But whatever the source, our irrational fear of rejection can cause us to lose sight of our dreams. We can lose the inner child that wanted to grow up to be the president, or an astronaut, or the next Bill Gates.

For Jia Jiang, reconnecting with his inner child meant confronting his fear of rejection head on. Over the course of his 100 Day project, he began

to see a much clearer distinction between the things he could control and the things he couldn’t. At first, Jiang wasted time and energy worrying about the things he couldn’t control, such as people’s perceptions of him. That only made him more nervous and led to poor outcomes. But as time rolled on, Jiang started to shift his focus towards the things he could control, such as making eye contact, stating his “why,” and not running away after an initial rejection. As a result, his outcomes improved dramatically, and he became more fearless in plunging himself into the unknown.

There’s a lesson here for all of us: our fear of rejection can be beaten.