Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection (15 page)

One of the biggest upsides of rejection is that it can serve as motivation. And for me, the motivation came early.

My first big rejection came in elementary school.

My teacher, Ms. Qi, was full of love and genuinely cared about all her students. One day, she planned a big party for us. She bought all forty of us gifts, which she carefully wrapped and displayed at the front of classroom. During the party, Ms. Qi had all of us stand together in front of the room. One by one, each of us was supposed to offer another student a compliment. The student who received the compliment could then pick out a gift and go back to his or her seat. It was a thoughtful idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Standing in the group, I gave my heartiest cheers each time someone received a compliment and picked up his or her gift. Eventually, the group started to thin, and I was still standing there. My cheers became less and less enthusiastic,
and gradually my joy turned into worry. Why hadn’t anyone raised their hand and said something nice about me?

Then the group became really thin, and my worry sharpened into fear. There were just three students left—two unpopular kids nobody liked, and me. Everyone else was back in their seats, holding gifts wrapped in shiny paper. The three of us just stood there, and none of the other kids raised their hands.

Again and again, Ms. Qi asked—even implored—the class to offer us some praise, or just say anything, so she could get us off the platform that felt like a guillotine. Tears ran down my face, and I felt I’d rather die than remain standing there. Before that moment, I hadn’t known I was that unpopular. But looking at who was standing beside me, I knew then.

Mercifully, Ms. Qi ended the horror show and asked us to pick up a gift and sit back down. I was too little to imagine what must have been going through her caring and gentle mind, having unknowingly turned a morale-building exercise into a public roasting of three kids without the appropriate comedy. Today, I feel worse for her than I did at that moment for myself, because she must have felt terrible for what she had accidentally set in motion.

This type of humiliation could leave a dark mark on a person in some way, especially a young kid like me. It could have changed who I was in ways that weren’t good. I could have started trying harder to be accepted by everyone, and shaped my personality and interests to everyone’s liking, in the hopes that conformity could prevent this type of traumatic
rejection from happening again. Or I could have turned the tables and started hating everyone and the world. I could have become a bitter loner of the type causing a lot of tragic headlines nowadays.

Luckily, I chose a third route. Rather than feel humiliated by how different I was from the other kids, I embraced it. Standing in front of my classmates, none of whom would stick up for me, didn’t make me feel vengeful. It made me want to prove everyone wrong about me—and show them who I really was.

In a strange way the experience also made me feel…special. From a very early age, I felt like I wasn’t like everybody else. I didn’t even
want
to be like everybody else. I wanted to find my own path. It’s why I’ve always been drawn to figures like Thomas Edison and Bill Gates and other trailblazers who don’t fit into neat molds. It’s also why, over the years, whenever I’ve gone down a road that was different from the more conventional paths of my sixth-grade classmates—whether it was moving to America, going to college, or even having success with my blog—I always look back at that rejection with gratitude.

I learned something critical that day, though I didn’t know it at the time and wouldn’t really discover it until I started my rejection journey. What I learned is this: rejection is an experience that it is up to you to define. In other words, it means only what you choose it to mean. The relationship you have with a rejection can be negative or positive, and it all depends on which way you spin it for yourself.

Some people are extremely good at turning rejection into a positive, even if the rejection itself still feels awful. They use the experience of rejection to strengthen and motivate themselves. Just ask Michael Jordan.

The speeches given at award ceremonies are usually heartfelt outpourings filled with thank-yous to families and supporters. They are usually emotional—and often a little boring. But Michael Jordan’s 2009 Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech was anything but boring. In fact, it was unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

Over the span of twenty-three minutes, Jordan methodically listed every personal rejection he’d ever experienced in his career and explained how much it had fueled him—from his high school coach not picking him for the varsity team to his college roommate being named Carolina Player of the Year instead of him; from the opponent’s coach who prohibited his team from fraternizing with Jordan to the media naysayers who claimed he wasn’t as talented as Magic Johnson or Larry Bird. Jordan’s speech revealed a side of him that his carefully crafted PR image had successfully hidden from the world—how he consistently used rejection as motivation during his career and even into retirement.

Jordan said that each rejection had “put so much wood on that fire that it kept me, each and every day, trying to get better as a basketball player…. For someone like me, who achieved a lot over the course of my career, you look for any kind of messages that people may say or do to get you motivated to play the game of basketball at the highest level, because that is when I feel like I excel at my best.”

Jordan is not alone. The more I looked into it, the more I
was astonished by how many—and how often—successful people convert rejection into personal fuel.

• Quarterback Tom Brady was passed over 198 times in the 2000 NFL draft before finally being selected by the New England Patriots. He had already left the draft party dejected and crying. Brady has since become one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, winning three Super Bowls and counting. He frequently cites his draft experience as part of what motivated him to succeed in the NFL and prove his worth to the teams that rejected him.

• An adopted child, Apple founder Steve Jobs was told by a playmate that he was unwanted and abandoned. According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs was deeply shaken by the comment, saying that “lightning bolts went off in my head. I remember running into the house. I think I was crying.” After his parents assured him that they specifically selected him as their son, he realized that “I was not just abandoned. I was chosen. I was special.” This shift in perspective became a core belief that helped drive him to unprecedented creative heights.

• After narrowly losing the presidency to George W. Bush in the 2000 election, former vice president Al Gore shifted his focus to the issue of climate change. His highly influential documentary on the issue,
An Inconvenient Truth
, won an Academy Award and altered the discourse on climate issues. Gore has referred to his election loss as a “hard blow” that “brought into clear focus the mission [he] had been pursuing for all these years.”

• While at Disney, executive Jeffrey Katzenberg was rejected by his longtime boss, Michael Eisner, as Eisner’s number two in command. In an interview with the
New York Times
, Katzenberg explained: “I ran the full gamut of emotions. I was disappointed, sad, angry, scared, philosophical, sad, vengeful, relieved, and sad.” But Katzenberg used the rejection as motivation to start his own film company, DreamWorks, whose animated films grossed even more than films by Disney’s Pixar by 2010. There was speculation that Katzenberg even modeled Lord Farquaad, the chief villain in DreamWorks’s blockbuster animation movie
Shrek
, after Eisner.

Of course, the sting of rejection is not the only thing driving the work and the ambition of these and other highly successful people. Sooner or later, other intrinsic motivations such as “the love of the game” or the desire to “put a dent in the universe” need to take over to sustain excellence. But it’s interesting to think about what might have happened if any of them had allowed rejection to deflate their sense of self—viewing it as something blocking their path rather than something they were eager and determined to overcome. Each of them saw rejection as “wood on the fire,” as Michael Jordan so eloquently put it. It simply added more flame to the ambition they already had brewing.

100 DAYS OF REJECTION: SOLICITING MONEY ON THE STREET

My hardest rejection attempts were the ones that were very public, where I opened myself to the possibility of being rejected not by one person but by dozens, or hundreds, or worse. This was why making an announcement on my Southwest flight to Vegas practically caused me to break out in hives. It’s also why my elementary school rejection left such an impression.

The good thing about thinking up my own rejection attempts was that I knew exactly how to push my own rejection panic buttons. And I could think of no better way to terrify myself than to stand at a busy Austin intersection, holding up a sign asking strangers for money.

I drive by panhandlers almost every day, and I have never been able to even imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes. Does their need for money override their fear of being judged and rejected? Do time and experience erode the fear and shame? Or do they have a different relationship with rejection altogether?

I didn’t want to be dishonest and stand on a corner claiming that I needed money. So I decided instead to ask for donations to a local food bank.

We often hear that real estate is about location, location, and location, and I figured that panhandling must follow the same rule. So I used Google Maps for my location research and picked a busy intersection just off one of Austin’s main highways. Standing there, I saw the world the way a panhandler
would view it every day, with cars driving by and stopping at the red light, their drivers seeing me through their windshields, making quick judgments, and usually lowering their heads to avoid eye contact. It was silent rejection by the masses and felt strangely reminiscent of my elementary school roast.

I felt trapped between wanting to draw people’s attention and hoping to avoid their judgment. It felt impossibly painful. I resorted to all types of coping techniques to get through it—talking to myself, trying to hold a big smile, and imagining what the donations I got could do for hungry people, who otherwise might have to do this themselves.

Initially, I held up a sign that read: E
VERYTHING
G
OES TO
C
HARITY
! T
HANKS
. I thought the sign was simple and to the point. But fifteen minutes passed, forty-eight cars came and went, and no one lowered his or her window or showed any interest in what I was doing. As the old adage goes, “When advertising fails, don’t blame the customers. Blame the message.”

I decided the message on my sign was too vague. So I changed it to something more specific, and hopefully more credible.

The new sign read: E
VERYTHING GOES TO THE
A
USTIN
F
OOD
B
ANK
! T
HANKS
. Immediately, I got some results. A woman named Lisa rolled down her window, flashed a big smile, and said “bless you” while handing me $2. Another driver named Lori gave me $7, the highest amount I would collect from anybody. I held that sign for fifteen minutes. All in all, forty-three drivers saw me with the sign, but just two—Lisa and Lori—offered a donation.

Then I changed the sign again, this time emphasizing even more that the money I was collecting would go to a good cause—and not into my pocket. The third sign read: T
HIS IS
NOT
FOR ME!
E
VERYTHING GOES TO THE
A
USTIN
F
OOD
B
ANK!
T
HANKS
.

Two drivers, Jessica and John, offered me a handful of coins. Another woman handed me some money without stopping, making it hard to catch. A driver named Lindsey advised me to hold my sign horizontally, instead of vertically, so people could see me better. She didn’t donate any money, but she didn’t charge me a consulting fee either, so that was good. Another driver asked me for directions to the food bank, because he needed the help himself. It felt good to help someone in need.

In the end, sixty-six drivers saw the third sign during the fifteen minutes I held it, and three people donated a total of $6.73.

Then I changed the sign one more time, this time hoping to add a bit of humor. The new sign read: G
OOGLE SUGGESTED HERE.
E
VERYTHING GOES TO THE
A
USTIN
F
OOD
B
ANK!
T
HANKS!

The idea was to convey that Google Maps suggested this location for my panhandling excursion. Unfortunately, this last sign was like a bad insider joke, and it only confused people. In my final fifteen minutes, thirty-eight cars saw me, and no one gave me a dime. My poor messaging and bad attempt at humor proved counterproductive.

But in the end, I had a productive hour. I encountered a total of 195 cars and received five donations for a total of $15.73, which I happily gave to the Austin Food Bank online.

I learned a lot from this rejection attempt about the importance of good messaging (including the upside of being specific), the element of surprise, and the hard lesson of not confusing people with bad humor. But the biggest lesson of all was how to use rejection as a tool to learn, adapt, and improve. Instead of sulking, just hanging on, or simply giving up after the first fifteen minutes, I treated the experience as a feedback tool, and quickly changed my tactics without abandoning the cause altogether.

Using customer feedback to quickly build and improve products is standard practice for many businesses. They set up metrics to measure how customers use their product or behave under certain conditions, and the feedback they get can change the direction of a product or even an overall business.

Yet that same nimble mind-set is rarely brought to bear when it comes to rejection. Blinded by their own expectations and emotions, rejectees often fail to take advantage of the feedback given by a rejector. In
Chapter 6
, I talked about the importance of asking and understanding the why of rejection. If that’s not possible, you can still change a component of a request and use people’s rejections as a way to adjust your approach. The key is to withdraw yourself from the emotion as much as you can and approach your request more like a bold, creative experiment.

For example, in a job search, if you applied one hundred times with the same résumé and were rejected for an interview each time, instead of seeing the rejections as a sign that you are not qualified for the job and should lower your expectations, you could improve your résumé, write a new cover
letter, or use other channels such as networking to try again and see if there is any change in the percentage of callbacks.