Rejection Therapy: How to Lose Your Fear

Rejection Therapy: How to Lose Your Fear

Article Written By Chris Hugh

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned early on, it’s that success depends on you. You’ve got to get out there and hustle and make your own opportunities, but that takes a certain amount of fearlessness. How can you develop the character to become successful?       `1

Rejection Therapy

Rejection Therapy, a free online game, might be your answer. People from around the world are using it to build character and overcome social anxiety. The UK Daily Mail calls it “the latest self-help hit” and the San Francisco Chronicle calls it a “cult phenomenon.”

How it works.

Players challenge themselves to make an offer or request of another person every day for thirty days straight. And get rejected. Players only get points when they get rejected. The point of the game is to overcome one’s fear of rejection by being constantly exposed to it. It desensitizes them. Rejection is usually looked at as a failure, but the game recasts it as success–a game point!

The game is free. One can play independently, or join the Rejection Therapy Facebook group for support (and a place to brag, or commiserate). Playing cards are available for people who need more structure or who want ideas on how to get rejected. A special set of Entrepreneur Edition cards are especially valuable (more on that later).

A Game That Could Make You Money

Rejection Therapy has helped people overcome shyness, get dates, and rebuild relationships. It helps everyone who plays it, but if you want to make yourself rich, it’s essential because it develops the character traits that all entrepreneurs need: self confidence, resilience and the ability to network. It can give you the skills to make yourself rich.

Injection of Self Confidence

Rejection Therapy players test their courage daily by making offers or requests until they get turned down, but getting that rejection can be harder than they think. Katherine Smith, a Rejection Therapy Facebook group member, went to a nightclub and couldn’t get anyone to refuse to let her take their picture. Even after upping the ante and asking to get in the picture with them, wearing their jewelry, she couldn’t get a rejection. People were much more accommodating than she expected. This experience is fairly typical. Players learn that the world is a friendlier place than they thought, and that builds confidence. Rejection Therapy creator Jason Comely summed it up like this, “I realized people were a lot more willing to give me what I asked for than I thought. My comfort zone was like a cage keeping me from exploring a lot of opportunities.” 

Resilience

One of the big lessons of Rejection Therapy is that rejection isn’t personal. As Jason Shen told the San Francisco Chronicle, he learned that when people reject him, it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with him, it just means they don’t want the offer.

Of course, it’s one thing to know rejection does not reflect on your worth as a human being–we all know that we shouldn’t take rejection personally. It’s another thing to play the Rejection Therapy game and see it in action: that’s when you really learn deep down that rejection isn’t personal. I learned that lesson selling my humorous short story, “The Bride of Frankenstein Dances with Celebrity.” It’s been published on Danse Macabre, and was purchased by two anthologies, including Vampires, Zombies and Ghosts, Oh My! On the other hand, it’s been turned down many times as well. Did the story change? Did I somehow become a pathetic loser with no talent in between submissions? No. Some editors wanted it and some didn’t, that’s all. It was a valuable lesson to learn. And I learned it through rejection.

Ability to Network – Every Friend Was Once a Stranger

Obviously thirty days of courting rejection will help anyone overcome shyness, and will probably lead to several new friends. Jason Comely, Rejection Therapy’s inventor, used to have an anxiety disorder, but lately he’s been know to go to a party, come up to a group of strangers, and announce, “I promised myself I’d make some new friends tonight, and you look like people who’d make good friends.” That’s networking ability! Add the skills one learns with the game to some of the suggestions from the Entrepreneur Edition cards (such as “Ask to be a speaker at a local Lion’s Club” or “Introduce yourself to your Mayor. Tell him about your business”) and you are sure to build a network.

Entrepreneur Edition cards.

The Entrepreneur Edition cards are not just about networking. They cover many practical aspects of building up a business, all in the context of the Rejection Therapy game. There are thirty-six cards–enough for one full game and six left over. They will help you do the things you know you need to do to grow your business and give you new ideas as well. If you steel yourself to play the Entrepreneur Edition and your business doesn’t strongly improve, you’ll know there’s something fundamentally wrong with your business–an important thing to find out in only thirty days.

Rejection Therapy will also change a person’s default behavior–the behavioral decisions that people make without thinking. If your default was to avoid interaction because you were afraid of rejection, 30 days of Rejection Therapy will definitely ease that fear as well as the cringing default behavior.

Summary

So how can Rejection Therapy make you rich? By helping you develop into a person who can make yourself rich. Instead of taking the well-worn road to success, Rejection Therapy can give you the wherewithal to four-wheel it.

Bio: Chris Hugh is a Silicon Valley lawyer, author, crafter and amateur photographer. Chris’s cat, Twitch, was in the New York Times Best Seller How to Take Over Teh Wurld: A LOLcat Guide 2 Winning. Visit Chris on Blogger. Chris’s crafts are available on Etsy.

Resources:

 

• Rejection Therapy Main Page

 

• Rejection Therapy Facebook Group — for privacy, it’s a closed group, but click here to join

 

Several players have created blogs where they chronicle their own experiences.

 

• Sneaky Little Fox includes magnificent portraits of people who failed to reject the blogger’s offer to take their picture.

 

• Reject Me is a good-humored blog that makes me feel like I’ve taken a vacation to San Francisco

 

• Jason Shen’s enthusiastic blog also includes advice on getting started.