Rejection Therapy – Vital Part of a Hero’s Journey

In my last blog, I gave a nut shell of Joseph Campbell’s work about Hero’s Journey and understanding entrepreneurship in its true sense. In this blog, let’s take it a step further and talk a little about facing your dragons and the role of Rejection Therapy to come out successfully. Jason Comely created a game called as the Rejection Therapy. This free game has a single rule – “You must be rejected by another person at least once, every single day”. Comely has aptly made failure a factor of pride. He shifted the perception of failure from negative to positive. Let’s get to the essence of the game and why it works every single time. Our mind is hardwired to work in the past. The mind makes you feel comfortable only when it knows the outcome. It accumulates facts throughout your life. Whenever you make a decision about your future it is purely based on the past experience of the mind. If you observe carefully, your mind tricks you by making you feel comfortable and happy, prompting you to take the safe path, a path that your mind knows the outcome for. Yeah, you overestimated your brain power, din’t you? For example, doing a job gives you a steady income and your mind makes you feel most comfortable and provides you with all the reasons and excuses to not take the unknown path of entrepreneurship. All the reasons and excuses are directly correlated to fear. Your mind scares you. It makes you feel sad. It is always on the guard to give you this fearful, sad, ugly feeling as soon as you try to do something it does not know the answer for. It makes you connect the known for joy and unknown for sadness. Rejection therapy works on your mind and tell’s it that failure is good. The idea is to off guard your mind and free you up. Now that there is no guard, you are out in the world, completely vulnerable and ready to accept what is about to come. You are taking rejections and some of these rejections are surprisingly converting to success. The central idea is to increase your acceptance levels. Taking things as they are, without getting attached to the feeling of joy or sadness. As soon as you reach that stage, you do not hold back on trying things out. Joy and sadness becomes one. You do not hold back and this is how you face your dragons, lovingly and more acceptingly. When you get to this stage, life changes and miracles happen. However, there is no miracle. It is what was possible always, just that you never opened yourself up enough to try. Most of us entrepreneurs have common set of fears. Hence we do not pursue a lot of those initiatives for the mere fear of being rejected. Below are some action steps to get started on the rejection therapy:

FEEL THE GAME

In order to simply get a head start, go to the nearest star bucks or DunkinDonuts or that pizza place you are a frequent customer to and ask for a free coffee or pizza as a token of appreciation for your customer loyalty. That will get you started and feel free to get creative on asking for such favors and getting rejected proudly in other scenarios.

FEAR TO APPROACH

There are people you want to approach and work with. However, your mind helped you put it back saying it’s not the right time yet. You need to wait for a little more evolution of your company or product or services. So as a first step make a list of 5 other similar people. Go and pitch what you have to say and get rejected proudly. However, if the results are in your favor, you can now go and talk to the people you actually wanted to speak with.

FEAR TO PUBLISH

You have held back on submitting your story to that elite magazine or publishing houe for the fear of being rejected. Of course the time is not right again and your mind has given you signals to not do so. So take the same approach as earlier one. Make a list 5 similar publishing profile (consider Under30CEO) and submit your story. Get rejected proudly.

FEAR TO HIRE

You have held back on hiring some expensive profile which could take your company to the next level quickly. This time your mind has tricked you into thinking you do not have the money. So why don’t you go and approach that person and work out a high commission payable only if certain conditions are met or equity based solution.

FEAR TO INCREASE THE INVOICE PRICE

You might have that old client who is still on the old price. You never approached to talk about the price hike because you do not want to loose them. As an action step, send an email or call up to mention about the situation. Ask, if they could work with you to come to a mutually agreeable price point. If this works out, would you mind sending Under30Ceo, a 5% commission for this tip? Jokes aside, I strongly recommend you take on the 30 day challenge of Rejection Therapy. But more so, take it beyond the 30 days and make it a part of your entrepreneurial life. Do share your experience with us and let’s circle back on this in future again. Jinesh Parekh is the founder of an offshore Ruby on Rails Development shop named Idyllic Software which exclusively works with startup’s to help build their MVP.