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Here's Why Someone Would Seek Rejection for 30 Days Straight
- quickpost 16y agoThe original post on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1754790 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1754790
- akkartik 16y agoEliezer: "Did anyone else glance at this, think "rationality level too low, I cannot trust anything these people say" and give up?" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755741 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1755741) My response is to quote Nassim Taleb: "Be gullible in the small, and skeptical in the large." http://akkartik.name/blog/9400292 http://akkartik.name/blog/9400292 It's an extremely rational strategy.
- dspeyer 16y agoI really want to see a journal of someone who tried this: what they asked for, what was surprisingly accepted and how rejections were issued.
- benchmark 16y agoI think HN member Jason Shen is on the fourth week of the 30 day challenge right now (although he hasn't posted about it yet): http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/the-rejection-therapy-challenge-week-2/ http://www.jasonshen.com/2010/the-rejection-therapy-challeng...
- jpwagner 16y agois it still worth the effort to try things that you don't actually want? seems to me that not only will you not feel the pain of rejection, you also won't be able to reap the benefit when there's an unexpected yes.
- paulgb 16y agoThe reward is realizing that the pain of being rejected is negligible.
- jscore 16y agoIt's really the journey (the exercise) and not the destination (the end result/benefit). So yes, it can be worth it just for the experience.
- trustfundbaby 16y agoI think the idea is to ask for things you want. True ... you might not want them badly and the rejections might not bother you, but I look at it like a vaccination ... little doses of rejection make it so you are not afraid to be rejected when you go after the things you really want
- holdenc 16y agoThere's another name for rejection therapy -- it's called sales work. Typically it's the kind of sales work hackers dislike. But plenty of people have built good careers around a sunny tolerance for rejection. Real estate agents, insurance sales people, cold callers, door-to-door sales people -- all of them experience many rejections for each closed sale. One successful sales person told me that "it's just a numbers game." I still think about this with every rejection I receive.
- petercooper 16y agoThere's another name for rejection therapy Or "marriage."
- loewenskind 16y agoI still don't get why in America it's popular to say that ones marriage is sexless. A study came out a few years ago trying to prove that married people were happier, but only ended up proving that on average married people have more sex. I don't get why the joke would be funny, I would find it sad if true and bizarre if made up.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI suspect it is a misinterpretation of another fact. Very often, a couple has less sex after marriage than before. This leads married people to believe that marriage reduces sex.
- gaius 16y agoWith each other?
- loewenskind 16y agoDoes it matter? Report findings: get married = have more sex, on average.
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- joe_the_user 16y agoIs there something special about getting one rejection each day? I've been doing part-time canvasing and I can accumulate far more than 30 rejections in the less than an hour. But I still have no-rejection days. Does it matter?
- David 16y agoIt's not about being rejected every single day. It's about learning to accept rejection more easily, which it sounds like you're doing fine on with part-time canvasing. (Or perhaps you could cope easily before that.) I'd take a bet that you're not the type this was designed for. For some, being rejected at all is a huge blow to ego, confidence, and self-esteem, which can have serious effects on mood and productivity, for instance. For these people, getting rejected more often means that each rejection is less significant and reinforces the knowledge that rejection happens. That is much healthier, and I'd hypothesize that it can increase one's average level of happiness. (It also gives an individual much more control over himself -- or takes it away from others, at any rate. Same thing.)
- zephyrfalcon 16y ago"For some, being rejected at all is a huge blow to ego, confidence, and self-esteem, which can have serious effects on mood and productivity, for instance. For these people, getting rejected more often means that each rejection is less significant and reinforces the knowledge that rejection happens." Yes, but this sort of "therapy" only works if you have the right thought patterns to go with the rejection (i.e. not taking it too personally, realizing it's not that big of a deal, etc). It may not work so well if you (were raised to) believe that you have to please others in order to feel good about yourself. In that case, each rejection is just more evidence that "you suck", and you enter a downward spiral.
- David 16y agoThat's what makes the game hard, and also what makes it worth it. The key is that repeated exposure leads to desensitization. Fear of rejection is no different from other irrational (or at least maladaptive) fears -- and those often _are_ treated by repeated exposure to the source of the fear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)
- jasonshen 16y agoThanks for checking this out guys. I think it's been a great experience - and I actually work in sales so I already deal with a great deal of rejection. I'll be writing a summary of my experiences soon so stay tuned ...
- catshirt 16y agoWhy not just do things you actually want to do? If they work, great. If they don't, and you tried really hard, I can't imagine anything more likely to help desensitize you.
- binomial 16y agoGoogle "social skydiving" for people's experiences doing this kind of thing.
- oceanician 16y agoSounded like the typical dating website - before I read it. Much more intriguing.