Little to Fear, Much to Gain

Once upon a time, an author came across a negative comment on Amazon underneath the name of his book. It was a glaring eyesore staring at him, and he couldn’t get over it. Pondering over the comment for a while, he decided to track down the commenter who turn out to be several states away. He crossed the states and tracked him down, only ended up breaking his head with an empty beer bottle.

Okay, this case might be a little extreme. But somehow I could oddly resonate with the author, and at some point in my life, I shared a similar mentality with him. I was emotionally vulnerable to the negative comments on my work. I once lost sleep after receiving harsh comments on me being a bad writer, and the worst thing is, I doubted my ability in doing what I care the most.

Therefore, when I bump into a podcast interview with Jia Jiang on Jeff Goins’ Portfolio Life(highly recommend btw), his description on the personal project subverted my view on rejection. For those who haven’t read his book, Jia is an entrepreneur who decided to toughen himself up through “100 days of rejection” – seeking one rejection every day from strangers for consecutive 100 days, as a form of therapy. As someone who has spent quite amount of time seeking validation, and avoiding the dreadful denial, I lived to believe that “rejection is a form of guidance”. I set up realistic goals, avoid those I couldn't reach in the name of “knowing myself well”. For me, reading this book and watching Jia’s 100 Days of Rejection Videos, or “Rejection Therapy” as he put it, was an emotional roller coaster. I was intrigued at first,and it turned into bouts of adrenaline rush watching him being rejected, then it started to grow on me. Jia apparently knew himself well enough, but his willingness to take the rejection from strangers also shows that he is someone who wants to be responsible for his dream, talent and ambition, instead of settling for security and stability. “The only thing I dread [is] not to be worthy of my sufferings.” He stated in his book.

“Rejection Therapy” is similar to the concept of “Exposure Therapy”. The book explained from a biological perspective that being afraid of rejection is human, but by exposing yourself into an intense series of rejections in a short period of time, you turn rejection into "a piece of muscle”, once you embrace it, “you get into a momentum”. The simple concept is to experience enough rejection till it’s no longer an obstacle for action. But the biggest difference that set this book apart from all the cliché is the analysis and reasoning behind each and every experiment. After each rejection, the author put the negative comments, the rejections and denials under the microscope, and that's when it all started to kick in. As a reader, I watched his videos for the thrill of seeing the daredevil, read his book out of curiosity of what his mentality is, but it is his struggle in his words and his logic in his analysis that really convinced me the meaning behind his process.

Then there is the story telling. From a writer’s perspective, not only is Jia a daring entrepreneur, but a good story teller. As if his own stories weren’t enough, he gave great examples of other people’s stories in the right timing, which supported strongly his analysis, and they are enjoyable to read. I especially enjoyed reading the story of Louis CK, whose obsession with becoming nothing but a comedian was so adamant that he never flinched from the rejections, till he reaches that unparalleled success. If he regards rejection as “a form of guidance” like I used to, the comedy world would lose a rare talent.

Personally, the book has precipitated me into a few actions for the past 3 weeks. At several critical moments, I tried to put myself into Jia’s shoes, thinking about what I would do if I weren’t afraid. I am not going to knock on strangers’ door as the author did to be braver, but the book did provide a different perspective to alter my believe system. I started to take other’s negative comments less seriously, and focus more on my own. Also, I’m surprised how few comments the book has on douban, and why it didn’t have a Chinese version for more people to read? So far, I’ve tirelessly recommended this book and Jia’s videos to a bunch of friends, and they all loved it. Hopefully, it could also bring some change to your life.

Here are the links to his website and YouTube videos:

http://fearbuster.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/DukieAjah