I never really did write a bona fide wrap up post, so here it is! Better late than never...
What Rejection Therapy Taught Me About Fear (and other lessons)
Humans are a funny lot. We desire things that we are perfectly capable of achieving, yet we are sometimes paralyzed by the fear of actually doing so. There is no cure for this condition, but it is possible to diminish the influence that fear has over your actions in life. Let me tell you what I learned about fear, up close and personal, from a challenge I participated in last fall.
In September I put myself through Rejection Therapy for 30 days. The concept sounded fun and harmless going in, and it was indeed fun often enough. It was also brutal. For those unfamiliar with Rejection Therapy, it's a challenge wherein you must seek rejection every day. Not hearing a "No" on any given day means you have failed. You must be rejected by someone every single day. It doesn't matter much what for (within the bounds of decency I suppose) and it doesn't have to be dramatic. It can be simple and small as long as the result is a big fat "No."
This often means approaching strangers: friends and family are usually aware of what you're doing so their rejections don't count. It has to be genuine. I ended up getting rejected for all kinds of things - asking to park cars for a valet service, requesting a table of restaurant patrons to draw a picture of my imaginary friend, and offering to give a stranger a hug who looked really unhappy. I actually had some quasi-questionable exploits in there as well, things I wouldn't do a second time, but I'll leave it to you to read all about it. The point is, I put myself in a position of possibly being embarrassed and humiliated on a daily basis. Why anyone would do this is beside the point of this post but if you're interested in finding out, check out our About page!
What did I learn about fear from all this angst? A lot, actually. No matter how much my heart pounded, my palms sweat and my stomach hurt at the thought of approaching strangers (and all those things happened every time because I'm a huge introvert unless I already know someone), the actual attainment of my objective was not nearly as frightening as the prospect of attaining it. The mere thought of approaching someone and possibly feeling humiliated by the encounter was far more terrifying than the experience I had once I was interacting with them. Sometimes - not every time by any stretch - I walked away thinking, "That's all? All my sweaty armpits was over that?"
What we fear is not necessarily the boogie man that we're sure is waiting for us on the other end. More often we are afraid because we don't know if that boogie man is waiting for us or not. If I knew I'd be humiliated every time, it would have sucked, but I would at least have had something to prepare for. I would at least know what I was getting into with each day's rejection. But I had no way of knowing how people would react to me. I had to take a chance on it going well or not, every time. And that to me is more scary than knowing what will happen.
Not directly related to fear, but as an added bonus, here are a couple more lessons I learned in Rejection Therapy....
I learned that most people actually want to help you if you ask for it - and ask politely. I lost count of how many times I would approach someone, certain that they would reject me, only to have them say, "Yeah sure, no problem!" That meant of course that I would have to keep approaching more and more people until I found my "No" but it also took me by surprise how many people are actually open to engaging with strangers and helping them out.
I also learned that you can't judge a book by its cover. I am ashamed to admit that I was certain I would be rejected by some people based upon their looks. It's not fair, but my preconceived notions did end up getting squashed. That's a good thing.
