The book titled “Rejection Proof” is written by Jia Jiang. The author had great entrepreneurial aspirations but got stuck to achieve his dreams by the fear of rejection. The author decided to overcome the fear of rejection and in order to achieve it, he designed a plan to take up a challenge he named “100 days of rejection”.
Each day in the 100 days of challenge, he decided to put forward an odd favor to somebody, in most cases the person to whom he asked the favor was some stranger and he made the request so odd and unlikely so that the chances of rejection was high. Some of his attempts were knocking at some stranger’s door and asking permission to play soccer in his backyard, going to an office building and asking them to give him a job offer to work there for a day etc. Every attempt to face rejection was a learning experience for him to handle rejection in better ways
The author’s rejection experience seems to give a thoughtful perspective to the reader. It gives us the courage to step forward and ask for anything we aspire to get in life and face rejection with a different perspective. The author communicates to the reader that rejection is just an opinion of the person who made the decision to reject. It has nothing to do with the merit or depth of the person who receives the rejection.
The book demonstrates how the same request which got rejected from multiple people can get acceptance from another person. If you ask a person to come with you to watch a music show and he/she rejects it, it is a matter of their preference and so we need not take it personally. Hence, rejections talk more about the rejector than the rejectee. Sometimes rejections are an outcome of our approach to the wrong people at the wrong time. So the same attempts can end up with acceptance when we meet the right people at the right time.
Asking people about the reason for rejection can help to understand why someone can’t satisfy our requests and thereby, we can better formulate our request next time. Also, it helps to take rejections not personal. Sometimes, we can get acceptance to smaller or second requests on the same matter if we understand the reason for the rejection and reformulate our request. So, it is good to reassess the original request instead of being specific on something. Asking for something less can help to meet the sub part of our actual request. Jia Jiang conveys the readers to retreat their requests instead of running away with rejection.
Rejections are an experience and it is completely up to us to define it. It is our choice to make our relationship with rejection positive or negative. Its meaning is what we choose to mean it.
Rejections not intact our self-respect. We can take rejections as just an opinion of the rejector and nothing to do with our self-worth. Then, if we move forward, we will see more opportunities. Rejections boost our rejection immunity and help us to get more and better things in life.
Rejections boost our motivation. If we are serious about our request, we feel that we can prove the rejector was wrong. Just take clues for improvement from each rejection, reframe the request and move on.
Rejections are human experiences. Do not take rejection as a heavy heart experience. It is just an experience human encounters while pursuing their aspirations. Rejections not telling us to give up but asking us to move on with better learning experiences till we meet the right people and roght time to achieve our goals.
The book “Rejection Proof” is an extremely engaging and perspective altering book and I highly recommend it. No dream has an expiry date! If you are stuck in life somewhere by fear of rejection, just read this book and move on.
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