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November 7, 2013

Rejection Therapy: 100 No's

I heard about rejection therapy when I attended ALT-NYC back in June. Design Sponge explained that a friend of hers had started to ask for bold things in the hopes of overcoming the fear of the "NO" or the closed door/opportunity. The idea behind rejection therapy is that we live in such a fear of being told no that we never asked or allow ourselves the opportunity to hear a yes. We already assume that people will say no so we never even allow them the chance to give us a yes.


I recently attended a conference in Nashville called the Storyline Conference. One of the speakers named Jia Jiang decided to put rejection therapy to the test and came up with 100 different things to ask of people. He wrote about each one and talked about how he was surprised with the results. He showed how he got yeses to certain things like playing soccer in a strangers backyard and flying an airplane. It showed the great rewards in beginning to conquer his fear of no's. 


I decided that starting in November I would start the process of rejection therapy. There are a few big things that I'm going to ask for as well as a lot of tiny small things. I have all these silly fears in my head that I'm scared of hearing no, so I'm going to try and push myself forward. I'm going to ask about 100 things and see how many no's I receive out of all 100.

You can download a printable that has 100 golden No's that you can cross off each time you hear a no and document how many times you put yourself out there.

What is something you would do if you knew that you would get a yes?

2 comments:

  1. I've never heard of rejection therapy--but it is so interesting! I think I am so guilty of getting caught up int he idea of this is what we've always done, or this is the way things have always been that I sometimes don't even think of things to ask!

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  2. This is so interesting! I was an art major....so those teachers can be tough and y tough I mean mean.lol. So I have no feelings in the design/ rejection area...I guess they did their job and toughened me up...ha!

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