Jia Jiang
Being a freelance writer means dealing with rejection.
A novelist is free to sit in a garret and spin their tales for years on end without fear of negative feedback, but freelancers have to put it out there day after day and hear “no” again and again.
How can you bear it? How do you keep it from killing your soul, from growing discouraged, from giving up?
This past weekend at World Domination Summit, I met someone with an inspiring answer.
His name is Jia Jiang. As a teen in China, he met Bill Gates and was inspired to come to the U.S. to study, live, and work.
A year ago, he quit a successful corporate job to chase his dream of entrepreneurship. But when a key funder for his startup pulled out at the last minute, he was devastated.
He hated the feeling of intense pain this rejection gave him. He decided he needed to conquer this feeling.
And that’s when Jia’s fortunes started to change.
Begging for rejection
He embarked on a project to toughen himself up by repeatedly experiencing rejection. He called it 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. His plan: To make outlandish requests sure to result in rejection each day for three months. The repeated rejections would surely diminish the pain he felt at rejection in the future, as he struggled to build his startup.
So he began to ask crazy things of total strangers. Would you let me drive your police car, Mr. Policeman?
Could I make the safety announcement on a Southwest Airlines flight?
Could I play soccer in your back yard?
Would you make me a set of Krispy Kreme doughnuts that look like the Olympic rings, in the next 15 minutes?
As you’ll see in the video below, Jia’s experiment had unexpected results:
Contrary to what he expected, many of the people he asked for rejection refused to give it. Instead, they said yes to his odd requests. And people were uplifted and thrilled and drawn into his quest to conquer rejection pain — more than 5 million have watched that video above on YouTube.
It’s an intriguing idea. What if you asked for the impossible, and some of the people simply said yes?
If you dared to ask, anything could happen. Your whole life could change.
From washout to celebrity
As word of his project spread, Jia became a popular public speaker, hitting TEDx, and finally speaking to a mob of 3,000 at World Domination. He received a standing ovation. You can bet a book is next.
This week, he was on LinkedIn’s writer groups asking whether he should self-publish his story or go for one of the traditional publishing offers he’s getting. His biggest problem isn’t how he’s going to scrape by anymore — it’s how to best capitalize on his success.
Jia dared to confront his worst fears, and in that act of courage, found the seed of his success. I think that is true for all of us.
Stare down your fears, and you will transform your soul. And what you need in life will be yours.
Feeling grateful for a “no”
At another World Domination event, I got to meet another blogger I’ve long admired, Jeff Goins. In his session, when asked how he deals with rejection as a writer, Jeff said, “Say thank you for rejection, and then move on.”
Why? Rejection helps us learn. Rejection tells us this is not the door we will open today. We need to press on to find other opportunities.
Rather than fighting rejection, if you simply and quickly accept that answer, it means you can move on faster. You can spend less time dwelling on that negativity, and move forward.
If you can seek rejection and accept it without fear, the world is yours. Jia proved it.
How do you cope with rejection? Leave a comment and tell us your approach.
