Jia Jiang: Rejection Proof

The following are notes from Jia Jiang’s talk at #GLS19. Use them to help you apply the content you learned at the Summit.

Story of school gifts: When Jia was in school, his first-grade teacher had an idea to have the class receive a gift while teaching the virtue of complimenting each other at the same time. She purchased everyone a gift and stacked them in the corner. All the kids were asked to say one nice thing about each other. When a student’s name was called by someone else, they were able to choose a gift and then sit down. Jia’s name was never called to give a compliment to. The teacher told him to pick up a gift then sit down.

• It is embarrassing being rejected in front of people, especially when we think we are well-liked.

Story of the letter: When Jia was 30 years old, his parents sent him a letter he wrote as a child. It had his aspirations and goals on it that Jia had not achieved yet. His wife noticed how unhappy he was and encouraged him to pursue the entrepreneurial journey he wanted to.

• Felt he wasn’t progressing
• Was afraid of failure

Story of the email: Jia opened an email from an investor declining his idea and not explaining why. He felt the same way from when he was six-years-old in the classroom and wanted to give up.

Solve that rejection problem once and for all.

Story of Rejection Therapy: Jia researched how he could overcome the fear of rejection and wasn’t impressed by the articles telling him to not take it personally. He found a website called Rejection Therapy. It’s a game created around a deck of cards. For 30 days, it challenges people to do things to get rejected and at the end become desensitized to rejection.

• He decided to do it for 100 days instead of 30 and vlog about it
• He was rejected left and right, then all of a sudden people started saying yes

Story of acceptance: One of the rejection prompts was to ask a stranger to play soccer alone in his backyard. The stranger said yes to Jai. The following day a police officer agreed to let him drive his car. Then someone let him fly his plane. A woman working at a donut shop agreed to make custom donuts into the Olympics rings symbol. People started sharing their rejection stories with him online.

What is rejection?

• What is the thing you’re so afraid of?
• If you overcome that fear, you can make some real changes in your life
• Fear is a numbers game
• In the 100 days, Jia asked for something pretty absurd, and someone said say yes to him. He could ask something that was pretty moderate, and someone would say no to him, but he finally got a yes. He just had to talk to enough people.
• Every objection you go through and have enough no’s, eventually becomes a yes

Story of J.K. Rowling: The Harry Potter author received 12 rejections trying to get her book published.

• Rejection is a numbers game
• Rejection is nothing more than opinion—the preference of the rejector
• It says more about the rejector than the rejected

Story of difference: Jia could say the same thing to ten different people. Someone will say yes and someone will say no for giving him a high five. Some people couldn’t wait to get away from him. He was the same person making the same request.

• Rejection says everything about a person, their state of mind
• Often rejection relates to someone else’s journey, education, prejudice and has nothing to do with you

Rejection therapy in the workplace

● Do something new every day
● Start outreach calls for an hour a day
● Find a new colleague to take to lunch
● Start encouraging other team members and saying kind things