You know what? It’s time for a new week challenge to be put lose in this world! Five days of actions to make me (you?) become an el grandé deluxe edition of yourself. Yepp, I’m telling you – that’s what’s going to happen!
The focus of the week is our old dear friend “Rejection Therapy” a thing I started doing like a year ago, inspired by Jia Jiang. A guy that did 100 days of these types of challenges and put it on YouTube. It kind of went viral, check out his nice Ted talk here: What I learned from 100 days of rejection. I’ve explained my take on it numerous of times, but if you missed out, here’s the simple genius basics of it:
Rejection therapy or Facing Fears, as I’ve also called it at times, means that we are to expose ourselves to a social situation with a specific question, request or action in mind that puts you out of your comfort zone! For instance, approaching a cute girl asking for a date, randomly ask people for a hug, or as in part of this week’s challenge; asking people for an video interview (which all Swedish people seem to hate).
The great thing with these challenges is that it’s a win-win no matter the outcome, as long as we pull the trigger. You see this very action of approaching & asking, is in fact us taking action towards a defined goal. And if you’ve read the Six pillars of self-esteem by Nathaniel Branden, you’ll see that as long as we do things that aligns with ours values, beliefs or goals – we build self-esteem. And if we are to follow these rules, it also means that we can’t lie or manipulate our way into getting a yes on our question or request. But that’s it, that’s the only rules we must play by. However if we do this, we’ll see our self-esteem level up like crazy. I can say this because it’s simply my experience after spending a bunch of ours practicing this.
The secondary result is that we desensitize ourselves from getting turned downed, rejected and controlled by our thoughts and emotions. FEAR. Because rejections will happen, otherwise you’ve designed the challenge a bit too nice (guilty at times). We want to create a new association to the feeling we get inside of us when we are scared of doing something. A new association that makes us connect the fear, to being a necessity for us to go through, if we are to reach our goals and grow. AND with the added benefits of getting a ton of thrilling, exciting moments to spice up our lives with.
If you do this over and over again, you’ll start to shape one of the best Habit Loops you can have.
It will change your life. But don’t get me wrong, the fear won’t disappear. But you’ll be able to stand in it, and it will act as a trigger (the cue) for you to act on, making your dopamine craving brain shine up like a night sky on new year’s eve. It will push you through the fear and throw you into taking action (the routine) so that your mind will get that reward it so badly seeks. The reward of proudness for doing what you sat out to do, a sense of accomplishment. An explosion of adrenaline and good feeling hormones we all love. In this case you just don’t have to get drunk or do drugs to get it.
So, the challenge for me this week is to set out on a quest to see if I can find a new apartment for me and my brother to rent. I’ll be asking random people with, and without the camera. But I’ll also try to come up with other creative ideas. Let me know if you’ve got some tips!
What’s the challenge for you? Well, sit down and think a few minutes about what you’d like to see happen in your life. Or just design a question that will serve you some niice rejections – it’s up to you! But either way, I do wish you good luck.
See you in the week, more videos will be posted!
/Alexander
Links in the video:
Most people crammed in a smart car // Guinness World Records Italian Show (Ep 20)
On how I approach strangers in the street | Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton | UCD, Dublin
By best Rejection therapy / Facing Fear videos:
