Jia Jiang and the Resilience Movement Overcoming Rejection
In May of 2015, during a TED Talk in Portland, Oregon, Jia Jiang introduced the idea of making yourself reject proof, or at least rejection resilient. Never being hurt when someone tells you “no” and never being scared to ask for more money. Being resilient against being dumped, being turned down for a job, or being told you're not enough.
The lifestyle Jia Jiang promised was so compelling, so irresistible that it launched his career as a Rejection Therapist, even withholding just a Business degree. Jia Jiang also has a book out called “rejection proof," an app, and a website based on his teaching as well.
His original TED Talk has been viewed over 9 million times between YouTube and the official TED website. If you haven't seen this yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out. He explains how he went out of his way to get rejected every day. At least once per day over the course of a hundred days. This, Jia says, would hard him against rejection, and he got these rejections by asking strangers for ridiculous things. Things they would be forced to say no to. For instance, the first day Jia Jiang started his rejection journey, he asked a security guard if he could borrow $100. He didn't give a reason; He just did it because he knew it sounded ridiculous.
According to him, after being rejected day after day, not only did he learn how to walk away, but he also learned to stick it out and ask for more. Imagine that having armor against being told “no," a pain that's potentially hardwired into us from birth.
Myth 1: You're Either Built Resilient, or You're Not
In today's world with online dating, politics, and jobs all seem geared toward narcissists and people who don't feel rejection. It is almost equating to being weak for being sensitive. As if success means being rejection proof.
Dr. Guy Winch, posted often on Psychology Today, looked into rejection, and he came up with a test that has been adopted at a couple of places. He called it the Waiting Room Ball Test. With this test, imagine you are sitting in a waiting room, and you see another guy and me sitting there, and we all start playing ball. We pass a little foam rubber ball to you, and you pass it to the other guy. Then the other guy passes back it to me, and we just do that. We do a circle, and then after a while, I start passing it just to the other guy, leaving you out. Think about how bad that would hurt. Those who participated in this were upset, nut more towards the rudeness of being left out.
So, they did this test and then brought those participants into a functional MRI and scan their brain. They found out something very interesting about rejection: It utilizes the same circuit in your brain that feels emotional pain and part of the circuit that feels physical pain. With that being said, people think that rejection would be its own particular type of pain, but it's not; it uses circuits that are there for other types of pain, and it's so simple and primitive they found out you can quite literally take Tylenol to reduce the feelings of rejection.
This is an extension of why people are afraid of public speaking, and why are people afraid of breaking up in person. Many of our personal fears come down to an actual pain we feel, and it boils to ostracization equates to death. The body knows this, so your brain is hardwired to feel being rejected this way. This also means that our brain prioritizes emotional pain over physical. Your brain usually remembers emotional pain, emotional rejection, more prolonged than you'll remember physical pain.
Another point is that rejection can temporarily lower your IQ. It can mess up your short-term memory and decision-making, according to Psychology Today, 10 Surprising Facts about Rejection. Basically, rejection not only hurts, but it can also temporarily make it difficult for you to function, reduces memory, and it makes it tough to focus.
Myth 2: All Rejection Hurts, but do all forms hurt Equally?
According to the APA, rejections are not all equal. Not all rejections hurt the same amount, and not all rejections will raise the same sort of pain, such as memory problems.
APA: "Rejection increases anger, anxiety, depression, jealousy, and sadness. It reduces performance on difficult intellectual tasks and can also contribute to aggression and poor impulse control physically. Rejection takes a toll on people who routinely feel excluded, have poor sleep quality, and their immune system doesn't function as well as those with strong social connections."
Some have harsher consequences, so the whole notion of toughening up may not work. If you're being ostracized actively, that's not really something you can necessarily toughen up from.
A study from Purdue University uses something called The Cyber Ball Model, which is the same as our waiting room game. They took African-American students, and they gave them a test where they were supposed to feel rejection, but the guys that were leaving them out of the game were supposedly KKK members.
So, they were playing cyber ball and being rejected by two conspicuous racist members from a group. Overall, it did not dampen the pain of exclusion. Even though it was somebody they would never want to play ball with, with ostensibly rejection still hurt. Another test they did included telling people they're going to pay them when they were rejected. So, they were earning money by being rejected, and it still hurt them; it still had the same pain mechanism in place.
Most people move into something called an “appraisal stage" caused by the pain of rejection. We think of all forms of ostracism as immediately painful, but the most pernicious forms of ostracism and rejection that we really take to heart are these appraisal moments, where we decide why we were rejected.
Myth 3: Can We Really Desensitize Ourselves to Rejection?
How do we stop feeling bad about rejection? Dr. guy winch talks about positive affirmations and lots of self-help, such as positive affirmations. There is a certain amount of positive affirmation that helps, but here's the real difference. Positive affirmations work, but your brain can tell what it's BS. Everyone has a belief system in their head, so if you're telling yourself things that you yourself don't believe, it won’t work.
So instead of magical thinking or trying to convince yourself of things, here's what you do instead: make a list. Make a physical written list of five values that you know you absolutely are true in your life. Then write a brief essay about each one of those listed items. The next thing that will help is after you've reviewed your list, make a zero-tolerance policy for self-criticism. Review what happened in your rejection and what you can do differently in the future, but don't chastise yourself for what happened. Measure what went wrong, and why what was within your control and what wasn't. But above all, get out of that emotional state and step back to have a bit of time buffer, but don’t give yourself room to self-criticize.
You can also try Rejection Therapy like Jia. It's a self-help trend with the idea that repetition is supposed to make you used to it. Your brain will eventually overcome or be so used to the rejections that it just doesn't react anymore. Keep in mind though that the message slightly wrong, as every rejection is completely different.
There was a study from Northeastern University and George Mason University about direction. They say to embrace the negative emotion, feel the pain, analyze your feelings. Find the emotion, identify what it was doing, and find a way to change that emotion into something more productive. Don't just ask if it's Justified. Don't try to justify it; just identify it. Identify what the emotion is and be able to label it with as much exactness as possible. They found through the study that they had 40% less incidence of alcohol abuse in people who are able to lower their emotional differentiation.
Final Thoughts
Rejection doesn't just sting. It doesn't just make us feel small for a moment. And if you let it, rejection can leave you vulnerable long-term. So, let yourself feel it. Embrace the rejection and analyze why you're feeling and understand what exactly caused the rejection.
If you're still having trouble after a tough rejection, make an honest list of your values and write a few paragraphs about each value on your list. You'll probably conclude that it wasn't you who was being rejected, but some combination of circumstances, timing, and poor fit. And if nothing else works, take a Tylenol.
Written by Todd Lemense presented by Joe Anthony