The fear of rejection is as healthy as the fear of fire. But in a competitive culture such as ours, it is by no means as useful. It actually can become a serious problem, especially if you are a shy or introverted personality. Below are five steps to overcoming the fear of rejection.
As a young adolescent, I could be extremely shy. My fear of rejection was nearly a phobia. I recall with painful clarity seeing three girls from my class approaching me on the sidewalk and actually crossing the street to walk two full blocks out of my way, rather than face the prospect of them rejecting my “hello”.
Paying your Dues
I had a conversation recently with a friend who is in the music industry. The music industry is structured, she said, to weed out all but the most talented, or the most persistent. And, she wondered aloud, if writing was not much the same.
Definitely. In my personal experience, there are two occupations that will teach you how to face the fear of rejection – writing and sales.
One cannot be a professional writer without facing rejection. At every step of the writing process, rejection awaits with open arms – with the query letter, the submitted manuscript, with the editors’ board meeting, with reviewers, and with the audience. However, there are no training programs to help writers to deal with their fear of rejection. Understanding how often famous books were rejected before being published certainly helps. It also helps to understand that even the best selling books, and the most successful movies are rejected more often than not. The number of people who don’t buy the book, or do not see the movie, or click on a link to a blog, always outnumbers those who do.
I was fortunate to work for MetLife early in my career, which is a company that actually trains its sales staff to embrace rejection. Let’s face it, no one wants to listen to someone selling life insurance. So their sales reps are trained to expect most prospects to say “No!”, when trying to book a sales appointment. So in order to combat the fear of rejection, sales reps are trained to calculate their commissions, not by the sales they make, but by the rejections they receive. On average you need three appointments to make a sale, and each sale is worth, lets say $500 in commission. So, in order to make a sale, you will have to pick up the phone and hear the word “no!” about 100 times. But that’s okay – because when you do the math, you know that each “no!” you receive, puts 5 dollars in your pocket. Most good sales people, regardless of the industry, know this, and know their numbers (which vary by industry and by person of course) better than they know their children’s birth dates.
Cherish the No’s
So whatever you need to do that puts you in the path of rejection, simply take a few minutes and think about the numbers.
If you’re looking for a job, ask the first person who interviews you how many applications they receive, and how many interviews they are having. If they received 50 resumes and are interviewing 5 people for one job in your field, you now have a rough idea of what you are facing. All things else being equal (which they never are, of course) you would have to submit your resume about 250 times to get 5 interviews to get one job offer.
Now sales people keep track of these numbers for years, and so they are based on a very large sample of no’s. When you’re looking for one job, keeping track of your progress for the first time, the sample of data you have is much smaller, and therefore less precise. So I would suggest asking people you know how many times they submitted their resume before getting their job. You have just doubled your sample. Ask every person you submit your resume to, and you’ll be improving your accuracy with every phone call.
You can use these same methods for any time you risk the fear of rejection… even dating. If a girl declines you in giving her phone number, why not ask her, “By the way, just out of curiosity, how many times do you get asked for you number each week?” When she tells you, ask her if she ever says yes. Be subtle, and certainly don’t let her feel that she is just going to be a number to you.
5 Steps to Overcoming the Fear of Rejection
1. Understand rejection is a necessary step towards success. With every rejection, remind yourself that you are paying your dues to earn the success you wish to achieve.
2. Estimate, to the best extent possible, how many times you will need to be rejected to reach your goal.
3. Track your rejections. Mark them in a notebook or a sheet of paper at home. With every check mark, remind yourself that you are one step closer to achieving your goal.
4. Remember these are averages, and that even if you calculated that you need ten no’s for every yes, it may happen on the third attempt, or the thirteenth. Keep an open mind and be flexible.
5. If you have exceeded the rejections you estimated by fifty percent, and still have not found success, stop and look at your strategy. Where possible, ask what you might be doing wrong. You’d be surprised how often people are willing to tell you why you did not get the job, or the sale, or even why the girl said no when you asked her for her phone number.
Not surprisingly, you may find that asking questions in that last step will actually lead, in itself, to the success you were looking for.
If this was helpful to you, you may be interested in seeing how rejection fits in as a cornerstone to other important elements of success.
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