Experimenting with rejection builds confidence
13th December 2010
Rejection stings, but it’s exactly what Shen wants. He’s on a self-imposed, self-improvement plan to get rejected by a different person every day for a month – a quest to get over his fear of rejection.
It’s all part of the 30-Day Rejection Therapy Challenge – a real-life game created in September by a Canadian Web designer with an anxiety disorder. And it has become a cult phenomenon as the idea spreads through Facebook, Twitter, the Hacker News blog and other social media.
Adherents in New York, Washington, San Francisco, Denmark and Hungary are documenting their denials on Facebook and Twitter. Followers can either buy a deck of cards on the rejectiontherapy.com website with suggested ways to get denied – Invite someone you’ve never socialized with out to dinner, ask someone their political affiliation – or players can come up with ideas on their own.
I’m waiting for the first suicide that can be traced to this game. But that’s me.