If You Aren’t Getting Rejected On A Daily Basis, Your Goals Aren’t Ambitious Enough

This blog post from Business Insider - by technology entrepreneur and angel investor Chris Dixon - reminded me of a friend I used to visit the bars with when I first lived New York.  He was seemingly fearless in his willingness to approach perspective female acquaintances.  Before going out, my roommate and I would watch clips from "Glengarry Glen Ross" to psych ourselves up for the evening, usually only to sit in a booth, sipping from a bottle of vodka and watching our buddy chat away with someone lovely.  Why did we just sit there?  Like many of us in the bar scene, and in many other situations, we feared rejection, and that fear led to inaction.

Luckily for my social life, my perception of new encounters and the meaning of any "rejection" experienced therein changed.  Accordingly, my tolerance for risk expanded - this was certainly fueled by the knowledge that almost nothing was remotely as unpleasant as fear made it seem it would be.  Well, now I'm a married man, and aside from the occasional attempt to inspire a single friend, this "wisdom" might seem of limited purpose.  Not so, says Chris Dixon.

Sure, his post is self-aggrandizing.  It details his success in securing a great position at a noteworthy VC firm after braving myriad rejections on a daily basis.  However, I was reminded of some worthy takeaways from the post.

First, there is no point in setting a goal that you know you can achieve.  That behavior is better characterized as making a to-do list.  Setting goals is about charting a path to attain something you're not 100% certain you can make happen.  There is personal, ego-related risk that you might fail, but the benefit gained from succeeding - or learning along the way - is usually much greater than any ego risk associated with failing.

Second, if you aren't taking risks, getting your hands slapped occasionally (figuratively, or course), or finding yourself in a situation that causes you to ask yourself, "wow, what do I do now?" then you aren't stretching, you're probably not learning anything new or doing things that will give you memoir-worthy stories.

Third, hearing "no" is really no big deal.  The more you hear it, the less painful it becomes.  I just finished "Just Listen" by Mark Goulston, who suggests that a "no" is really the best opportunity you can have to learn more about someone - assuming you're willing to hear the hard truth about what inspired the no.  In that sense being told "no" can actually help much more than it hurts.

Putting yourself in a position to be rejected is like going to the gym after a hard day.  Once you start the process even the worst outcome is no big deal, you often find it turns about to be a very positive experience, and either way there is some benefit derived from the exercise.

I have included the afore-mentioned scene from Glengarry Glen Ross.  It's 7 minutes long, and I hope you find it amusing.  Beware that it features some questionable language.