Home | Feature | WEARING REJECTION PROOF VESTS

WEARING REJECTION PROOF VESTS

25/07/2020 07:21:00 By Nathi Gule

Font size:

Action movie heroes usually carry machine guns and wear bulletproof vests.
They wear these to survive and they inevitably make it to the end of the fiction movies. Today, as our own and only real life heroes, we need our own bulletproof vests.
We need to put on rejectionproof amour.

Last year, during the Global Leadership Seminar, there were a lot of mind-stimulating speakers from around the world.
Each captured the imagination with their thought leadership presentations.
One though comes to mind today as I pen this article. It was by Jia Jiang. Yes you probably have not heard of him. You do not need to have.
You need to know of the content more than the person.

rejection

But since you insist, let me share his short biography. Years after Jiang began his career in the corporate world, he became an entrepreneur and discovered everyone’s biggest fear: rejection.
To conquer his fear, Jiang embarked on a journey and discovered a world where people are much kinder than we imagine.

The best-selling author of Rejection Proof and owner of Rejection Therapy and CEO of Wuju Learning, Jiang teaches people and trains organisations to become fearless through rejection training. Strange training right? Not really.
One of my most favourite quotes, I saw on a Whatsaap profile, says: “The cave you fear to enter the most has your greatest treasure.”
Don’t you just like those WhatsApp profile quotes or statuses? Some are quite motivational.

crippled

If I was preaching, which I don’t by the way, I would say I think this message is for someone today. Someone out there is crippled by fear, hindering him from achieving their greatest potential.
Someone is being parayalsed by doubt from going to the next level in their lives. Someone out there is walking away from a cave with their treasure because they are slaves of fear, doubt, and lack of self-belief.
I will return to Jiang in a bit. So the other day I went to buy green pepper at the Sidwashini Market. Yes, my awesome hood. Food just slaps different with that green pepper flavour. I was served by an energetic young lady. In her early 20s or late teens I presume. I am bad with guessing ages, but she was young, that is certain.

digress

We were both wearing masks so I cannot say whether she was a pretty young lady or not. Such is life in the masked era. I digress.
So as she served me I marvelled at the wide variety of vegetables she had on display. My curiosity was bursting at the seams so I had to ask her. “Is all this from your farm?”
I asked through my black mask.

She laughed and said, “yes!” I said, “I don’t believe you, how did you manage to have a farm and even go all the way to have a stall in a prime located market?” She explained that her parents helped her with some capital and the rest is history. I was impressed. Do you know why?
An hour earlier I had been speaking to someone with a Master’s degree who is not working—just yet. This intelligent person has a first degree in Agribusiness. And then there is this young lady, I presume, with no tertiary qualification, but owning her economic future.

difference

What is the difference between the two? Rejection-proof is. Hence let us go back to Jiang.
To flow with me, allow me to share Jiang’s story of Rejection Therapy as shared on the GLS website. Jiang researched how he could overcome the fear of rejection and was not impressed by the articles telling him to not take it personally. He found a website called Rejection Therapy. It’s a game created around a deck of cards. For 30 days, it challenges people to do things to get rejected and at the end become desensitised to rejection. Yes, become desensitised to rejection, which I assume our lovely young agriprenuer is now.

So this guy decided to do it for 100 days instead of 30 and vlog about it. Vlog is basically capturing videos and uploading them online, perhaps on YouTube.
He was rejected left and right, then all of a sudden people started saying yes. I loved this part of the seminar. He had to be rejected first before he became rejection-proof. One security guard company director once said during training, the guards are hurled at with all sorts of insults so that they become desensetised to them on duty. They become insult-proof.

Every objection you go through and have enough no’s, eventually becomes a yes is the lesson from Jiang.
In one of the take home quotes it states that, ‘you can change yourself by leaning into your fear and embracing your fear’.
Why is this column today all about rejection proof? Well Eswatini is in dire need of a new breed of entrepreneurs. It needs a vibrant resilient private sector to take flight despite the challenges and effects of the coronavirus.

innovators

The country desperately seeks new innovators and businesspeople to ideate and enter the business world to make an impact to stimulate this economy. But daily many of those who should be entering this market are scared to take that first step. They still walk around with CVs and keep hoping to get called in for a job. Where will you get a job when even globally job losses are so prevalent? But there are still lots of spaces in the entrepreneurship market. Just like that lovely market lady, you could make a daily income for yourself and your family by looking beyond the hurdles and rejection. And to make it in the business world you need to be able to take rejection in the chin and keep moving until your business idea takes flight.

The founder of the leading social media app Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, has a trending video in which he speaks about Facebook not being his first innovation. He tried many other things including gaming apps and they failed. But he kept going until he got that yes. You can too. Let’s put on that rejection-proof vest and go out there and flourish, just like our fiction action heroes, creating a series of real life successes.