The Practice of Being Told No

Rejection always stings. But what if someone told you that rejection can be used as a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to build your resilience? Rejection therapy is a practice coined by Canadian businessman Jason Comely in 2010, who designed a game where individuals seek out rejection at least once a day. The idea is grounded in the exposure therapy model: where consistent exposure to a feared stimulus desensitizes patients’ anxiety toward it. 

This kind of cognitive behavioral therapy can be seen in American author Jia Jiang’s experiment called 100 Days of Rejection. In this test, he committed to seeking out rejection every single day for 100 days, starting with small, somewhat absurd requests, and slowly working toward the most difficult ones. After he completed this challenge, he discovered that the sting of rejection, once he was exposed to his feared stimuli many times, simply lost much of its power.

Jiang writes how courage had never been a fixed personality trait of his, and that people are not born with inherent bold or timid traits. These characteristics are shaped by the environment, and most importantly, can be redesigned. Someone can spend years avoiding rejection or risks, but this tendency trains their nervous system toward avoidance. When someone keeps practicing facing rejection, they get better at handling it.

His prescription is simple: start with small rejections, seek out to take risks and face your fears, and stay consistent. A small step in building confidence today will make the next step feel less impossible, and over time, courage becomes less about not feeling afraid and more about learning that discomfort will not break you.