Want to Lead an Extraordinary Life? Learn How to Handle Rejection and Setback
Do you want to live an extraordinary life? If your current life and career are 100 percent satisfying, then stop reading right now. This article is not for you.
On the other hand, if you want to live an extraordinary life, I recommend you read two new books that will give you the tools to succeed in your journey. These books aren’t quick, get-rich schemes or inspiring stories of superstar athletes taking home the gold. No, these two stories are all about how regular people (you and me, in other words) handle rejection and setbacks, and land back on their feet again.
The heroes of these books aren’t celebrities and the journey they went through doesn’t involve once-in-a-lifetime lucky happenstance. You can do what they did.
You may not become rich, famous, or powerful after following their advice, but if you learn from them you will probably lead a better, more meaningful, and rewarding life.
The Third Door
The first book on your reading list should be The Third Door by Alex Banayan. When I first heard of Banayan, he was hobnobbing with Jessica Alba at a conference, had a six figure book deal for The Third Door, and was the youngest ever venture capitalist hired at Alsop Louie Partners. A lucky bastard, in others words, who had the inside track. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I thought his book would be a pretentious, navel-gazing tome. One of those celeb success books that are autobiography masquerading as business advice. Once again, dead wrong.
The original idea for the The Third Door was for Banayan to interview some of most successful people in the world like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to find out how they became successful. Instead, Banayan’s book tells a gripping story about trying and failing and then trying again and again to get interviews with these successful people — an ugly and honest journey filled with doubt, fear, and rejection, where he wasn’t afraid to admit he looked like a fool (more than once), all in a quest he wasn’t sure he could complete.
In his book, Banayan does meet many successful people and interview them. But it’s Banayan’s story about trying to meet these people that serves as the best example of how to be successful. Each step in his journey from getting their contact information to wooing their gatekeepers and preparing for interviews shows how much rejection one must go through before achieving a goal.
During his journey, Banayan learns the philosophy of the “third door.” In his third door metaphor, success is like a nightclub: the VIPs get right in, the huddled masses (you and me) stand in line and hope to get in, while the people who really want to succeed find or make a third door to get in.
By the end of his quest, Banayan had interviewed people like Bill Gates, Quincy Jones, Jane Goodall, and Maya Angelou, but you’ll find his journey more inspiring than the advice of these successes. Because Banayan shows firsthand how difficult it is to do something extraordinary, the work involved, the friends you need, and definitely the time it takes.
There’s nothing he does that cannot be done by others. We can all find that third door, if we work at it and learn from our rejections.
Rejection Proof
Speaking of rejection, the second book I suggest you read is Rejection Proof by business speaker Jia Jiang. Rejection is when someone personally tells you ‘no.’ Jiang’s book will prepare you for all the rejection you will receive on your mission to do something extraordinary.
Jiang is now a motivational speaker and had one of the top three most popular TED talks in 2017 detailing his experiment with 100 Days of Rejection. After being rejected by an investor for his startup, Jiang took it really hard. So he decided to conduct an experiment in order to help him deal with his own fears of rejection.
What Jiang discovered along his journey was also something any person can do — learn from your rejection. Jiang’s book goes into more detail of the lessons and adventures of his 100-day quest, but here are the main takeaways of what he learned about handling rejection.
First, rejection is just a numbers game. It takes a lot of ‘no’s before you eventually get a ‘yes.’ Jiang points out that J.K. Rowling, who wrote the most popular young-adult series in the world, was rejected by 12 publishers before the 13th publisher accepted her first book Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone.
Second, rejection is just an opinion. The rejection you receive says more about the person who rejected you than it does about you or your proposal. Just because one person does not like your idea does not mean you or your idea are bad.
Third, rejection is a source of knowledge. When you get rejected, you learn something. When Jiang was rejected, he learned to ask why the person said ‘no’ to his request. When the person explained the reason why, Jiang learned how to better frame his proposals.
Jiang suggests when you get rejected on your first request, treat it as a negotiation. For example, on one of his rejection tasks, Jiang asked if he could sleep in a hotel room for free. The front desk attendee of course said ‘no,’ but when Jiang changed his request to napping in a room for the afternoon, the woman said ‘yes.’ Remember, most people want to be accomodating. So when your first request is rejected, ask for something less. Often, the reduced request will get a ‘yes.’
Jiang’s final bit of advice (and which he signs all his books with) is: Just Ask! You’ll never get anything in life if you don’t ask for it.
Alex Banayan made requests for interviews and book deals. He was rejected more than once by many people for interviews and by many literary agents for representation, but he eventually got his book deal and met many successful people. The same thing happened with Jiang. The more he asked for things, the more he started getting yeses.
So if you want to live an extraordinary life, accept rejections, learn from them, and remember the people who get things in life are the people who ask for them.
Kyle Crocco is a Content Marketing Coordinator at BigSpeak, frequent visitor to microbreweries in Santa Barbara, and creator of wacky music videos for Duh Professors. He’s also following Jiang’s advice on how to handle rejection.
