REJECTED? Good. Now Relax & Take It Easy.

Whether you're going out to meet new friends, find a date, reach out to new potential sponsors for your blog/website, book a guest for your podcast, blog, or Livestream, or make a sale pitch to a client for your product or service, when it comes to earning things in your favor...

Rejection is unavoidable.

You can't win them all. Fact.




Rejection is just a part of life and it's no big deal, man, really. As a lazy procrastin8r, you have the natural ability to stay calm and keep moving forward, slowly and surely whenever you face rejection. And trust me, you are*going to face rejection and you’re going to face rejection a lot.

Look, there are ways to increase your chances of success and earning the big prize of three letters ("YES")

But no matter how suave and charming you are, no matter how good of a salesperson you become, no matter how strong your persuasive skills may be, you're always going to face rejection at some point. If there’s one guarantee about life, it’s that you’re going to be rejected. But don’t let that daunt you

Even the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest, the most alluring and charismatic of people still hear the word NO at least once in a while. Whatever level you’re at, shit happens.

Dr. Seuss was rejected by 27 publishers. Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because his editor said he quote "lacked imagination". Elvis was told by the concert hall manager at the Grand Ole Opry he was better off going back to Memphis and driving trucks.

The list goes on and on.



Rejection happens. Quit your whining. Stop your worry wart tendencies. And...Get over it

Look, it's not about how to avoid rejection entirely so much as it is about how you handle it. Today, we’re going to dig into how you can use your lazy brain to take rejection with ease and grace.

Certainly you can hone your social skills and increase your success rate of getting people to "buy in" to your pitch, whether that's a product, service, or even a date.




However, you can NEVER reach a full 100%success rate. Ever.

Know this going in and it'll be easier to learn from mistakes as well as triumphs. Know that even the best, those better at you at this, are still getting hit with rejection on a consistent basis.

The ability to successfully make a sale means absolutely diddly squat. It means NOTHING. Unless you have the strength and Aloof attitude to not give a fuck, when and if rejection happens... and it will happen. Over, and over, and over again.

With proper rejection handling under your tool belt, you won't be emotionally bogged down by the rejection, no matter how bad it is, and will simply take it at face value, in stride. You will "take it with a grain of salt" as they say and tell yourself "fuck it" and move on.

Lowering the chances of rejection is no doubt useful. There are certain psychological tricks you can learn to get what you want out of people (time, money, etc).

More importantly though than all that gimmicky bullshit is the ability to handle a rejection in the first place and not let it hold you back or stifle you during your journey of leveling up your social skills.

Don't wallow in your misery.



If you can’t handle rejection in the beginning stages of mastering social skills, then you can’t expect to be able to handle it later down the line.  If you’re playing guitar, you gotta learn to strum before you play chords on the fret.



Practical and effective rejection handling is the absolute key and foundation to every step along the way in your social skills evolution.

You can’t really get anywhere if every time you get rejected, your progress becomes stagnate. You should be moving ever forwards, slowly but surely.

Handling rejection smoothly and embracing the Lazy Mindset goes hand and hand. 

With the Lazy Mindset, whenever you mess up or don't get it exactly right or hear the dirty two letter word "NO", you'll be able to bounce right back, without skipping a beat. You'll remain cool, composed, and unfazed by any sort of rejection.

This will allow you to level up your charisma much faster than attempting to go right in with practicing new communication skills -- pickup and sales tactics -- because it'll allow you to focus your energy on improvement rather than emotional coping (with the pain of rejection)

Your goal, as a ProcrastiN8r, is to minimize effort and maximize results, the gravitational center of laziness.

Any energy exerted should not be wasted.

If you're gonna get out of bed, then it better be worth it. Likewise, if you're gonna "make your pitch" then it better be worth it.


Worrying about rejection before it even happens or very well harping on it after the fact is nothing but a waste of time, mental and emotional energy. Those are not resources you want to spend when you are lazy.

The amount of rejections you receive will never hit the Zero mark and that's okay.


How do you handle rejection?

It all comes down to mindset. We'll touch on some outward displays of handling Rejection with poise, like body language, but to be honest, those things will come  naturally when your inner frame is in the right place, so let's first dive into mindset.

First of all, let’s get something out of the way….



Rejection Hurts

 I ain’t gonna sugar coat things and pretend like it doesn’t or promise you that you won’t feel any physical aches, emotional distress, or mental discomfort from rejection.

It’s painful to be rejected. No doubt about that. And frankly no matter how many times you are rejected, it still freaking hurts.

But again, it’s how you deal with that pain that matters, not necessarily avoiding it entirely. No pain, no gain, I suppose. Feeling pain from rejection is just part of the human experience and that’s something you’ll learn to accept.

Let’s take a look at where this pain is coming from...

In the hunting and gathering times of our ancestors, you needed social approval for survival. Literal survival. Being rejected, or outcasted, meant certain death. You couldn’t hunt and gather alone; you needed a tribe to protect you from beast and man alike.

We learned to fear rejection over centuries of evolution, because well, we didn’t want to die. 

Thus, our brains have become literally hard wired to associate rejection with death.



Unfortunately, in modern society, where you don’t actually need a tribe to protect you, you don’t need to be approved socially in order to survive and be a functioning member of society, that instinct is still there, even though it’s kind of outdated hardware.

Look...You ain’t gonna die from rejection.

Your instincts pull at you and try to convince your rational mind otherwise. But you’re really not. You’ll be okay.

You still feel that pain and anyone that says they don’t feel it is either lying or a psychopath. 

But recognize it for what it is and know you ain’t gonna die. Your brain is just firing off “danger” signals to try and keep you alive. But in reality, you’re not in any sort of threatening situation by attempting to make a sale or any sort of proposal and getting turned down.

Since you know death is not a consequence of rejection, it makes it easier to accept the pain and recognize it for what it is, from a calm, rational standpoint.

Your emotion of fear or anxiety will be there no matter what and you can’t control your emotions. You can, however, control how you react to them. React with a “meh” attitude and don’t care, don’t get caught up in the emotions or act on them.

That’s too much work and too much drama.

Be lazy. Take the path of least resistance, the easy way out. 

What’s the lazy path in terms of handling rejection?

Simple.

Not giving a single fuck about it.



Indeed, You may not be able to control your emotions.

But you do get to decide if you want to let them take charge of you or if you take charge of them.

Get in the habit of saying “fuck it” when your emotions try to stop you from approaching someone in the first place or prevent you from trying again or make you wanna scream or shout.

You can train your mind how it reacts to certain emotions and re-program the fight, flight, or freeze instincts.




You can train your brain to not give a fuck.

Your brain is sort of like a machine and you’re the lazy pilot of this giant fleshy mech. Your brain takes stimuli, releases certain chemicals based on that stimuli, and then you, as the one driving the thing, you have the control and authority to purposefully choose what to do at that point.

The brain is pretty cool and the more you do things consciously, on full manual mode, the more often you purposefully choose your actions in response to certain stimuli (in this case, choosing to calmly walk away in response to bad emotions from rejection), the more likely your brain is to resort to that action on “auto pilot”. 



You program your brain’s auto pilot by driving full manual.

Whatever you choose most often becomes “natural” and your default way of dealing with the emotion. So if you did the opposite of what I’m suggesting and decided to actually CRY when you’re rejected, you would feel strong impulses to want to cry every single time you feel the pain of rejection.

However, if you choose to smile, nod, and walk away upon getting hit with rejection, without any sort of tearful outburst, you would feel strong impulses to do that instead. 

You can always choose to go either way, but the one you choose to do consciously more often is the one that you’ll do when you’re “not thinking about it.”

It’s the same emotion you feel either way,  just different “impulses”, different “auto pilot” programs.




In other words, you train your brain what to do with emotions.

The lazy method of handling rejection is to nod, smile and say something along the lines of: 

“Okay, well thank you for your time”

Likewise, overcoming the fear of rejection in the first place, the lazy way, comes down to just walking up, carefree and saying “Hey”

Do that often enough that it becomes your “default setting” and you can start to do that without even consciously putting in the mental effort to do so.

You’ll still feel the pain. That is hardwired.

But the software, how you react to it, is flexible and can be re-coded to something more effective than crying or screaming.

Train your brain to Take It Easy during highly emotional times.

Lessening the Pain.

Maybe the pain is too much and you just can’t even.

No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to not take the rejection to heart.
 
Here’s the thing, you’re trying to hard. You’re thinking too much.

Lazy people don’t overthink. It’s too much work. Remember that.

Relax, man.

It may help to know that every single human being experiences the same sort of emotional dilemma, the same pain, as you. You’re not alone.

You’re not the only person in the world to ever have been rejected and you certainly won’t be the last. Take a look at the bigger picture here and don’t get so caught up in your own head.





Also, don’t get your hopes up too much.

Not in a depressive sort of way but in a rational relaxed one. Look, being shot down when you have your hopes are up to the skies is more painful than just a plain rejection straight up.

You can at the very least lessen*the pain by going in with a “fuck it, let’s see what happens” sort of attitude, rather than a hopeful one.

Just because you’re not hopeful doesn’t mean you’re necessarily doubtful, to be clear. It is better to be pleasantly surprised than severely disappointed.


You could also try to Assume the Sale.

Assume the person wants what you’re offering.

You’re reminding them why the already bought it or why they already chose to go out with you.

This takes the pressure off.

It’s done, dude. You got it already.

You don’t need to convince them of anything.  They already bought in. There’s no rejection to fear. 

Quite a mind fuck but it may help with confidence and ease your worries in the long run

And if for whatever reason, they choose to “back out” (reject) your offer, then you have to say to yourself “aw well, their loss”.

You have to go into the conversation (or sales pitch) with the attitude that if they do in fact still say NO and reject your offer or proposal that they are the one that is missing out, not you.

They have more to lose than you do by turning you down.

You have put yourself in a winning position 




Lean back and relax

Finally, a point we’ll touch on briefly is using effective body language to increase the strength of your Lazy mindset.

Use open body language. Don’t cross your arms, instead put them behind your head or at your hips.

 Lean back, keep your legs apart, not tightly together. Make slow, deliberate movements, not jittery quick ones. Don’t display any signs of nervousness.

Speak firmly and don’t rush to finish sentences or fill in gaps of silence. Wait, listen. Pause once in a while.

Maintain strong eye contact but don’t stare too long. Look away once in a while -- away and not down. Don’t ever look down, not at the floor, not at your phone -- that just shows insecurity.. Look to the side and show a bit of aloofness.


Overall, make your body relaxed and at ease.

Your mind will follow your body.







Now go out there and get REJECTED!

Getting rejected is no big deal. It really isn’t. Again, you’re absolutely NOT going to die because of it and it’s pretty much an...inevitable.

You can train your brain to Take It Easy whenever you are rejected.

The best way to learn how to handle rejection is to just go get rejected. Don't focus on closing the deal. Focus on being able to cope if the deal isn't closed.

If you don’t want to put yourself in quote on quote “risky” social situations, if you don’t want to expose yourself to the possibility of  getting rejected, and would rather stay at home all day, it’s not that you are being lazy, it’s that you are being fearful. 

True laziness is not giving a fuck. True laziness is getting better, slowly, at your own pace.

Take a few steps to learn how to handle rejection.

As a matter of fact, go say something you know won’t work and you know will get you rejected. Shoe 'em your worst.

Give your worst pick up line.

Give your worst sales pitch.

Give your absolute worst.


Make it your goal to actually fail and get rejected, instead of actually try to win the thing. Once you do that, you’ll see, it’s not that bad and you really had nothing to fear to begin with.

Learn from your mistakes and move forward. Never take rejection to heart.


Take it easy,


- N8



P.S.

In a later blog, we’ll cover more specific tactics in closing the deal , getting things to go in your favor, and lowering your chances of rejection,including more phrases you can say and body language you can use.

 But given the fact that rejection can and will happen no matter what, at whatever level you’re at, and you will never have a 0% rejection rate, it’s best to get a strong hold on the handling of rejection itself before tackling how to sway things towards your favor.


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