How to Be a Better Human - How to embrace rejection (with Jia Jiang)

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

We experience rejection all the time–in job interviews, while dating, when pitching a story or even trying to join a new club or activity. But if rejection happens so often, why is it so scary? And worse, what if our fear of being rejected is keeping us from going after the things we want? Jia Jiang is kind of a rejection expert–he’s gone from a career in the corporate world to the risky world of entrepreneurship. To conquer his fear of rejection, he started the 100 Days of Rejection Therapy blog, where he documented an experiment in which he willfully sought rejection on a daily basis. Now he’s authored a bestselling book, and owns a company dedicated to helping people overcome their fear of rejection. In this episode, he shares what he’s learned over the years on how to turn fear into triumph. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Let me start off today's episode with a confession. Sometimes when I'm working on a new project, whether it is a joke or a script or any sort of new idea, I have this image in my head of how successful it's going to be and how it's going to be perfect and everyone is going to love it. And that idea, that image I have in my head

is in a completely unrealistic alternate universe. Because once the excitement fades, I start to think about the real world, the world that I actually live in. And in this world, it is inevitable that no matter how good anything is, someone is going to not like it. And in fact, someone will probably hate it. And the fear of that rejection, well, the fear of that rejection often makes me stop working on the project altogether. I wish that I could say that that is a fear that I've gotten over. And look, sometimes I do manage to finish things and put work out into the world despite being afraid of rejection. I mean, you're listening to this podcast after all. It's not just ideas.

Sometimes it translates into products. But if I'm really being honest, there are a lot of times where that fear stops me in my tracks and I don't put the thing out there. And that's a shame because I know from experience that rejection gets easier if you practice facing it. The first time I got on stage to do stand up at an open mic, I did shockingly well and I was actually really hooked. But the second time, oh boy, the second time I did stand up, I bombed to total silence.

It was a horrific experience. I could not believe how slowly time was moving. It felt like I was on stage for a millennium instead of for just three minutes of terrible jokes. But now, after years of telling jokes, when I get silence from a crowd, it's not fun, but I also don't feel like it's traumatic, right? It's just information that I need to rewrite my punchlines or clarify my premises. And the process of getting rejected in that particular way has gotten a lot easier. I've built those muscles. And that is exactly what today's episode is all about. It's about how to face rejection and why you might be surprised by what happens when you put yourself out there despite being scared. Our guest, Jia Zhang, is the author of the book Rejection Proof, How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. But before Jia wrote this book,

he got his first taste of rejection at a very young age. Here's a clip from his TED Talk. When I was six years old, my first grade teacher had this brilliant idea. She wanted us to experience receiving gifts, but also learning the virtue of complimenting each other. So she had all of us come to the front of the classroom, and she bought all of us gifts and stacked them in the corner. And she said, why don't we just stand here and compliment each other? and she said, why don't we just stand here and compliment each other? If you hear your name called, go and pick up your gifts and sit down. What a wonderful idea, right?

What could go wrong? Well, there were 40 of us to start with, and every time when I hear someone's name called, I would give out the heartiest cheer. And then there were 20 people left, and 10 people left, and five left, and three left.

I was one of them. And the compliments stopped. Well, at that moment, I was crying. And the teacher was freaking out. And she was like, hey, would anyone say anything nice about these people? No one? Okay, why don't you go get your gift and sit down so behave next year, someone might say something nice about you.

Well, as I'm describing this to you, you probably know I remember this really well. But I don't know who felt worse that day. Was that me or the teacher? She must've realized that she turned a team building event into a public roast for three six-year-olds without the humor. You know, when you see people get roasted on TV, it was funny. There was nothing funny about that day. In this episode, we're going to talk with Jeh

about his book, about how he went viral on YouTube being publicly rejected, and why he's now started several companies that try to help people become fearless in the face of rejection. But first, we are going to take a quick break, so don't go anywhere. And we are back. We're talking about rejection on today's episode with author Jia Jiang.

Hi, I'm Jia Jiang. I'm an author and speaker and entrepreneur. I help people overcome their fear of rejection. I'm very excited to talk to you because I'm such a fan of your book and of your YouTube videos and of your talk. All of it is just it's so funny and engaging. And it's about this topic that I feel like we really don't talk about that much, which is rejection. So how do you define rejection? It's basically you walk up to someone, a person or an entity or organization, you want to get accepted with a certain request.

And that person exams you, whether it's thoroughly or whether instantly, and that person says no. And so that will be a rejection in my definition. How did you get interested in the idea of rejection? Just like a lot of things in life, you actually run into it by accident. So to me, basically, I tried to get funding with my startup and I got rejected with the investment. And I just started examining how I felt. And I felt so terrible, I wanted to quit right away. Also, because the person who rejected me was someone I really respected. I thought, man, he was a seasoned entrepreneur.

He must knew the subject more than I do. So if he rejected me, who am I to say that this idea is a good idea? Then I started doing some self-examination. I've read a lot of personal development books. And if you want to be successful, there's no way to, you can't just keep quitting like this, wanting to quit like this. So that's where I started looking back in my life saying, wow, I really have this fear of rejection. And I look for other people's approval. And I've tried to find a path of least resistance in everything I do.

So that's why I started getting really interested in this topic, saying, okay, how can I overcome my own fear of rejection? So the next time I get rejected, I won't feel this way. When we get these professional rejections, when you pitch your idea and the investor says no, when you ask for a promotion, you get rejected. When you apply for a job, when you say no. I mean, I'm giving all professional examples, but they can often feel like they're extremely personal. Like it is the same thing of being like no one likes you. And I think something that you've done such an amazing job at through your work is clarifying that when people say no, most of the time, it's not that they're saying no to everything

about you. It's just that they're saying no to that very specific request. It doesn't necessarily reflect no to everything about you. It's just that they're saying no to that very specific request. Exactly. It doesn't necessarily reflect how they think about you. And even if it does, sometimes it does. Sometimes people just don't believe in you as a person. But guess what? It's the fact that they don't believe you says as much about them as they do about you.

Because they don't know you. They don't know everything you've grown up with. They don't know your determination. They don't know your dreams've grown up with. They don't know your determination. They don't know your dreams and aspirations and skills. Yeah, so that's why I think rejection is very one-sided, meaning the rejecter, just all he or she did was to say no, but the rejected felt a whole world of weight of that rejection,

because now you feel like this is an indictment of who I am. And if that person, especially someone that I really respect, if she says no to me, that means I'm not worthy. And if you spell it out, that doesn't make any sense. However, we often do spell it out. In our mind, we instantly link that rejection to our self-worth. And that's why it has a lot of damage to us psychologically.

In your book, I think you also really highlight one of the painful parts of fearing rejection this much, which I think everyone who's listening to this can relate to, which is that we often don't try for the things we really care about because we're afraid of being rejected. And so as a result, we don't even have the possibility of making the dreams come true or having the big accomplishment that we so desperately want. Exactly. And a lot of times, the bigger your dream is,

the more impact you want to have, the more rejection you're going to have to go through to actually make it happen. However, we have that in our mind. If I don't get rejected, there's always that possibility that we can make this work sometime in the future. So that's why by leaving that possibility,

we often don't want to confront the possibility that we're going this work sometime in the future. So that's why by leaving that possibility, we often don't want to confront the possibility that we're going to get rejected. So that's why we often delay our dreams. And the thing is, if we go even try it, sometimes we get rejected once or twice, or in fact, maybe 20 times. And we feel like, wow, I should give up. This is really painful.

But as I mentioned, the more impactful you want to be, the more rejections you're going to have to get to actually get that yes. So maybe you need to go through 25, 30, 50, 60, 100 rejections. But sometimes we quit at three. We feel like this is a no. And then maybe if we just quit right now,

we don't embarrass ourselves further. And there's still that self-worth and there's still that possibility that's left in our mind that someday we can do this. And that's where I think it's really damaging. Because if you look at the people who are really successful in their lives or impactful in our history, people like Martin Luther King Jr., people like Mahatma Gandhi, those are the people, they are so impactful. They get rejected so bad, but they didn't give up.

They didn't let those rejections dictate what they're going to do. They actually keep going because they know the flip side of strong rejection is strong acceptance. And that's where the ability to fight over rejection to actually keep going is really important. Well, I want to go back to a couple of anecdotes from your book, Rejection Proof. We have this idea in our head of how things will go perfectly. And if we don't actually try it in real life, that idea can't ever get challenged.

I wonder if you can share some of the times where that's happened to you in your life. I know you had kind of an amazing invention when you were fairly young and you had a version of this because you were afraid of rejection. It was when I was a teenager and I saw myself as an inventor. So I had a notebook that had basically hundreds of ideas that I wrote down. Every day I would look at something and I was like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I can do this to solve this problem I just encountered? cool if I can do this to solve this problem I just encountered. So one of the ideas I wrote down was, what if I can install the caterpillar tracks on the bottom of shoes or wheels at the bottom of shoes? And what if I combine the skate shoes with normal shoes? Wouldn't that be great? I just like

skate everywhere, but then if I want to walk, I just walk. And I started doing research. I started going to my college library from a local college and just, you know, find out how do I apply for a patent. I started drawing it out. I still remember my first drawing. And then when I did it and I sent it to the drawing and everything to my uncle, and because he's someone I really respected, but he's a lawyer. He's not an inventor. He's not even a product guy. I hung on every word he said to me. The first word he said to me, he was like, man, your English sucked.

And the words you are putting on the drawing is not even right. You know, why don't you worry about trying to learn English rather than coming up with this thing? And that just totally deflated me. And it was, looking back, it sounds silly, but you know, I see my uncle as my, as almost like my second father. And if someone I respect

that much, didn't think highly of my idea, basically I was looking for approval for my idea. And when I found, I looked for the approval from the wrong guy. And secondly, even if I did it to the right guy, I couldn't, I shouldn't just give up after one rejection. In fact, I should have just kept going. Now, that idea, a couple of years later, someone else did it. And of course, we talk about entrepreneurship. They're not about execution, right? You got the right idea.

You got to make it happen. But that idea turned into Healy. You've seen those shoes that kids wear that they can skate around. When I see a kid wearing that shoe skate around in a park or on the street, I always think, man, I should have been the person who made this happen. To be clear, and you say this in the book, too, you're not saying that the inventor of Healy's stole your idea. It's just that you have a similar thing and you could have done something similar, perhaps.

Yeah. So something that I think is really useful about that, though, is you got rejected. And at first you just took a rejection and you would turn and you'd run away. And then you decided, I'm going to change that about myself. And so you started making these videos and you said, I am going to seek out rejection. I'm going to get rejected for one thing every day. And by doing that, I am going to get stronger and get better at rejection. And you started making these videos

and posting them on YouTube. What did you learn about rejection through doing that? Yeah, very quickly, I learned that I'm not going to die from this. On a conception level, of course, I knew when I woke up to someone, I say to the borrowers, they can borrow $100 or people are gonna say no to me, but I'm not gonna die. It Just by having that awareness or understanding that you're not going to die from this made a whole world of difference. You know, you started with things that are kind of obvious that you would get a no. You go up to a stranger and say, can I have $100? Yeah, I think we could all agree.

That's pretty unlikely that they would say yes. You discovered that like while that seems like such an obvious no, it also turns out that obvious no is not that far from a yes. So how did you go from the first time you ask someone, hey, can I have $100? And I'm saying, obviously not. How did you realize that actually it wasn't that hard to get someone to actually start to think about it and consider it at least? This comes from my day three. Actually, this came very early in my 100 days of rejection. When I went into a Krispy Kreme donut shop, I asked the donut maker. That was the year of the Olympics. So I was like, how about you can link five donuts together and make them look like Olympic rings?

Which is such a hilarious concept because like, how is that even physically possible? It seems like it's not possible. No, it's not possible. That's why there's no way they were going to say yes. In my mind, I'm like, I'm going to come in. They're going to say no. And I already learned that I'm not going to die. So I'm going to say yes. In my mind, I'm like, I'm going to come in. They're going to say no. And I already learned that I'm not going to die. So I'm going to say a joke.

And then I'll just thank them and then leave. That's all I had this plan in my mind. What ended up happening is the donut maker took me so seriously. She was like, what does the color look like? If I do it this way, is it going to get stuck in the fryers? If I do it that way, maybe I can make it happen. So 15 minutes later, she gave me a box of donuts that looked like Olympic rings. It just blew my mind.

It blew my mind. And she was also so kind that she paid for it herself. She was like, you know, this is not me. That was like a watershed moment in my life. Because first of all, there's no way she was going to say yes. No way. I picked this request specifically to get a no, to have some fun, then just leave.

But even that, I got a yes. I just asked myself, how many yeses have I missed in my life just because I thought there's no way I would get one? And that's where almost like a whole world that's hidden in plain view got revealed to me. The world is of so many possibilities, so many opportunities, if you just explore, if you just lose that fear. Why don't you just keep going and see what kind

of world you can discover? You also learned some very interesting and I think broadly applicable techniques that everyone who is listening can use. So what are some of the things that you learned in your rejection experiment that helped you to actually not get rejected when you made requests later on? You make a big request, whether it's a silly request, legit request, the other person says no, your instinct is, okay, I tried. All right, you just want to leave. Or you might get a little bit upset. You might get very disappointed and feel the pain. So you start arguing with the other person saying, how can you say no?

You shouldn't say no. So you start arguing. So you have this fight or flight instinct in all of us. But I found that if I don't go to automatically go to one of those two responses, if I stay engaged, if I try to find out why, if I try to ask the other person, how can I get it? So if I start engaging the other person like that, what I'm doing is I'm bringing the other person to my side.

Some people just want to get rid of you, but most people are actually kind and helpful. So when you're asking how, the other person will be like, okay, maybe I should help this person so it doesn't get personal. Or I don't feel too bad about rejecting the person. And a lot of times the solutions that the other person came up with, it's actually better than you originally requested. We're going to take a quick break, but please don't stop listening to the podcast now. I would count that as a rejection, and I really don't think I could handle it. We will be right back with more from Ja. And we are back. We're talking about rejection with the man behind rejectiontherapy.com. He's the author of Rejection Proof, Ja Zhang. While a lot of people, myself included, spend tons of energy trying to avoid getting rejected, Jia has worked to try and actively seek rejection out. And here is what he discovered when he decided to first face his fear of rejection

and put himself out there. This is another clip from his TED Talk. So one day I went to a stranger's house, I had this flower in my hand, and I said, knock on the door, I said, hey, can I plant this flower in your backyard? And he said, no. But before he could leave, I said, hey, can I know why? And he said, well, I have this dog that would dig up anything I put in the backyard. I don't want to waste your flower. If I don't do this, go across the street and talk to Connie. She loves flowers. So that's what I did. I went across and knocked on Connie's door, of flowers. So that's what I did. I went across and knocked on Connie's door, and she was so happy to see me. And then half an hour later, there's this flowering Connie's backyard. I'm sure it looks better now. But had I left after the initial rejection, I would have thought, well, it's

because the guy didn't trust me. It's because I was crazy, because I didn't dress up well, I didn't look good. It was none of those. It was because what I offered did not fit what he wanted. And he trusted me enough to offer me a referral using sales term. I converted that referral. This has kind of taken off now. It has a new life of its own where a lot of people on TikTok are doing this rejection therapy experiment too. I wonder between your own or other people's that you've seen online, what are some of the most memorable rejections that you've seen people try and get? Yeah, there are a lot of people trying to get dates with strangers, but that's not, that's really not my thing. I'm happily married. But as I mentioned, like in my

personal example, I've seen, there's one thing that I try to get a haircut at a Pestmark once. You tried to get them to give the person who grooms the dogs to give you a haircut? She just bust out laughing and she said no, but we had a great time. Another one of my favorites is your burger refill. Yeah, I think it was at a Five Guys. I don't remember. It's at a burger joint. And after finishing a burger, I went and talked to the cashier and said,

hey, can I get a burger refill? And he was really confused. And then we negotiated a little bit and he said no. But that was the, they cracked me up. What I found is if I come in relaxed and try to have a good time and be curious about what the other person would say and how I would respond, I actually perform the best.

Like those are usually my best ideas. And this is usually I do best with my negotiation when I'm like lighthearted and just having fun. Yeah. I think another thing that you come up with, even when you're doing one of these sillier ones, right? Like asking a restaurant that gives drink refills, if you can get a burger refill too. One thing that you wrote that I think is really perceptive is that if you mention to the other people what they're

seeing, then they're a lot more receptive, right? So like, if you ask, can I get a burger refill? And then you go, sorry, that's a weird request, isn't it? Then they'll go, yeah, it is a weird request. And all of a sudden, you're on the same side rather than being on opposing sides. Exactly, exactly. And just the thing is, especially if you make a strange, like a big request, right? If you make strange requests, the other person sometimes, they'll be like, oh, what is this about? And is this person crazy? So they would have these kind of doubts in their mind. And that's why sales is tough. Sometimes when you sell something to someone, people have doubts and they don't mention it to you.

They just stay in your, people want to be nice. so it stays in their mind and they just want to, at the end, they reject you. But if you can mention some of the doubt that they would have and that it almost like kind of bring whatever the doubt they have to the front. Now you're both seeing the doubt, especially if you have a solution for that doubt.

A lot of times people feel like, oh, okay, you're not crazy. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. You're thinking about, you're empathizing with feel like, oh, okay, you're not crazy. Oh, okay. Oh, wow. You're thinking about, you're empathizing with me. Okay. You know what you're asking. It's not easy. So when you mention those doubts, a lot of times the request gets easier because the other person feel more at ease. Do you think that part of the outcome was building your own self-confidence? Absolutely. By the end, I felt I could ask anything from anyone, anywhere.

Just because I learned, one, how to ask it, and two, I would learn how to give the permission to the other person to say no to me. In fact, that's really important. If I give the other person permission, if I'm not so attached to the outcome, I feel I can ask anything. The ability to ask anything and do it in a way

that one, it doesn't make the other person feel bad. Two, it doesn't make yourself feel bad. It's very powerful. I think there's something really interesting about the idea of giving permission to others and to yourself. A lot of times we really want to get a yes. Having a yes would mean a lot more. If we're really attached to the outcome, we get really tense. We get tightened up. We want to, we're almost forcing, willing the other person to say yes to us. So we're trying to put on the best show possible. But a lot of times that kind of pressure that we put on ourselves and the other person, you know, they don't produce the best result because you're not at your best when you're tense, when you are so clinging to a

possible yes. You're almost begging. So if you're not that attached to the outcome, when you're tense, when you are so clinging to a possible yes. You're almost begging. So if you're not that attached to the outcome, but you're very attached to your performance, your intention, the way you're asking, if you do your best, the outcome will come either one way or the other, but you're not putting the pressure on the other person. So that's why give the other person the permission to say no to you actually opened up a lot of possibilities. You've written that my rejection therapy taught me that the worst thing they can say is no is actually not true. Okay, so if that's not the worst thing they can say, what is the worst they can say? The worst is you say no to yourself. And we do that all day

long. We rationalize why we shouldn't ask this. And this is human nature. You know, we want, I mean, that's a lot of times that's trying to be socially acceptable, trying to be gregarious, trying to fit in, that make us get along with each other. But also, if you have a big idea, if you want to make something really impactful happen, you're going to risk a lot of rejections.

So getting people to say no to you is not the worst thing. The worst thing is you're going to risk a lot of rejections. So getting people to say no to you is not the worst thing. The worst thing is you say no to yourself because you don't even get a chance to validate your idea. You had this moment where you owned a house, you had a really successful corporate job, you were making a really healthy income, you were happily married, and you were expecting your first child. So on the outside, everything looked like it was going really well. And you were really unhappy. And I think that is a situation where a lot of people are really would be hesitant to make a change. That's a form of fear of rejection to to like sit with something where it seems good, but it's not right for you. Exactly. I was miserable at my job

because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to take a chance. I want to be the one who come out with crazy ideas, who can make things happen, to take chances and fail and succeed. That's what I wanted. Not at a Fortune 500 company working as a marketing manager.

That's where I was. I held on to that for so long because from outside, everything in my life felt okay, felt good. I got a house, I got to pay my mortgage, I got a kid on the way. But deep down, I was miserable because it's not what I was meant to do. I knew if I come out and say, all right, I'm going to give up all this and start pursuing my dream full time, I'm going to get a lot of rejections, you know, from my friend, especially from my in-laws. So yeah, maybe they're still having,

I think they still haven't gotten over that yet. So but yeah, so that's a lot of possible rejections. And that's why I hold on to my job for a long, not long time, but for much longer than I wanted, because I don't want to be rejected by people around me. What is it that you think appeals to you so much about being an entrepreneur? Because I know that you have wanted to be an entrepreneur for your whole life, but kind of held off on doing it because it seemed too dangerous or too prone to failure. The possibility, the thrill, the work, the team building, the dreaming and the everyday grind, the possible success and failure.

And you will get that a corporate job. But when it comes to entrepreneurship, you can do a lot of things. Like basically you can do anything you want and you don't have a lot of constraints. Of course, there are best practices. There are smarter ways to build a company, terrible ways to build a company.

But really the world is your campus, you know, from team building to product making. But at the company, you have a lot of resources. You have a good team, but also you have a lot of constraints. Tell me about this app that you're building that's trying to help people be a little bit better every day.

Basically, we get inspired on quite a bit, you know, with TED Talks and this podcast and we read books. And so often when that happened, we're like, wow, this is amazing. It's changing my life. I'm going to be different. But then nothing happens.

Because to actually make something happen, to actually make a change in our lives, we have to take actions. We have to do things. We can't just keep that mental note in our mind saying, someday, if I get rejected, here's how I would react. What you have to do is you got to go get rejected every day. You got to just go out and do things. So taking action is the key differentiator between dreamers and doers. And I want I'm building an app to help people take actions to go from intention and knowledge and desire into real change and habits. And how can people get involved with that or use it in their own lives? Yeah, so you can go to my website, rejectiontherapy.com, and you can find a place where you enroll in beta testing.

So we're trying to align our psychology to our actions. To be better human is actually going a little bit against human nature. little bit against human nature. Because again, to take actions, we have to constantly fight over our urge to be lazy, to be entertained, to be distracted, to procrastinate. We have to take actions. So my goal is how can I use human nature for making us better? For people who are listening and for me too, I feel very inspired by this idea of running my own experiment where I set a number of days and then I just try and get one rejection every single day. What tools or advice would you have for people who are embarking on their own practice of trying to get some rejections? Yeah.

So don't say I'm just going to be like this forever going forward because forever is a long time. A hundred days is a long time. Try to do this for maybe two to three weeks. Say every day I get rejected. And when you're done with 21 rejections, count that as a long time. Try to do this for maybe two to three weeks. Say every day I get rejected. And when you're done with 21 rejections, count that as a huge success. Pat yourself on the back. You've completed this accomplishment. You will develop a habit and you can use that in the future. So have a starting date and end date is actually really important. Two, start with something easy.

Just go out and see a stranger saying, can I take a selfie with you? And boom, you get rejected. Cool, you got it done for the day. I actually did research on this. There'll be a lot of people saying yes to you when you ask them for a selfie. Don't be attached to getting a yes and no.

Focus on yourself. Focus on making that big request. So if you focus on that, the results will take care of themselves. A lot of times the result will surprise you. You can learn a lot from how people behave, how people interact with you and how your behavior will impact their behavior.

I seriously, I'm going to try this myself. I'm excited about it. I've been watching some videos of people doing it online. And even just like you see the panic in their eyes as they're like, I'm about to ask for a free coffee at the coffee shop. And then they go there and the person's like, sorry, I can't do that. And they're like, I'm about to ask for a free coffee at the coffee shop. And then they go there and the person's like, sorry, I can't do that. And they're like, OK, it's fine.

I'll pay anyway. But just the relief of like I it wasn't the biggest thing in the world to just like ask for something and see what happens. No, it's not. But we make it such a big deal in your mind. And I should say it's probably better to ask for something free from a giant chain rather than from a local mom and pop shop. Like I think if you're going to ask for the person who's not going to be suffering from

it. Yeah. And also, don't forget this. Sometimes by giving the other person a chance to say yes to us with a big request, we're actually giving the other person the opportunity to feel good about themselves. So maybe give the other person a lot of compliments and tell them, hey, it's okay. I know this is a big request. It's okay to say no, but if you give it to me, you'll make my day.

I would love to take a selfie with you and celebrate this. Yeah, I love that. I actually feel like it leads perfectly into the question that we always try and end the show with. So what is one thing that has helped you to be a better human, whether it's a book, a movie, a piece of music, an idea? My wife. She has made me such a much better human, whether it's a book, a movie, a piece of music, an idea? My wife. She has made me such a much better person than I was. And I feel like marrying the right person, of course, that's not easy for everyone.

But I think having someone in life that believes in you, that supports you, that cheers you up when you're down, that suffers with you when you're down, but also enjoys your success, that suffer with you when you're down, but also enjoy your success. And that's so important. So it doesn't have to be your wife or family members, but try to find the people in the world who actually, they relish in your success.

That is so important. Well, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show. And the only thing that's left for this episode is the credits. So would you mind reading the credits for me? That'd be fantastic. I would love for that. Okay, amazing. Well, Jia Zhang, thank you so much for being on the show. Please check out his book, Rejection Proof, and go to his website, rejectiontherapy.com.

Thank you for having me, Chris. Okay, normally I would read the credits here, but I'm going to toss it to you, Jia. Take it away. That's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening to How to Be a Better Human, hosted by Chris Duffy. A big thank you to today's guest, me, Jia Jiang. Oh, you're welcome. My book is called Rejection Proof, How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. My website is rejectiontherapy.com. From TED, this podcast is brought to you by the constantly rejected Sammy Case, Anna Fallon, and Erica Yuan.

From Transmitter Media, the team includes Greta Cohen and Farrah DeGrange, who both constantly surprise strangers with their kindness. And from PRX, it's Jocelyn Gonzalez and Sandra Lopez-Monsalvi, who both claim to have invented the Healy. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or a stranger.