by Jia Jiang
When you don’t know how much you want and value something, rejection can become almost a measuring stick. Some of the most successful people obtained their achievements only after going through the most gut-wrenching rejection. Because it was through that rejection that they discovered how much pain they were willing to experience in order to obtain their goal.
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Comedian Louis C.K. decided he wanted to become a comedy writer and stand-up performer as a kid growing up in Boston. Possessing a rare combination of brazenness and heart, disrespectfulness and relatability, crudeness and insight, Louis C.K. blossomed into his life dream. By his mid-forties, he had accomplished more than most comedians could ever hope for.
As a stand-up performer, he frequently performed on the most popular late-night TV shows, and his tours usually sold out within hours. His one-hour specials were made into DVDs that yielded millions in profit, and he even had his own show on HBO. He’s been nominated for thirty Emmy Awards, winning five.
Given his innate talent and the fact that he had managed to achieve his dream career, you might think Louis C.K.’s success was the natural outcome of all the right lucky breaks. Yet that couldn’t be further from reality. In fact, he was rejected over and over again in the pursuit of his dream. And it was because of all those rejections that he found out how badly he wanted a career in comedy.
When he was seventeen, Louis C.K. gave his first stand-up performance during an open mic night at a Boston night club where aspiring comedians would get onstage to tell jokes. The audiences at these events are notoriously tough on people, often booing them off the stage. It’s a nerve-racking way for people with stand-up dreams to test their talent, and an equally convenient way for them to give up their dreams after public rejection.
Not knowing anything about the setting nor having ever even attempted stand-up, Louis C.K. spent days preparing two hours’ worth of material that he thought was great. But the audience thought differently.
After only about a minute and a half, “the people just stared at me,” he recalled in an interview about his career on the Howard Stern Show. After delivering a joke that clearly bombed horribly, he’d said, “I think that’s all I really have,” and walked off the stage, humiliated. The emcee proceeded to make fun of him for ten minutes afterward. “It was a terrible feeling, and I wanted to die,” Louis C.K. said.
But he gathered up the courage to try again. A famous local comic put him in front of a bigger crowd without any preparation. “It was awful,” Louis C.K. recalled. “Literally my hands were shaking, and my heart was pounding so that my head kept bobbling up and down.” Needless to say, this time it went even worse and he bombed again.
These thrown-to-the-wolves experiences would have led many young dreamers to believe they didn’t have the talent or that the career they dreamed of wasn’t as glamorous as they had imagined. In the popular “fail fast” culture that many entrepreneurs and businesses now are clinging to, most, if not all, would have concluded that doing stand-up comedy might not be their thing. Most of them would have moved on to try something else, perhaps something that didn’t involve such public exposure.
When asked why didn’t he walk away at that point, Louis C.K. explained: “A little time went by and I was like, well, I didn’t die, and I am still interested. That felt bad when it was going on, and I’m healed now, and I’m still interested in trying again. I made it through the bad feeling. I can handle feeling that bad.”
He toiled away in Boston night club obscurity for eight years, struggling to make ends meet. Many nights he was required to perform to literally empty rooms at clubs, because in case someone walked in, there would be a show.
One night, Jim Downey, the director of Saturday Night Live—which has always been a life-changing and dream platform for comedians—came to town looking for fresh writer talent. He selected every single comic who auditioned—except Louis C.K. It was like the world was giving him the clearest possible message to quit. But Louis C.K. still didn’t give up. The rejections, in fact, were a real gut check. He’d been rejected in a pretty dramatic way, but he still didn’t want to give up. This realization gave him the strength to pursue comedy despite these early experiences. Later, his “lucky” break finally came when he was discovered by Conan O’Brien and got a job as a writer. The rest is history. But when you think about the trajectory of his journey, Louis C.K.’s “lucky break” wasn’t really luck at all. It was the result of being able to endure multiple devastating rejections over a long period of time.
Most of us grew up harboring big dreams, whether it was becoming the president of the United States or being a rocket scientist or doing stand-up comedy for a living. Yet most of us abandon these early dreams. As we get older, we learn through self-reflection that we don’t really have the combination of passion, drive, or talent for that particular dream. Or we learn through rejection that the world isn’t receptive to our endeavors. So we change course, often finding success in other professions. Again, this is the “Upside of Quitting” that economist authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt talk about.
But some people don’t give up—even after the world initially, or even repeatedly, rejects them. They become who they always wanted to become because, through the worst rejections, they learned how much their dreams mean to them.
Dostoevsky once said, “The only thing I dread [is] not to be worthy of my sufferings.” The same goes for rejection. Is your dream bigger than your rejections? If it is, maybe it’s time to keep going, instead of giving up.
FINDING MISSION
Most of the time, when we talk about rejection, we’re talking about one person or one group saying no to another. But sometimes life events are so profound and life changing that they make people feel rejected by fate, or even by God. How does a person find meaning when his or her world turns upside down—or, in the case of Major Scotty Smiley, literally pitch-black?
Many of my classmates at Duke Business School were incredibly intelligent and creative. Some went on to become successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. Yet if you ask me which classmate left the biggest impression and impact on me, it would be Scotty Smiley.
Smiley was a U.S. Army first lieutenant at the time and had served in Iraq. On April 6, 2005, his platoon spotted a suspicious vehicle with a single male driver heading toward their post. Smiley was the closest to the vehicle and fired a warning shot, but the driver didn’t stop. Lieutenant Smiley had a decision to make. He could aim at the driver and stop him with a bullet, or fire another warning shot, attempting to spare the driver’s life. He decided, fatefully, on the latter. Smiley remembers seeing the driver look toward him, then a second later detonate a suicide car bomb. Smiley was much closer to the vehicle than the rest of his platoon—he’d purposely tried to stop the vehicle before it got closer to his men—so the bomb didn’t hurt anyone except Smiley.
The next thing Smiley remembered was lying in the hospital. Some shrapnel had penetrated his left eye and gone into his brain, and the doctor told him he would never see again.
Smiley told us this story during our school commencement. “It is often said man’s greatest fear is to go blind,” he said. “I met that fear that day.”
A deeply religious man, Smiley felt rejected by God. Why had God taken away his sight and left him blind for life? His life went into a tailspin. “My life, in my opinion, was taken from me,” he told Fox News during an interview about his experiences. “It’s hard for anyone to deal with that. Denial, anger, resentment, fear…I didn’t know what to think.”
He was also afraid of being rejected by the army, which had become the bedrock of his life and his career. In almost all cases, such debilitating injury would mean leaving active duty.
But Smiley wasn’t willing to settle for that fate. He wanted to go on with his life and live it to the fullest—inside the army. He told our class: “I didn’t want to be Lt. Dan Taylor”—the fictional character in the movie Forrest Gump who becomes overl
y bitter after losing his leg in the Vietnam War.
So Smiley preempted the army’s inevitable decision by making one of his own. Instead of quietly retiring from the army, he petitioned to stay in, taking on jobs to help and inspire other injured soldiers. The army agreed, and Smiley became the army’s first blind active-duty officer.
In the meantime, he climbed Mount Rainier, skied in Colorado, surfed in Hawaii, skydived, and completed a triathlon. He received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star from the army. He then won an ESPY award as the world’s Best Outdoor Athlete in 2008. After graduating from Duke’s MBA program, he went on to teach a leadership course at West Point, then became the commander of the Warrior Transition Unit at West Point’s medical center. Recently, he received the army’s prestigious MacArthur Leadership Award and was promoted to major. He also became an author of the book Hope Unseen, telling his story.
Smiley’s deep faith never again wavered. It became his mission to use his story to inspire millions of soldiers, athletes, churchgoers, and everyday people to shift their perspectives on what “rejection” means and how to turn adverse circumstances into strength, motivation, and mission in life.
To this day, Scotty Smiley’s story continues to inspire me. I sat in the same classroom with him for my entire first year at school. Other than using special software for blind people that would read homework and course material to him, he participated just like everyone else. I remember one day after class I helped him to walk to the front of the school building where his family was waiting for him. He hugged his beautiful and loving wife, Tiffany, and picked up and kissed his toddler son, and waved good-bye to me.
I usually feel great sympathy toward those with disabilities. But in that moment, I realized there is no way I could feel bad for Scotty Smiley. I thought to myself, My God, what a guy! And what a privilege it is for me to know this man!
Losing his eyesight was a tragedy. But instead of being defined by tragedy like so many others, Scotty decided to define himself through his reaction. In a way, he found his new mission in life through his rejection and turned a story of tragedy into one filled with meaning and joy. Because he chose to.
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In a way, these stories remind me of a much more grim yet profound one: the story of Dr. Viktor Frankl. I read Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning many years ago, and its message has always stuck with me. The book describes the time he was forced to spend in Nazi concentration camps. He and his fellow prisoners were stripped of everything that was once valuable to them—from comfort and security to human dignity and justice. Many times, life and death were decided randomly, based on the whims and moods of sadistic guards. However, Frankl still discovered one thing in the experience that no one thought was possible: meaning.
Frankl found that even through the deepest suffering and absence of physical freedom he could find meaning in his condition, whether it was to strengthen himself spiritually or to help care for other prisoners. Having meaning not only prevented him from losing hope and ending his own life, but it also gave him the freedom to choose what type of attitude he exhibited toward it all.
We might not have freedom to control our situations, but we have freedom to find meaning in every experience, even when it’s rejection, whether it’s empathy, value, or a new mission in life.
LESSONS
1. Find Empathy: All rejections are shared by many people in the world. One can use rejection and suffering to obtain empathy and understanding of other people.
2. Find Value: Repeated rejections can serve as the measuring stick for one’s resolve and belief. Some of the greatest triumphant stories come only after gut-wrenching rejections.
3. Find Mission: Sometimes the most brutal rejections in life signal a new beginning and mission for the rejectee.
CHAPTER 11
FINDING FREEDOM
It’s been said that no one captured more earthly glory than Alexander the Great during his reign as the emperor of Macedon. Undefeated in battle, Alexander conquered territory stretching from Eastern Europe to North Africa to South Asia. His presence struck fear in the hearts of every man he encountered—except one.
One day, when Alexander’s army was crossing the Indus River into India, he encountered a man sitting in the woods, naked and in a lotus position, staring at the sky. The man was known as the gymnosophist, or the “naked philosopher.” Puzzled, Alexander asked him what he was doing. The gymnosophist answered: “I’m experiencing nothingness. What are you doing?” Alexander replied: “I’m conquering the world.” Then they both laughed at each other’s foolishness.*
Alexander and the gymnosophist couldn’t understand each other because they lived in different paradigms. Alexander, who was trained in Aristotle’s linear Greek philosophy and believed in spectacular achievement in his one and only life, thought the gymnosophist was wasting his time by sitting there and doing nothing. The gymnosophist, on the other hand, held the asceticism belief that life’s true meaning comes from abstinence from worldly pleasures. He thought Alexander was wasting his time by conquering the world, which to the gymnosophist meant little in the grand scheme of things.
Yet Alexander the Great and the Indian gymnosophist were in fact both conquering the world. Alexander was conquering the collective and objective world that we all live in, and the gymnosophist was conquering the individual and subjective world only he lived in. Throughout history, mankind has been striving to discover and conquer both of these worlds. In fact, it’s at the point where the inner and outer worlds intersect that many of the most amazing and profound philosophical, religious, and artistic breakthroughs occur.
I started my rejection journey with a very straightforward goal: to overcome rejection so that I could become free to take more risks in my business and in my career. Put another way, I was focusing on the outer world and how to get better at dealing with it. But in the end, the biggest surprise of my journey was how much overcoming rejection would change my inner world—the way that I experience both the world and myself. Inside, I have found a sense of freedom and peace. And I had no idea how much mental and psychological bondage had enslaved me until I was able to eliminate it.
FREEDOM TO ASK
100 DAYS OF REJECTION: FLY A PLANE
By the time I neared the end of my rejection journey, I was regularly getting far more yeses than nos. When I asked a stranger on the street to play rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock—a wacky expansion of the classic game rock-paper-scissors—he went for it immediately. The next day, I visited the fast-food restaurant Sonic, where employees wear roller skates to serve food to customers waiting in their cars. I asked if I could borrow a pair of skates to have some fun on my own. They asked me to sign a waiver, and off I went. For my next attempt, I saw a construction crew operating a bucket truck that was fixing a business sign on top of a building. I asked them if I could ride in it, and they put me in the bucket, lifting me fifty feet above the ground and swinging me around just for thrills.
I was having a lot of fun doing all this cool and wacky stuff, but I was also a little frustrated with all the yeses. I wasn’t sure whether I’d become so good at asking for things that people had a hard time turning me down, or whether my requests were too easy. As strange as it might sound, I really wanted more rejections to achieve some balance in my learning. So I decided to come up with a rejection attempt that there was no way anyone would let me do.
For rejection attempt number 92, I visited a local airport and I asked a pilot named Desmond if he would let me fly his plane. I had no license, no experience, and honestly, no courage to fly a plane. I simply asked so I could get rejected.
But Desmond said yes.
It turned out he owned what’s called a gyroplane—a type of small, unenclosed rotorcraft that looks like a miniature version of a helicopter and can take off and land with ease. To me, it resembled more of a motorcycle than an airplane.
In fact, Desmond was a gyroplane enthusiast who couldn’t wait to tell peopl
e about how awesome his aircraft was. What I thought was a crazy request was actually an opportunity for Desmond to share something he loved.
To make sure I wouldn’t crash and die, he went up with me, teaching me how to fly it. It was a far cry from the gigantic commercial jets I was accustomed to. And precisely for that reason, I learned what real flying was, and perhaps how the Wright brothers and early pilots felt when they were in the air.
Before that day, when I thought of flying, I thought of standing in long frustrating lines, taking off my belt and shoes while making sure my pants didn’t drop, walking through the body scanner wondering if it would give me cancer someday, sitting on dirty carpet charging my mobile phone while waiting out a flight delay, fighting for overhead luggage space and elbow room with the guy sitting next to me once we boarded, and longingly peeking out the plane’s little windows to get a glimpse of the sky.
But in the gyroplane, I felt like a bird. No wonder Desmond loved it so much! He taught me to turn, to glide, and to climb higher in the sky. We did 360s, nosedives, and sharp turns. One minute I was two feet above a cornfield, just like a seagull skimming above the ocean. The next minute I was a thousand feet in the sky, just like an eagle.
It was the best flight of my life.
After we landed, I was consumed with one thought: What if I had never asked Desmond if I could fly his plane in the first place? I would have missed this whole experience. I wouldn’t even know gyroplanes existed.
Looking back over my 100 Days of Rejection, had I not asked, there were so many experiences I would not have had, from the silly to the profound: the Olympic donuts, having a talk-show host sing to my son on national TV, learning to be a greeter and a panhandler, becoming a professor and an office manager for a day, touring a fire station and a hotel, buying a McGriddle in the afternoon, assembling a smile-giving team in Washington, DC, giving a speech on the street, and learning more about the profession of female bodybuilding than I ever thought I would. I have so many incredible memories I would never have formed. These experiences wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t sought them out—they existed only because I had asked.