BA340_D2 Strategic Thinking and Innovation- Week 5: Discussion 2: Fear of Rejection

View the humorous and thoughtful 15-minute TED talk by Jia Jiang entitled What I Learned From 100 Days of Rejection. Then answer the question below.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jia_jiang_what_i_learned_from_100_days_of_rejection (Links to an external site.)

In what ways do you fail to take risks, create innovation, and express creativity because of your fear of rejection?

Fear of taking risks or expressing creativity came as a result of life experiences. As a child, I was confident and wasn’t scared to take risks. I woke up one day and decided that I wanted to come to the USA, and I did just that. I had no idea where I was going and how I was going to survive. Everyone was scared for me and my reaction was, I will figure it out once I get there. As life challenges came about and with age, I started rationalizing a lot of things and in the process discouraged myself by instilling fear.

I believe what triggers the sense of rejection is partly because of losing both parents at an early age. Losing your parent as a kid makes you feel unwanted because you are in this world alone with no one to stand up for you. I had no one to tell me that I was good enough, and so I developed self-doubt and to prevent rejection and failure, I chose not to try. The young version of myself comes up with all these ideas and the adult in me always questions every idea and ask the young version of myself to be cautious. Having security in life is another reason I prevent myself from moving ahead with new ideas. I always ask myself, “what if” this or that doesn’t work, where are you going to go and who going to take care of you? I lost a lot as a kid, so I have fear of losing everything.

The Ted Talk by Jia Jiang helped me realize that rejection is part of life, and it should be embraced. We’ve all been rejected or going to get rejected at one point. What stood out in Jia Jiang, TED talk is his research where he found that people who really change the world, who change the way we live and the way we think, are the people who were met with initial and often violent rejections. People like Martin Luther King, Jr., like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, or even Jesus Christ. They did not let rejection define them, but they let their own reaction after rejection define themselves and they embraced rejection(Jiang, 2015). Going forward, I will embrace my failure and rejection and remember to ask why if I am rejected.

References

Jiang, J. (2015, May). What i learned from 100 days of rejection. Retrieved November 15, 2021, from https://www.ted.com/talks/jia_jiang_what_i_learned_from_100_days_of_rejection