More Dakka On Your Expectations
After hearing my friend talk about his roommate’s brash decision-making from the despair at getting rejected by girls he liked several times, my friend mentioned that his roommate had asked out a total of three people since high school. Only three!
While there are more factors in the story involved, I’ve heard similar enough troubles that it seems worth saying: Three people is not a lot. Certainly not enough rejections to merit the magnitude of self-worth issues people can walk away with that few from.
If you had the expectation that if the first person you ask out didn’t like you then you’re doomed to loneliness, then a (probable enough) failure would be such a damaging experience you might not try again for a long time. If you instead believed that number was two, the first rejection would hurt considerably less. The higher you go, the less it hurts.
Maybe the expectation we implicitly have from culture is low enough to make three rejections somewhat sting. Why should it? Why shouldn’t that threshold be something like sixty? Or a hundred?
If you can only alter your chances by acquiring skills, improving yourself, and looking harder, then each rejection is valuable new data on what to do better next time. None should be felt as a failure towards your goal by any means. Rejections are an indicator of progress.
My favorite so far.