The email sat in my drafts folder for three weeks.
Twenty-one days of opening my laptop, rereading the four sentences requesting a meeting with the CEO of our biggest potential client, hovering my cursor over the send button, and then closing the laptop with a sigh of relief. "Tomorrow," I'd tell myself. "I'll send it tomorrow when I've had time to make it perfect."
But that Tuesday morning in March, something different happened. My colleague Sarah burst into my office, her face flushed with excitement. "I just landed the Morrison Industries account!" she announced. "Cold-emailed their CEO last week, and he loved my approach."
Morrison Industries. The same company whose CEO's email address had been burning a hole in my drafts folder for three weeks.
I managed to congratulate Sarah, but inside, something cracked. As she left my office, I sat staring at my laptop screen, finally seeing the pattern that had been invisible to me for thirty-two years.
The email to Morrison Industries wasn't an anomaly. It was my life.
There was the promotion I never asked for, watching someone with half my experience get it instead. The startup idea I never pitched because "the timing wasn't right." The woman at the coffee shop I saw every morning for six months but never spoke to because "she probably had a boyfriend anyway." The speaking opportunity at the industry conference I declined because "more qualified people should go." The salary negotiation I avoided because "I should be grateful for what I have."
I wasn't living. I was hiding.
Every decision in my life had been filtered through a single question: "What if they say no?" And rather than risk hearing that two-letter word, I had chosen silence. I had chosen safety. I had chosen a life of quiet desperation, dressed up as prudence and professionalism.
That morning, sitting in my ergonomically correct office chair in my reasonably successful but utterly unfulfilling career, I did something I'd never done before. I opened a spreadsheet and started listing every opportunity I'd let pass by in the last year because I was afraid of rejection.
The list was heartbreaking.
- The conference speaking slot I didn't apply for - The potential mentor I never reached out to - The salary increase I didn't negotiate - The innovative project proposal sitting in my desk drawer - The industry award I didn't nominate myself for - The networking events I skipped - The collaboration opportunities I ignored - The media interviews I declined - The book idea I never pitched - The consulting gigs I didn't pursue
Forty-seven opportunities. Forty-seven potential "no's" I had been too afraid to risk. Forty-seven chances for my life to change that I had voluntarily forfeited.
But what really broke me was the calculation at the bottom of the spreadsheet. If even 10% of those opportunities had turned into "yes" responses – a conservative estimate – my life would look completely different. Better role, better income, better connections, better stories, better confidence. Better everything.
I had been so afraid of rejection that I had been rejecting myself.
That's when the idea hit me. It was absurd, which is probably why it felt so right. If my fear of rejection was the prison, then rejection itself had to be the key. What if, instead of avoiding "no" at all costs, I sought it out? What if I made getting rejected my actual goal?
I pulled up a new spreadsheet and typed a header: "The Rejection Challenge: 1000 No's in 365 Days."
The number felt impossible, which made it perfect. To hit 1000 rejections in a year, I'd need to get rejected 2.74 times per day. There was no way to achieve that without completely rewiring my brain's relationship with the word "no."
My hands were shaking as I created the columns: Date, Rejection Request, Category, Response, Lessons Learned, Emotional Impact (1-10).
Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I opened my drafts folder, found the three-week-old email to Morrison Industries' CEO, and hit send.
Rejection #1 was officially in motion.
What I didn't know, sitting in that office on that ordinary Tuesday morning, was that this impulsive decision would completely transform not just my career, but every aspect of my life. The next 365 days would teach me that everything I believed about rejection, success, and human nature was wrong.
But first, I had to learn how to get rejected. And as it turned out, that was harder than I thought.