“How do you deal with all the rejection?” I’m collecting beautiful moments with Nikita in Central Park, New Delhi. She teaches soft skills to social entrepeneurs and dealing with rejection is one of them. In the park almost half of the people are drawing. But I’m startled by the question. I never regarded this project as being an exercise in dealing with rejection. There are so many people cooperating and helping me. Nevertheless if half of the people makes a drawing -which is a high number – you get rejected a lot on a daily bases. A good opportunity to share how I deal with it.
- I ask a question, so no is a natural and valid answer. If I only want to hear yes I would give orders. But I don’t believe that the world would work best in this way. If you give the other the freedom to do what she wants, beautiful things can happen.
- The “no” isn’t about me, it’s about the other. The potential drawer might have a bad day, is insecure about his drawing capacities or just doesn’t feel like it. I also don’t want to do everything somebody else proposes. The reasons another person has to reject are more telling about his state of mind than it says something about me as a person.
- I focus on the people who say “yes”.
- If there’s too much rejection I stop for a break. In Bulgaria for instance, almost everybody rejected the first days after the question “may I ask you something”. So I went for a cup of tea, met some wonderful people and suddenly a bunch of friends started drawing. Next thing I did was discussing my strategy in how I walked up to Bulgarians in every detail possible with a good Bulgarian friend. This gave some adjustments in the way I approach Bulgarians for a drawing. This leads to the final point.
- If your question gets only rejected. It might not be the right question.
a) the wrong person you’re asking
b) not the right time
c) not the proper way to ask.
c) not the proper way to ask.
Playing around with these factors can help a lot. 
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