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I shook my head. “So many noes. No, no, no, no. All day. Doesn’t it make you want to quit?” I asked. My dad replied with something that would change my life: “Love rejections! Collect them like treasure! Set rejection goals. I shoot for a hundred rejections each week, because if you work that hard to get so many noes, my little Noah’le, in them you will find a few yeses, too.” Maybe that’s why he named me NO-ah, to remind me of this daily to keep going. Love rejections?! Set rejection goals?!
The hardest lesson that I learned is that “rejection is protection”. Rejection never feels good, but as artists I think we tend to take rejection so personally. It can cause us to doubt our work or talent. However, rejection isn’t always someone saying we don’t like your work or you’re not talented. Sometimes it’s someone else recognizing that they can’t give you what you need to fly. It’s a venue saying this is not quite the right fit for you right now. That doesn’t mean that you won’t find home for your work. That doesn’t mean that venue won’t come looking for you one day. It means you have to keep working hard until you find the perfect fit and when the time is right it will work itself out.
As my dad and I entered the tenth local shop that afternoon, I felt my muscles go tight with a full body cringe. He’d just asked to speak to the manager in an Israeli accent as thick as hummus. Sounding identical to Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I don’t get it.” His voice boomed enthusiastically after he was introduced to the store’s boss. “You live in greatest country in world, and you have greatest business in sector, but you still have a crappy copier. Why? I must help you. Here, I gave much better, let me show!” His pitch would be met with a rejection. And then another rejection. Countless rejections. Rinse and repeat. Every. Damn. Day. But then, invariably, inevitably, a hard-won success. This particular day was glorious, though. Absolutely glorious. He sold two copiers in one day! So Dad said let’s go celebrate and grab some burritos! “Why you look so sad, Noah?” he said as we sat down to eat. Although I should have been riding on the adrenaline of my dad’s glorious day, something felt wrong. Despite his ultimate success, the process of getting there felt demoralizing and pointless. I shook my head. “So many noes. No, no, no, no. All day. Doesn’t it make you want to quit?” I asked. My dad replied with something that would change my life: “Love rejections! Collect them like treasure! Set rejection goals. I shoot for a hundred rejections each week, because if you work that hard to get so many noes, my little Noah’le, in them you will find a few yeses, too.” Maybe that’s why he named me NO-ah, to remind me of this daily to keep going. Love rejections?! Set rejection goals?! My dad reframed rejection as something desirable — so you feel good when you get it. He was saying aim for rejection! It was suddenly clear to me why my dad was never afraid to ask anyone anything — and why he pushed for a hundred rejections a week: the upside of asking is unlimited and the downside is minimal. And he was right! “What’s the worst that can happen?” he’d say whenever I cringed at some
The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all. The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and conflict, the desire to attempt to accept everything equally and to make everything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form of entitlement. Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad. And because they refuse to reject anything, they live a valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. All they give a fuck about is sustaining the high a little bit longer, to avoid the inevitable failures of their life, to pretend the suffering away. Rejection is an important and crucial life skill. Nobody wants to be stuck in a relationship that isn’t making them happy. Nobody wants to be stuck in a business doing work they hate and don’t believe in. Nobody wants to feel that they can’t say what they really mean. Yet people choose these things. All the time. Honesty is a natural human craving. But part of having honesty in our lives is becoming comfortable with saying and hearing the word “no.” In this way, rejection actually makes our relationships better and our emotional lives healthier.
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