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By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

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Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#61

Post by bvanslyke »

chillingeffect wrote: post #55
rada wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except women are people, not inanimate objects to bounce balls off of. Those women did not choose to participate in SeanDav's practice, and it was not cost-free to them to be used and discarded that way. More to brazzy's point, SeanDav doesn't get to decide how he comes across to people. Pretty young women get hit on constantly and it is really exhausting and demoralizing to be rudely interrupted every five minutes w…

Ironically, it seems you're trying to sympathize with women by saying they're not inanimate objects to bounce balls off of, but you're still denying them autonomy. When women want attention, they dress attractively. When they don't want attention, they dress casually. It's just like birds. Ever wonder why they call it the birds and the bees? If you're a guy and you hit on women in sweatpants, you'll most likely fail,…

Amazing post. I think I just got an HN bingo.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#62

Post by pharrington »

chillingeffect wrote: post #55
rada wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except women are people, not inanimate objects to bounce balls off of. Those women did not choose to participate in SeanDav's practice, and it was not cost-free to them to be used and discarded that way. More to brazzy's point, SeanDav doesn't get to decide how he comes across to people. Pretty young women get hit on constantly and it is really exhausting and demoralizing to be rudely interrupted every five minutes w…

Ironically, it seems you're trying to sympathize with women by saying they're not inanimate objects to bounce balls off of, but you're still denying them autonomy. When women want attention, they dress attractively. When they don't want attention, they dress casually. It's just like birds. Ever wonder why they call it the birds and the bees? If you're a guy and you hit on women in sweatpants, you'll most likely fail,…

Turns out people wear nice clothes for a whole lotta reasons, and even beyond that the attention they might want is probably not the attention you're about to give. You can't divine the other's context, which is why the less creepy ways of meeting someone almost always involve relating over explicitly shared context.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#63

Post by d23 »

wtbob wrote: post #58

It's possible (probable) that he had developed a fear of rejection due to his divorce, but the very fact that he had a divorce indicates that he had been able to date and marry in the first place (to a poor choice, no doubt). I'm sure that his approach was able to return him to where he was before, and perhaps improve him, but I wonder if it would be any good for someone with a deep-seated fear of rejection, or if it…

Actually "immersion" or "flooding" is one of the things known to be effective for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_%28psychology%29 It's just basic conditioning.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#64

Post by ck425 »

Fascinating. I do a lot of amateur theatre and one of the most useful things about it is that it forces you to do similar things to on a regular basis and it really does help a lot in various aspects of life. In particular it really helps deal with interview and presentation stress. I'm very tempted to give this a go myself.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#65

Post by kyleblarson »

curun1r wrote: post #59
kyleblarson wrote: post #51

Very good article, but I would say that exposure therapy has limits. I live in an area with lots of rattlesnakes and am terrified of them. I'm certainly not going to risk a venomous bite to get over my fear.

They actually use somewhat the opposite of this type of training with dogs to keep them from messing with rattlesnakes. It's more controlled, so the rattlesnake has a rubber band that keeps its mouth shut and the conditioning is given to the dog using a shock collar, but it doesn't take too many shocks before the dog won't go anywhere near a rattlesnake. It may seem cruel, but for dogs that live in area with lots of…

We do this each spring with our dog: http://www.methownet.com/grist/features/dog_snake_training.h...

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#66

Post by balabaster »

ObviousScience wrote: post #45
balabaster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like a challenge, why did you fold from the challenge of enjoying a sense of community with those that appear uninteresting to you? Everyone has something to learn and something to teach. I bet if you'd stuck it out, there was much you could have learned from them, and them from you. Closing yourself off in a room robs both you and them from a chance to grow.

I hear that a lot, but I just don't have about more than even 30 minutes of pretend interest to give people I find boring. Maybe I'm an asshole, but I genuinely prefer to just sit alone and think about things than talk to people I find boring, even if they have yet another funny story about something to do with fishing that's slightly different than the others. This isn't to say I don't go to the bar and chat up peop…

Most of the talk is superficial talk about stuff that doesn't matter. They're telling you because you're listening. They haven't got to the deep stuff yet, perhaps they're not invested in you(?) Why do they enjoy fishing? Perhaps they like the solitude, why? Maybe it's the same reason you enjoy it. Maybe they don't like people either. Why is that? Perhaps it's the same reason as you. Perhaps there is a deeper underlying topic to discuss than that fish they caught that's slightly different than the other person's fish. You're confusing superficial small talk with meaningful conversation. Maybe you're not digging because you don't care and that's fair enough. The bigger question is why don't you care? Is there nothing more to that person than meets the eye? Or do you just not care about them enough to dig past the superficial small talk to the real person underneath?

What is it you prefer to think about rather than reach out and make a meaningful connection with others?

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#67

Post by ck425 »

pharrington wrote: post #54
mod wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find anything in that story to be douchey. What he's really doing is using interaction with women as practice to be better at interaction with women. I'm not really sure how else he should do it. Maybe he could have established friendships with them, and "used" them even further?

"What he's really doing is using interaction with women as practice to be better at interaction with women. " Specifically, by learning to not care about the women in question or the interactions. This is why comparing talking to people with shooting freethrows is goddamn weird. People are not basketball rims. The basketball rim lacks subjective experience.

I'd argue what he did was learn not to care about his own natural reaction to the situation, which is different. He also set ground rules to avoid making the women uncomfortable.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#68

Post by lkbm »

balabaster wrote: post #29
jonpress wrote: post #19

I didn't have many friends in school. I never tried to fit in - I found other people in my class to be predictable and uninteresting and it took me too much energy to pretend that I was enjoying their company. I went through several years of school with no friends at all - At times, 'cool' kids would invite me to play sports with them after school but I never did. I spent all my lunch breaks alone programming games o…

If you like a challenge, why did you fold from the challenge of enjoying a sense of community with those that appear uninteresting to you? Everyone has something to learn and something to teach. I bet if you'd stuck it out, there was much you could have learned from them, and them from you. Closing yourself off in a room robs both you and them from a chance to grow.

If you like a challenge, why do you avoid the challenge of enjoying eating pickle and marshmallow sandwiches?

Enjoying a challenge doesn't mean doing stuff you don't enjoy. You might like hanging out with people, but not everyone is the same. That's okay.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#69

Post by HardDaysKnight »

xianshou wrote: post #10

I play Go and chess, and I think of it this way: the best players may have won more than others, but they have also lost more than others, because they have simply played more games. Frequent loss or rejection is a necessary step to goodness. This also applies to business, the opposite sex, and most anything else that might matter to you. Or, to paraphrase many an artist and CEO: if I have not failed today, it means…

I've played tournament chess for a few years. In fact, I'll be playing in a chess tournament this weekend. I've lost lot of games. The effect, I think, has been an increased ability to handle failure, rejection, and frustration in other areas of life. How one gets better at chess is a subject of intense interest among chess players. Of course, one has to learn opening principles, positional ideas, endgame technique, tactics, and more. However, I think there is also a psychological change that must happen. A transformation in how one views the game. Generally, I think it happens this way. A tournament player eventually realizes that the game is (most likely) a theoretical draw. Nobody can win a game by force. Every loss is the result of your own mistakes. Coming to that realization the chess player stops trying to force wins from unclear positions, stops mentally calculating long and wild variations that eat up time on the clock, and in truth will never appear on the board (and are full of errors anyway), and instead begins to focus on his opponents (perhaps subtle) errors. He begins to accumulate small advantages. In short, he lets the other player beat himself. Of course, it's all easier said than done.

Re: By Making a Game Out of Rejection, a Man Conquers Fear

#70

Post by bjourne »

fenomas wrote: post #26
bitL wrote: post #15

He could accelerate his progress if he just did 50 cold calls to random strangers selling diapers a day - he would be super hardened after a week ;-)

Which raises an interesting question - do people with such jobs deal exceptionally well with rejection? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they do, but then I wouldn't be if they were more than averagely depressed, either. Surely someone must have looked into this.

No. :) From my experience, working such jobs, you put on a "diaper selling mask" to shield yourself from the blows. Some people get really angry when you call. Unless you're a total sociopath it's a job that gets you depressed if you do it for to long.
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