Rejection Rewires Your Brain | Lab Notes

Jamey Maniscalco (00:01.41)
Welcome back to Next Door Neuro Lab Notes. Okay, so last summer, I got more uncomfortable than I have been in years while ordering a cup of coffee. So I was trying this challenge where you go into a coffee shop and ask for a free coffee. And it's meant to help reduce the negative emotions around hearing no and getting rejected. This was part of a broader kind of entrepreneurial training I was doing as I was starting my own business and...

venturing out on my own. And so I'm walking up to this counter in the coffee shop and I'm feeling pretty confident. And this is a coffee shop I had never been to before and I had no plans to go back to. So I didn't have a lot of skin in the game with a lot of people I knew or a familiar setting. So I'm feeling good as I walk up, but the second that I said, can I have this coffee for free? I was crawling in my skin. It was so uncomfortable.

in a way that I hadn't experienced for a long time. And this was really surprising for me because I'm a pretty outgoing person. I talk to people all the time. I don't tend to get embarrassed easily, but this moment felt fundamentally different. And it made me realize that this coffee challenge wasn't about personality or self-confidence or outgoingness. It was about how your brain processes rejection.

which is deeply rooted in our biology and ties directly into why so many of us don't start new things, whether that's a new hobby, a sport, a new business, or just a new routine that you might think is good for you. And that's what I want to explore in today's episode. But before we jump in, if you find this content helpful, please, please, please like, subscribe, hit the alert button. It is a no-cost way to support me.

and to support the channel. Thank you so much. Okay. So the reason we don't start new things isn't usually our time or our discipline or our motivation. It's that starting feels risky. We think, what if this doesn't work? What if I'm not good at it? What if I look stupid in front of people? And our brains are wired to interpret risk, especially social risk.

Jamey Maniscalco (02:28.01)
as threat, as major threat. And this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. So avoiding risk, especially things like social rejection, they help keep us a part of a community. And being a part of a community, especially evolutionarily, when we were in smaller tribes that supported each other more intimately, was critical for your safety and survival. So your brain is biased towards noticing what could go wrong.

and avoiding it. But in our modern world, that same system shows up as continual hesitation, as constant overthinking, and is waiting for this feeling of certainty about what we're going to do that never actually comes. So when you think about putting something out there publicly, or asking somebody for something, or trying something new, especially in a public setting, your brain doesn't process it.

process of that as this is going to go well, it processes it as this could go badly, you should probably avoid this. And that's why we tend to kick the can down the road. That's why we tend to feel like we need to get everything right and perfectly set up before we start, rather than starting and figuring it out along the way.

And the key mental shift around this that so many of us miss is that the only way that these threat signals around new things will ever change is through exposure. So when you experience rejection and then nothing bad actually happens, your brain starts to learn, huh, this isn't that dangerous. And over time, that knee-jerk negative emotional response to risk starts to get weaker.

your hesitation starts to drop. And what used to feel like this major threatening event starts to feel more like information. And once you understand this, well, it doesn't really get that much easier. Understanding it doesn't make it easier. And that's why I want to give you a few simple ways to actually start building this skill intentionally, because working on it as a skill is the only way that this is going to start feeling better. So what's the first thing that you can do?

Jamey Maniscalco (04:48.29)
The first thing is when doing something new, stop trying to look competent. We put this expectation of proficiency on ourselves, especially as we get older, that we need to be good at things right when we begin them. And so we artificially raise the stakes for ourselves when we're trying something new. And early on, you don't need to be good. No one expects you to be good. What you need is to get feedback so you can improve.

And so many of us miss that by trying to look good right away. And so what we can do is find something small that you can do not to impress anyone, but to learn and to embrace being bad at that. Because being bad at anything is the first step towards being good. And so the example that comes to mind for me is when I started Clario, this is my new business that's going to launch publicly in a few months. I would literally say to my collaborators,

Hey, I'm still pretty green in this space. If you see something I'm missing, tell me. And what that does is it reduces pressure and makes it easier for people to give you real honest feedback. And I still continually remind myself that my goal is to grow through feedback, not to be right all the time. The second thing you can do is seek out small rejections, not these big high stakes one.

ones, but these low risk moments where the answer might be no. So that could be asking for a small discount or for something for free. Think coffee challenge example. Or reaching out to someone you assume might not respond with an ask, with an offer. Or making an ask or offer that feels slightly uncomfortable. Whether it's you feel like you're asking a little too much of somebody or for a price point that's not comfortable or

telling someone your services are at a price point that is higher than you feel comfortable quoting. Because every time you experience that and the world doesn't end when you do something uncomfortable, your brain learns this isn't as dangerous as I thought. And that's how we start rewiring. And third, start measuring your attempts in this space, not the outcomes. So don't ask, did this work? But stop and ask,

Jamey Maniscalco (07:14.338)
Did I do it? Did I show up? And that might mean tracking how many times you reached out to a potential client, not how many of those people said yes. Counting how many times you showed up for a new habit. Just focus on how many reps you're getting in week over week, because that's what's actually going to change your brain and change your behavior over time. So this all is exactly what Mark was getting at in our conversation when he said,

You're not even in the game until you've heard a hundred no's. So if you want to hear more about how he's applied this across multiple businesses and how he teaches others to do the same, check out our full conversation linked at the end of this episode. So I hope this has been helpful. I really do. And I think some of these skills are really important to work on. Most of us avoid this at all costs. So take a stab at it. Do it once.

You'll feel uncomfortable enough for that lesson to really resonate and you'll come back to it to test yourself. And I hope that I'll see you next year. Next year. I hope that I'll see you next time on Next Door Neuro.

I'm gonna do that last part take again.

Jamey Maniscalco (08:33.144)
So that's exactly what Mark was getting at in our conversation when he said, you're not even in the game until you've heard a hundred no's. So if you wanna hear how he's applied this across multiple businesses and how he teaches others to do the same, check out our full conversation linked at the end of this episode. And I hope this has been helpful for you and I look forward to seeing you next time on Next Door Neuro.