Adversity Challenge #2- Rejection Bingo

Over the past two weeks, I have worked to complete the second adversity challenge for my Hustle & Grit Class. The purpose of this challenge was to get you out of your comfort zone and become comfortbale with getting rejected. We were each assigned a bingo card and the objective was to get four of the challenge in a row or a on a diagonal. While completing it, I was able to learn more than a few lessons, which i’d like to share with you today. As you’ll see, it was the challenges which I couldn’t mark as complete that taught me more lessons than the ones that I was able to complete.

The X’s indicate that a chellnege was completed successfully. Circles indicate that the challenge was attempted but not completed successfully.

1. The easiest path isn’t always the best one

When initially planning out my path to success, I was able to identify a route that was relatively straight-forward and simple in my opinion (Column B). I was able to knock off for the first two challenges pretty seamlessly, as they were what I would call “low-hanging fruit”. However, in preparation for the next two challenges, I came to the realization that this wasn’t the purpose of the challenge. We weren’t meant to simply tick the boxes, the purpose was to challenge us.

After this realization I changed my outlook on the assignment and decided to go for two of the challenges I was less likely to achieve; requesting a zoom meeting with a celebrity and applying for a reality TV show. Additionally, there was a personal aspect/potential reward for each of these two challenges, which made it all the more challenging and made me more motivated to do them. For the celebrity zoom request, I reached out to multiple people to see if they would be willing to participate in a charity event I have seriously been considering. This was an intimidating message to write as the consequences of a rejection would mean more to me than if i was doing it to simply tick a box. I felt much the same way about the reality TV application. As you most likely know, I have been heavily involved in my startup, Sublet Connect, and thought it would be fitting to apply to the Dragon’s Den using Sublet Connect as my idea. Once again it was a difficult application to write because I was afraid of having something I put so much time into turned down.

Besides being more difficult, what made these challenges really different than some of the easier ones was the potential upside. What if one of the celebrities responded? Or what if the Dragons wanted me on their show? These would be huge wins for me, something that wouldn’t necessarily be the case for one of the easier challenges like making a pie. What this made me realize is that big rewards don’t come with easy paths. You have to take the path less travelled to achieve this reward.

2. Putting yourself out there holds you accountable

These were some of the messages I sent to local Toronto celebrities. I also sent messages to Shawn Mendes & The Weeknd.

In October of this year, I was hospitalized as a result of a reaction to a new medication I was put on for my Crohn’s. I was subsequently placed on steroids, which you may or may not know has more than a few side effects, one of which is elevated levels of energy. After having recovered, one of the ways I dealt with this side effect was through running, which I thought was quite miraculous considering I could barley walk before. Another common side effect of steroids are feelings of euphoria, which can often lead to people planning large, extravagent ideas. Well sure enough while on a run one day, I had the idea to run from London to Toronto over the course of 8 days to raise money for Chrohn’s and Colitis Canada. Having taken steroids before, I knew that this was another euphoric feeling, and that I should wait until I was done my cycle of steroids to commit to it.

I had been off steroids for about a week and had still not spoken publicly about my desire to complete this charity run. In this challenge I saw an opportunity to hold myself accountable and commit to actually going forward with it. One of the reasons that I believe we are scared of taking big leaps like this is not as much the fear of getting rejected, but more so the fear of being told yes. If someone responds to me I will most definitely feel an obligation to go forward with the event. Although I would be thrilled to complete the event, the idea of training for and running a half marathon everyday for 8 days is a daunting task. To compare it to a start-up setting, when you go to investors with your business idea you want to be told yes. But in being told yes, you are being entrusted with a large sum of money and are expected to perform to the standards laid out for you. It’s no walk in the park and so although this investment is an extremely exciting accomplishment, it also means there’s no turning back and that you’re committing to this idea.

3. You’ll never be ready… so just do it.

Imposter syndrome is something many entrepreneurs experience at some point in their lives. It’s something I have felt at many times while building Sublet Connect. I’m still in university for Christ’s sake… what do I know about building a business? It was also something that I experienced while filling out my application to appear on Season 16 of the Dragon’s Den. There were numerous times while filling out the application that I stopped and thought “I can’t do this, these Dragons would absolutely rip me apart.” I was scared what the dragons would think of my idea or being labelled as immature and unprepared. I’ve seen them criticize people to the point of tears before and was dreading the possibility of having the same experience.

However, thanks to our discussion in class I realized that this was a completely normal feeling and that we’d never truly feel ready. Having understood this, I was able to just push forward despite that anxiety lingering in the back of my head. It’s not so much about making this feeling go away, as much as it is learning to deal with it. We need to know how and when to keep pushing forward because if we let the fear grip us, we’ll never take that leap that we need to take.

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed this adversity challenge. I like to believe that I don’t take into account what people think of me too much, but this challenge showed me I still have a ways to go. I was very happy that I didn’t take the easy path and that I challenged myself in attempting more difficult tasks. Although in the end I had to choose the easy path to succeed, I don’t think I would have been able to learn the lessons I did had I not pushed myself to try the more difficult route first.