“I’m afraid of rejection”

Someone told me they were afraid of rejection for a project they were working on. Here was (part of) my response:

• What rejection is it that you're afraid of?
• Do you think that fear is tracking something real, or is it just totally miscalibrated?
  • If it's tracking something real: what is it tracking? What is your all-things-considered, intellectualized standpoint on it?
  • If it's miscalibrated: what do you think, then, is causing you to feel afraid? What do you think of that thing that's causing the fear?
• One thought: I think that people can often get into the mindset of 'selling' rather than 'qualifying' — the failure mode here is one of feeling like you need to 'convince' people to do something, and that if they say no then they're 'rejecting' you. I think this basically always flawed, and that in-fact the right framing is one of 'qualification' — where you know that you have a solid product/thing-to-offer-of-value, and the only thing you're trying to do when chatting with people about it is to figure out, collaboratively with them, if there's a good mutual fit. At that point, there is no such thing as rejection, since… if they weren't a good mutual fit, then both sides are made better off by the 'deal'/'connection'/etc not happening! This excellent post goes into much more depth on this frame-shift. It's written with respect to doing sales for a product, but it very easily translates to loads of other aspects of life — finding friends or romantic partners, working at companies and hiring people, etc. In particular, I think it's helpful for re-orienting from a place of insecurity to a place of security in a way that doesn't involve lying to oneself. (I do think that Nabeel's frame-shift works commensurately better when you're as you get good at iterating quickly & effectively on feedback — consider aiming for both at once.)
  • To the extent that you can re-orient your framing here, what would that look like? How does thinking through Nabeel's frame feel to you?