A few weeks ago I started doing rejection therapy. The idea is pretty simple: put yourself in situations where someone might reject you, until rejection feels less scary.
One of the challenges was walking into a coffee shop and asking the manager if I could be a greeter at the door. If they said yes, I’d have to stand there, smile, and greet people as they walked in. Pretty ridiculous, but that was the point.
I tried it alone on two separate days.
The first time I’d spent most of the day at home. I walked over to a Starbucks, couldn’t even picture myself doing it, and just walked past.
The second time I tried something different. I spent the day outside, studying at a cafe, getting lunch, going to the gym. I figured being out and about would make it easier. It didn’t. I made it to Starbucks and stood outside for what felt like forever, imagining how awkward it would be to stand at the entrance greeting strangers. Then I went home.
The funny thing was I wasn’t even that afraid of the manager saying no. I was more afraid they’d say yes, and then I’d actually have to stand there looking awkward for a good amount of time.
Then on another day, after studying and hanging out with friends for a few hours, we split up to do our challenges on our own. Approaching the manager suddenly felt a lot easier. I actually went through with it. Thankfully they said no, so I didn’t have to greet people at the door.
The challenge hadn’t changed. My friends weren’t even standing next to me. So what changed?
And it wasn’t just this one challenge
I started noticing a few other patterns. Once I got myself to attempt one rejection therapy challenge, the next one felt easier immediately after, like I had already crossed some barrier. But a whole day alone seemed to do the opposite. Even if I spent it outside, eating at restaurants, studying at cafes, going to the gym, I got less confident around strangers as the day went on. I wasn’t sitting in my room. I was surrounded by people. So why did approaching strangers get harder the longer I went without meaningful social interaction?
I started thinking this might not just be about rejection.
The day I spent alone
I keep thinking about one day where I was alone almost the whole time.
I woke up, did some reading and studying, then got out of the house. Lunch at Souvla, cafe to study more, then the gym. Nothing unusual. Pretty productive day, honestly.
I was around people for most of it. I talked to the people at Souvla and the cafe, but those were automatic conversations. Ordering food, saying thank you. Not much thinking involved.
When I paid more attention to how I’d actually spent the day, I realized I was thinking about myself a lot.
Walking outside, I’d catch myself thinking about how I looked, how confidently I was walking, how I was carrying myself.
At the cafe I was very aware I was sitting alone, how I was sitting, what I was doing. At one point I was watching a video on GPU internals and wondering if the person behind me thought I was a classic SF tech bro, with all the stereotypes that come with that.
The gym was the same. Between sets I’d stare at myself in the mirror, check out my physique, or just try to look cool. Sometimes I’d do a few random exercises and leave, then wonder if someone thought I was a beginner who had no idea what he was doing.
Sometimes I’d even tell myself, “Who cares what anyone thinks? I’m just gonna do my own thing.” Looking back, even that was still me spending energy on how other people perceived me. I was just doing it in a different way.
Other times I’d pick up some heavy dumbbells and imagine the people next to me with lighter weights thinking, “Damn, hes strong…”
Throughout the day I’d also think about the rejection therapy challenge I was supposed to do, imagine approaching someone, feel hesitant, and put it off. The longer the day went, the more I was checking how confident or socially comfortable I felt.
I wasn’t really experiencing the world around me. I was imagining how I looked to the people in it. Sometimes I imagined them judging me. Sometimes, like at the gym, I imagined them admiring me. Either way I was looking at myself through their eyes, even though they were probably not paying much attention to me.
I started wondering if that was why I felt worse around strangers as the day went on.
Eventually, I found a psychological concept that seemed to describe what I was experiencing: self-focused attention.
Self-focused attention
Self-focused attention is when your attention shifts inward, toward your own thoughts, feelings, appearance, and behavior, instead of what is happening around you.
Psychologists have studied this with social anxiety for a long time. One model from David Clark and Adrian Wells is that when you get concerned about how other people see you, you start monitoring yourself almost like you’re watching yourself from someone else’s perspective. You don’t even need to be thinking “what if someone judges me” for this to happen.
I think this can turn into a loop. I start watching how I’m coming across. That makes me more aware I could be judged. I get more self-conscious, so I watch myself more. And the more attention I spend evaluating myself, the less I’m giving to anything around me. Instead of being curious about people or whatever I’m doing, I’m checking how comfortable or confident I feel.
That’s my best guess for the rejection therapy days. After hours alone I was already pretty deep in that habit. By the time I wanted to approach a stranger, I was so conscious of how I might look that even a silly interaction felt like a lot.
Spending time alone doesn’t automatically make someone self-conscious, and I can’t say this is definitely what was going on. It just matches the day pretty well.
If that’s what was making the challenges harder, why did hanging out with friends seem to wipe it out?
Why Being With Friends Changes Everything
At first I thought it was simple. If I do something ridiculous with friends, the social risk feels smaller because it’s shared. Even if I embarrass myself, I can go back and laugh about it with them. I still think that’s part of it.
But that doesn’t fully explain why I felt more confident after we split up to do the challenges on our own. Or why I generally feel more comfortable around strangers after hanging out with friends, even when I’m not doing rejection therapy.
When I’m with people I’m comfortable around, I’m not thinking about how I’m standing, how I’m walking, or whether I look confident. I’m too busy having fun. Listening, making jokes, laughing, reacting to whatever is happening. My attention is on them and on the thing we’re doing.
I’m not watching myself. I’m just in it.
And that feeling seems to stick around after they leave. Almost like social momentum. I’ve spent the last hour being spontaneous and comfortable around people, so approaching a stranger afterward feels like continuing what I was already doing.
Compare that to a full day alone, watching how I look and how other people might see me. Then approaching someone means going from observing myself to actually talking to a person. That jump is a lot harder.
I think something similar is why one challenge makes the next one easier. After the first interaction I’ve already moved some attention off myself.
There are other factors too. Friends are social support. Doing one challenge successfully makes the next one less scary. I don’t know how much each of those matters.
But maybe I’m not more confident around friends because I care less about being judged. I’m just barely thinking about being judged.
What I want to try
When I started rejection therapy, the goal was just to get less afraid of rejection. I still want that. I also want to spend less time thinking about myself and more time actually engaging with whatever is in front of me.
One of the things I like about traveling is the chance of spontaneous stuff. I want to be able to explore a city alone, talk to strangers, meet people, and do ridiculous things just because I feel like it. I don’t want to need a group of friends or a few drinks to feel okay doing those things (although of course those would be even more fun).
So how do I get there?
I think the first step is just noticing when I’m monitoring myself. Catching the moments where I’m wondering how confidently I’m walking, how I’m sitting, or what some stranger thinks I’m doing.
Instead of trying to convince myself that nobody is judging me, I want to practice putting attention back on the surroundings, the thing I’m interested in, the people around me.
And I don’t want to immediately check whether I feel more confident after. That would just be more self-monitoring.
I still want to keep doing rejection therapy, just with a slightly different purpose. Not just collecting rejections or proving I can do more embarrassing things. More like practicing acting spontaneously even when I feel self-conscious. Starting conversations, saying things without overthinking, being okay with someone thinking I’m weird. Especially after hours alone, when I don’t already have the social momentum from hanging out with friends.
I’m not trying to get rid of self-consciousness entirely. I don’t think that’s even the right goal. Being aware of how you come across is normal and sometimes useful. I just don’t want that awareness running the whole show.
I’m still figuring this out. I don’t know how much of my experience is actually self-focused attention, or whether any of this will make the difference I want.
But I have a clearer idea of what I’m trying to work on. Maybe confidence isn’t always about learning to care less what other people think. Sometimes it’s about getting so into what you’re doing that you stop thinking about yourself.