STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
James Altucher on Courage & Resilience
Rejection – and the fear of rejection – is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves.
—James Altucher
Entrepreneur, author, and podcaster
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Meet the Giant
James Altucher
James Altucher is an American entrepreneur, author, and podcaster whose writing often focuses on reinvention, creativity, entrepreneurship, failure, and what he calls “choosing yourself.” In The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth, he discusses rejection as a central obstacle to taking ownership of one’s direction. This quotation captures that argument: fear of other people’s refusal can prevent us from making our own attempt.
What This Means
Rejection hurts because it places judgment outside our control. Someone else decides not to hire us, publish us, date us, fund us, invite us, or agree with us.
The fear of that experience can become more restrictive than rejection itself. We stop applying, asking, creating, or speaking before another person has actually said no.
Altucher calls this an impediment to choosing ourselves because avoidance transfers decision-making power outward. We allow an imagined future rejection to determine present behavior.
Choosing ourselves does not mean ignoring feedback or assuming everyone else is wrong. Rejection can contain information. It can also simply reflect fit, timing, preference, or circumstances.
The essential distinction is between letting rejection inform the next choice and letting fear of rejection prevent the first choice from happening.
Why It Matters
One way to reduce rejection’s power is to change the success criterion. Instead of measuring only whether the answer is yes, measure whether you made the attempt.
Send the proposal. Ask the question. Submit the work. Introduce yourself. The external answer remains outside your control, but completing the action is yours.
Enough attempts also produce perspective. A no stops feeling like a universal verdict and becomes one data point in a larger process.
A Moment of Reflection
What opportunity have you been rejecting on someone else’s behalf because you are afraid they might say no? What would choosing yourself look like in that situation?
Carry This With You
Fear of rejection can limit us more than rejection itself by preventing attempts that were ours to make.
Source & Attribution
The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth
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