Selling is the most human thing you can learn.

As the phone rang, I wanted to die.

My survival instincts were in high-alert, and they were telling me that I was in immediate danger and that if I didn’t hang up the phone a massive asteroid would come hurting through the 12th story window in our midtown Manhattan office building and wipe me out.

I was starting to pit out even though the A/C must’ve been set to 65 degrees because I was freezing on the outside.

A stranger picked up on the other side of the phone — “Hi, uhh… I’m Mike and I’m talking to medical professionals about a product I’m…”

Click!

The next few calls, the same result.

A front-desk person would pick up my call, I would blather on for a few seconds about something they didn’t have time for and then, Click!

At some point, I grew numb to that feeling.

The rejection didn’t sting nearly as much and I knew that the longer I stewed on it, the longer it would hurt.

So I just picked up the phone and kept calling, adjusting my pitch each time.

Eventually, I reached somebody who had more than enough time on their hands to hear my sales-pitch.

“That sounds great! Let’s set something up next week,” she said.

I punched the air with my fist — it wasn’t a sale, but it was one step closer and that small win felt like it’d created a firestorm in me.

I eventually got fired from that job because selling is hard, but it instilled in me a constant reminder that those who can wade through the waters of rejection for long enough are often rewarded.

…

The only sure-fire method I’ve learned of effectively dealing with rejection is simply to become numb to it.

To tell yourself that, sure, it’s not you, but to also just continue to put yourself out there.

A major part of the reason why rejection stings is purely biological — the areas of our brain that are activated when we experience rejection are the same as those that experience pain (study).

Often, we’ll magnify that pain with self-criticism.

Learning how to sell is basically like pushing yourself through a gauntlet of pain: you’ll be rejected far more than you’ll be accepted, particularly early on.

And yet — sales is so important for any growing business, corporate-climber, or, really, anyone with an idea who wants to

Which is why I absolutely love encouraging people to sell and to ask for money.

It’s scary. Rejection hurts.

But it's human, too.

As Daniel Pink writes in, To Sell is Human,

“To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.” 

If instead we focus on reframing our actions not as taking something from someone, but instead as improving their world and/or lives, it becomes all the more powerful and rewarding to continue to do that action.

If you're an entrepreneur, or someone who's afraid of asking for money (a creative, developer, freelance dance instructor, whatever), watch this: