Practice being refused

Diogenes of Sinope lived in Athens in the 4th century BC. He slept in a large storage jar, owned almost nothing, and ignored most of the city's rules about what was proper. Athenians called him "the dog", kyōn in Greek, which is where the word Cynic comes from. He took it as a compliment.

Most of what we know about him comes from stories collected about five centuries later by the biographer Diogenes Laertius, and some of them are surely legend. This one has lasted because it is so practical:

The Cynics called this askēsis, training. You get tough the way an athlete gets fit, by practice rather than by thinking about it. Diogenes rolled in hot sand in summer and hugged snow-covered statues in winter. Being turned down was one more hardship to train for.

This "cynical" has nothing to do with the modern word for distrust. The Cynics wanted freedom: from needing much, and from needing other people's approval. The Stoics grew out of them.

Fear of refusal runs on predictions: that a no will be crushing, that people will think less of you, that you'll replay it for days. If you never ask, the predictions never get tested, and they stay as big as they feel.

Modern therapy for social anxiety does what Diogenes did. In "social mishap" exposures, people deliberately do mildly awkward things in public, like asking a shop for something it obviously doesn't sell. They find that the consequences are smaller and shorter-lived than they feared.

We also overestimate how much other people notice. In one study, students sent into a room wearing an embarrassing T-shirt guessed that about half the people there would notice it. Fewer than a quarter did.

Start small and work up, like any fear ladder. The aim isn't to be a nuisance, so choose asks that are fair to make. Diogenes picked a statue. And if you get a yes, enjoy it, and ask for something bigger next time.

Nadia is a junior designer who hasn't asked for anything at work in two years. She'd like to work from home on Fridays, but she's sure that asking would make her manager think she isn't committed. Her plan is to wait for her annual review in eight months, and in the meantime to work late, so that a no is less likely.