You're Actually Not Bothering People Enough

Most of us hate asking for favors. We worry about being a burden, coming across as needy, or facing rejection for asking too much. But what if our fear of bothering people is stopping us, and the people around us, from becoming happier? Dr. Laurie explores why our instincts about asking for help are usually wrong. She speaks with psychologist Nicholas Epley https://www.nicholasepley.com/ about why asking others for help can actually make them like us more. And author and entrepreneur Jia Jiang https://www.jiajiang.com/ shares how 100 days of asking for outlandish favors totally transformed his life. Experts Mentioned: Nicholas Epley https://www.nicholasepley.com/, Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Jia Jiang https://www.jiajiang.com/, author, entrepreneur, and expert in “rejection therapy” Resources Mentioned: Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection https://www.amazon.com/Rejection-Proof-Became-Invincible-Through/dp/080414138X, by Jia Jiang (2015) “What I Learned from 100 Days of Rejection https://www.ted.com/talks/jia_jiang_what_i_learned_from_100_days_of_rejection,” by Jia Jiang (TED, 2016) “100 Days of Rejection Therapy https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLamouX6QxWIuTHuaArIOzdorWoYaF6cU5,” by Jia Jiang (YouTube series, 2013) RejectionTherapy.com http://rejectiontherapy.com/ “Surprisingly Happy to Have Helped: Underestimating Prosociality Creates a Misplaced Barrier to Asking for Help https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36067802/,” by Xuan Zhao and Nicholas Epley (Psychological Science, 2022) “Beautiful mess effect: Self–other differences in evaluation of showing vulnerability https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-34832-002,” by Anna Bruk, Sabine Scholl, and Herbert Bless (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2018) Related Episodes: “Treating the Pain of a Broken Heart https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/treating-the-pain-of-a-broken-heart” “Forget Small Talk: Go Deep Instead https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/forget-small-talk-go-deep-instead” “The Surprising Case for Oversharing https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-happiness-lab-with-dr-laurie-santos/the-surprising-case-for-oversharing” See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  Pushkin.

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  Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. We're finally coming to the end of our Happiness Hot Take series, a whole season in which I've been calling out the bad happiness advice that I hear so often on the internet. For our final hot take, we're heading back into the Happiness Lab archives to revisit a misconception that I struggle with myself. Many of us find it hard to ask for support, either because we're afraid of inconveniencing other people, or we don't want to come off as too needy. We're taught to handle things on our own, even at times when we really could use a helping hand. But today's hot take is this: We should be bothering people a little more often. It turns out that asking someone for a favor doesn't just make life easier for you, it can actually make the other person happier as well.

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  So stay tuned for research and stories that reveal why asking for everything from a little assistance to a massive act of generosity can be good for everyone involved. Here's this week's, in case you missed it, Happiness Hot Take. I hope you enjoy it.

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  We're in a first-grade classroom in Beijing, China. It's about 20 years ago, ahead of the annual holidays. To mark the occasion, a teacher has brought and wrapped presents for her students. The gifts are stacked up in a corner, ready to be handed out.

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  And if she just stopped right there, it would be a great story.

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  Zhajiang was one of those excited kids.

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  But she had all of us come to the front of the classroom and said, hey, why don't you guys say nice things about each other? If someone calls your name and says something nice about you, you can go get a gift and sit down.

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  One by one, the kids started sharing kind words about their classmates.

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  It was great when it started. Someone can sing really well, someone is helpful to other teachers, and I would applaud as with my turn.

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  But the flow of compliments soon slowed down and then petered out completely. Worried, Zhajiang's teacher asked, um, doesn't anyone have anything nice to say about the students who are still at the front of the class? No one spoke. Three gifts sat uncollected in the corner, and three kids stood rejected at the front of the room.

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  And I was one of them.

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  It was just a fleeting few minutes in Zhajiang's life, but the events of that day cast a long shadow. Zhajiang eventually graduated school, then headed to college and began a new life outside China.

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  But the thing is, once I came to the United States, I started following like a path of almost like a least resistance.

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  Nearing his 30s, Zhajiang felt like he was being held back from chasing his dreams and fulfilling his potential. And he traced some of that back to the fateful day many years ago, where he stood rejected in front of his classmates.

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  Pretty sure it didn't help.

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  You see, Zhajiang needed all the confidence, self-belief, and drive he could muster because he had a dream.

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  I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. You know, I actually come from a family of teachers, but I didn't never want to be a teacher. I want to be entrepreneur because I was inspired by Bill Gates.

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  Becoming the next Bill Gates requires a willingness to put yourself out there. You've got to be prepared to tell potential investors and clients about your big plans, and you've got to be prepared for them to laugh you out of the room. You have to knock on door after door after door, asking for support and backing, until you get the answer you want. And Zhajiang just wasn't sure he could handle that.

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  I just felt like my fear of rejection was really holding me back.

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  Though now fully grown, Zhajiang still felt the pain of his six-year-old self.

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  And I was just miserable, to be honest, because I feel like I'm getting old, my wife was pregnant, and I just feel like I probably missed my mark to be this entrepreneur that I've always wanted to be.

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  So was Zhajiang going to admit defeat and give up on his dream and remain miserable on this path of least resistance? Nope.

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  So that's where I realized I got to overcome this fear of rejection.

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  Even if you didn't get dissed by your entire first-grade classroom, you can probably still relate to Zhajiang's lack of confidence. It's not just entrepreneurs who need to make themselves vulnerable to others. Whether it's in our careers or just in daily life, many of us have a hard time asking for the help we need because, like Zhajiang, we fear rejection. We may worry we'll get a big fat no from a friend or stranger, or we may just hate the idea of bothering busy people. We may fear being seen as pushy, or annoying, or needy. These fears may feel very real, but do they match the reality of reaching out to the people around us when we need help? By not even opening the conversation, are we actually making ourselves and other people less happy than we could be?

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  Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy, but what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.

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  I was a former college football player, so asking for help's not the kind of thing I typically did very much.

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  This is social connection expert and Happiness Lab regular Nick Epley. Like Ja, Nick grew up with a reluctance to ask for help.

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  I was pretty strong and capable and I could do stuff. And that always made me fairly reluctant to ask others for help, to do almost anything.

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  If you've heard Nick on other episodes of this season, you may recall that he studies the way our minds mess up when it comes to happier social connection. Recently, his lab has turned to the fears that he and so many of us have when it comes to asking for help.

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  And our research and that of many others in the field has been making it crystal clear that many of those fears are miscalibrated, that is, they're exaggerated. We tend to underestimate how positively these interactions are going to go.

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  Nick's work begins from a premise that many researchers argue is a universal psychological truth. We enjoy doing nice stuff for other people.

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  I think feeling happy to have helped is a very real thing. You go do something kind for somebody else, you'll feel pretty darn good.

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  We usually notice how good it feels to help others when we're in the role of the helper. We forget that the same maxim holds for the people we ask to help us.

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  Notice that asking for help from somebody else gives an opportunity to do something kind for you. And by not asking for help, you are really missing out on an opportunity to make somebody else feel good.

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  We sometimes worry that our requests will be a burden on the person we approach, that they'll feel pressured to say yes. But Nick's research shows that that usually isn't the case. Especially when we have a relatively simple request, calling upon another person for assistance can be a gift, not just to ourselves, but also to the person we ask.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  So in some ways, it seems almost selfish to not ask other folks for help when they could give it to you easily because you're denying them an opportunity to do something kind for you.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  The problem is, we usually don't see it that way. And when we fail to ask for help, we don't get to witness the happiness boost it gives us or the person giving us assistance. And so we continue to believe that seeking help is an imposition, rather than a wonderful way to bond and make everyone happier.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  We only get feedback from the things we choose to do. And we don't get feedback from the things we choose to avoid. And in an imperfect world like that, we're going to get a systematically distorted view of how these social interactions are going to go that naturally confirms our belief.

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  To test just how deeply ingrained these false beliefs are, Nick designed a simple experiment. He set up a photo op at a popular spot on campus. But the camera he put out there wasn't a modern smartphone. It was a vintage Polaroid Instent camera. And that choice was key because old-school Polaroids aren't built to let you take selfies.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  So in the old days, if you wanted somebody to take a picture of you, you had to go up and ask them to do it.

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  So Nick's subjects had to find a stranger to assist them. But before they approached anyone, the subjects were asked how annoyed they thought the stranger would be by being stopped and how positive their mood would be afterwards. Nick later compared these predictions to what the strangers actually said about taking the Polaroids.

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  And we found that people tended to underestimate how positively others respond, how willing they would be to help, how happy they would feel helping after they actually did. It was a more positive experience for the person you asked for help than people expected.

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  Nick's subjects also grossly overestimated how inconvenience the phototakers would feel. Their guesses were six times higher than what the helpers themselves later reported. Six times higher. Our predictions of how other people will react to our helping requests are way, way off.

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  They were likely to want to try to help you. And given that they were perceiving it as an act of kindness, given that you'd asked for it, they'll feel good when they actually help you out.

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  Results like these prompted Nick to rethink his own resistance to asking for help.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Here in Chicago, it sometimes snows in the winter. But I couldn't plow my driveway. I was often reluctant to have a neighbor come and shovel my driveway. And then our work in part made it clear to me that the neighbor would probably feel pretty good being able to do that for me. And so I now will ask him if he could do that if I can't shovel it. And it's created lots of good conversations between us where I get a chance to thank him for that. He feels good for it. And I don't think I ever would have done that before.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Asking for help to take a quick photo or for a friendly neighbor to lend you a hand shoveling snow are great places to start. But aspiring entrepreneur Ja Zhang was in a hurry. He wanted to supercharge his fight against his crippling fear of rejection. So the approach he took was rather, uh, extreme. He decided to ask people for some pretty fantastic favors.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  I saw this big guy. He looked like a security guard of some sort. And he was sitting behind a desk. And I said, okay, I'm going to ask him. Then as I just inching toward him, I just slowed down. I was like, this is so scary. My heart was pounding. I was sweating.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  We'll hear how all this turned out when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.

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  You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

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  I just moved into my new sabbatical house and I've been trying to make it feel more me. The living room is already furnished with a boho vibe, but it lacked the perfect rug to bring the room together. That's why I turned to Wayfair. I bought Wayfair's washable, distressed, vintage floral oriental rug in blue. That rug is so soft and cozy and I was able to find it in a vintage-looking blue color that perfectly matched the rest of the items in the space. And with Wayfair, you can get rooms that look great at every price point. I'm only staying in my sabbatical place for a short time, so I didn't want to spend a lot on a new rug. But with Wayfair, you can shop thousands of products across every style and budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season.

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• 17:15Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. There are plenty of reasons we put off getting support. And for a lot of people, cost is one of them. With BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. And while we're reconsidering old assumptions, maybe there are a few others worth questioning, too. Women these days inherit a lot of unwritten rules. Be ambitious, but not too ambitious. Be there for everyone, but still make time for yourself. Have it all together, but don't look like you're trying too hard. I've been trying to unwrit the unwritten rule that I'm never allowed to say no, that it makes me a bad person. I've been trying to give myself the grace that I would give other people

• 17:59Speaker 00

  and to remember that no one has the bandwidth to do everything all the time. If you're trying to work through your own unwritten rules, therapy may be of help. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks. And eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or live outside the US? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/laurie to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash Laurie.

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  Want-to-be entrepreneur Zhang Zhong wanted to beat his fear of rejection. So he began what a lot of us do when we're ready for a big behavior change. He did a Google search.

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  Google is like the real Yoda, right?

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  After a few clicks, Zhang stumbled on a website that would change his life forever: rejectiontherapy.com, a site that teaches a practice known as exposure therapy. Let's say you want to get over your phobia of heights. Exposure therapy would tell you to confront that fear by visiting locations a little bit above ground level and then over time climbing higher and higher, so that through gradual exposure, you get used to heights. Rejectiontherapy.com applies that same logic to the fear of asking for help. The website suggests things like challenging a stranger to a game of rock, paper, scissors, or asking for a small discount the next time you buy something. The challenges even have different levels, so you can start with just a mild taste of

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  rejection and gradually build up to going way out of your comfort zone. Zhang was ready to dive in.

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  I was like, this is the best idea I've ever heard.

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  The site recommended a month-long challenge: 30 days of rejection.

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  And I didn't want to do 30 days because I was like, you know, I want to go hardcore. Let me overdose on rejection and see what happens. So I did 100 days of rejection.

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  And rather than performing these challenges privately, Zhang decided he needed to film all his interactions and to share them with the entire world.

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  I know if I do this by myself, I probably get a couple of rejections and just quit. But if I declare that to the world, and I would think people will hold me accountable. So I can't just quit that easily. So that's what I did. All right, this is my first try.

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  Day one of Zhang's rejection marathon started pretty spectacularly.

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  I'm gonna try to borrow $100 from a stranger.

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  Zhang picked a security guard sitting by a desk in the marble-filled lobby of a nice mall.

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  Excuse me, do you think I can borrow $100 from you?

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  The security guard looked confused, like he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.

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  No? No? All right. No, okay, it's all right. Thanks.

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  Zhang didn't wait around to answer the security guard's question.

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  I just ran as fast as I could.

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  Zhang was downhearted. He assumed the interaction had gone terribly, that the guard had badly rejected him. But all that changed once he watched the footage.

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  I was like this NFL scout looking at a game film, you know, analyzing myself.

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  Zhang was shocked by what he saw, and not by the guard's reaction, but by his own.

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  I looked so scared, and I was like, oh, wow. I didn't know he was a security or someone. I don't know, he just sits there. He looks like a security guard. I thought he might pull out a gun or just yell at me or something.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Watching the video revealed that Zhang had nothing to be scared of. He didn't get the $100, but the guard was nice. He even gave Zhang a window of opportunity. He asked Zhang, why? Like, why did he need the $100 anyway?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  I could have said many things. I could have negotiated with him. I could have said, if you can do 100, can you do 5? You know, can you do 1? I could have explained that I was overcoming our fear of rejection. I just ran. So I said, okay, next time, no matter what happens, I am going to stay engaged. So I'm not gonna run. That's the thing, I'm not gonna run.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  On day two of his 100 days of rejection, Zhang headed to his favorite burger joint, Five Guys Burgers and Fries. He purchased a cheeseburger and ate it, and then returned to the counter for the big ask.

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  Yeah, it's really, the burger's really good. Can I get a burger refill?

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  Could he have a burger refill? That is, another cheeseburger totally for free.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  Uh, no, please, no burger. Okay. All right, I would like you guys a lot more if you did have a burger refill.

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  The cashier said no, but this time Zhang didn't run away.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  And I started negotiating. I started to stay calm, and I tried to explain myself. And when I left, I didn't feel as bad. Like, I felt way better than the first day.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Zhang was rejected. Five Guys does not offer burger refills, even if you ask politely. But the no Zhang received from the cashier yet again came with more kindness and humor than he expected.

• 22:49Speaker 03

  Day two was a success. On to day three.

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  By day three, Zhang already felt like he was heading for a rejection gold medal.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  I'm driving to Krispy Kreme.

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  So his next ask took his odd requests to Olympic-level heights of ridiculousness.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  I'm gonna ask them to make me some specialized donuts.

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  Zhang wanted the folks at Krispy Kreme to make him a set of five donuts, interlocked in the shape of the famous Olympic rings.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Well, there's no way they're gonna say yes to that, you know? And I would just come in and make a joke, you know, and get rejected and hopefully not be too scared.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  You want the wings?

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

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  The employee, Jackie Braun, got a pen and paper and asked Zhang to help her sketch out the design. She didn't look angry or confused. She kind of seemed to relish the challenge.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  And 15 minutes later, she brought me out a box of donuts that looked like Olympic rings. That is really good. That is really good. Yeah. Man, you're making me really happy today.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Jackie didn't even charge Zhang for the donuts. "It's on me," she told him with a big beaming smile.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  So when I was walking out at that donut shop, I was like, wow, how many yeses have I missed in my life? Because I was expecting a no. So that was a magic moment for me.

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  Pleased with his success, Zhang went home and posted the day three video, but it didn't get the handful of views he was expecting. Millions of people watched that donut clip. It got so much attention that his Olympic ring donut story wound up on daytime television shows.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  I think Krispy Kreme stock actually went up that day. Because this is like a marketer's dream, right? I asked them for donuts that looked like Olympic rings. And I was like, no way they're gonna say yes. They couldn't say no to me. They were like, yeah, how can I make this? And when I left there, I just had tears in my eyes because I just couldn't believe this world is much nicer than I thought. It's much kinder than I thought.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Zhang's donut success was a turning point for him. It convinced him that he could successfully ask for just about anything. And Zhang really did ask for rather strange things. He asked to become a mannequin in a department store, to give the safety announcement on an airplane, to slide down the pole at a fire station, and to feed a lion at the zoo.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  There we go. Oh, hold on, hold on, it's okay, it's all right, it's all right.

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  The videos that followed were as hilarious as they were popular, like when he asked for a haircut from a dog groomer.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Can you treat me like a German shepherd? Like Tibetan Mastiff or Chow Chow or something?

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  Zhang's videos eventually attracted the attention of a certain psychologist.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  And I thought, this is fascinating, right? This is an extreme version of what I did.

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  Psychologist Nick Epley's research had already shown that people are more willing to help us out than we think, that they react more positively than we expect to simple requests, like taking a quick Polaroid photo. But watching Zhang's YouTube videos, Nick realized people may also agree to far more complicated requests.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  I mean, it's off the charts what he asked people to do.

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  Nick carefully analyzed Zhang's videos, counting exactly how often his pleas for help got rejected.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  And it turns out, less often than he's accepted. That most of the time, a little over 50% of the time, to these crazy requests, the person does it.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Nick also watched to see the reactions of the strangers that Zhang approached. Did the donut makers and flight attendants and zookeepers get mad and yell at him and tell him to go away? Or were they genuinely trying to be kind and accommodating? Nick's analysis was striking. In the vast majority of interactions, people reacted completely positively. Zhang's extreme experiment in rejection therapy is a great example of two things that our lying minds often get wrong. First, we don't get rebuffed nearly as often as we fear. And second, the people we ask for help are usually much happier to oblige than we expect. But my guess is that hearing Zhang's story didn't exactly prompt you to go out and demand

• 26:48Speaker 00

  weird-shaped donuts, or to borrow money from strangers on the street, or to head into a lion's den at dinnertime. So what simple strategies can we all employ to be more comfortable in asking for help? Things that will allow us and the people around us to enjoy the happiness benefits that come from bonding over a helping hand? We'll find out when the Happiness Lab returns after this quick break.

• 27:16Speaker 01

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• 27:59Speaker 01

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• 28:23Speaker 00

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• 29:49Speaker 00

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• 30:33Speaker 00

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• 31:43Speaker 03

  I'm dividing my life into BD and AD, before donuts and after donuts. It was a watershed moment for me because it opened up this whole new world to me.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  A decade after asking a Krispy Kreme employee to build him the Olympic Ring of Donuts, Ja now runs the very company that inspired him, rejectiontherapy.com. He's also an in-demand speaker and the author of "Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection."

• 32:11Speaker 03

  I didn't plan this. I didn't plan this thing to go viral and someday I'll write a book, someday I'll do a blog, you know, someday I will give a TED Talk or be on Laura Sandel's show. I never planned all that. All I did was like, I'm gonna do something.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  And the viral videos Ja made are now used by clinicians to help patients with social anxiety. They may seem extreme, but Ja says they can still teach us important lessons that we can apply in everyday settings. His first takeaway is...

• 32:38Speaker 03

  People are actually much nicer than we think. People are actually very open, especially if you ask them wacky stuff.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  A second lesson is that your fears that people will angrily reject you or think less of you if you ask for assistance are likely to be very, very misplaced. Ja is living proof that you'll hear no far less than you expect.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  When I started, I thought I was gonna get 100 rejections. You know, maybe like I got some yeses if I get really lucky, but as it turned out, sometimes just by asking, you get a yes.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  But to get to that yes, Ja says we also need the courage to expose our vulnerabilities and to ignore any worries we may have about seeming needy.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  I don't wanna bother other people. You know, I want to be independent, right?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  And the research backs this up. Psychologists have long found evidence for what's known as the beautiful mess effect. We assume that people will avoid us if we seem needy or dependent on help, but it's actually just the opposite. People like us better when we show weakness or express emotional vulnerability or seek their help. Being messy makes us seem more open and relatable.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Really good friends, they ask for help. They ask for opinions, they ask for help, and they're vulnerable to each other. If you give and take, that really builds relationships. In fact, sometimes the fact that you're asking shows that, okay, I'm asking you because I need you, and that's really increases the bond you have with each other.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  But connecting with potential helpers also requires changing the negative mindset that many of us have about soliciting assistance. Your tension while asking for help can make the whole interaction less comfortable for everyone. It's something that Ja learned early in his days of rejection therapy.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  I was expecting rejection, and all my focus is how I could deal with that rejection. I didn't even think the possibility that people would say yes to me. And if you don't bring this aggressive energy, you're not that tense. People actually relax when they talk to you.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  To decrease that tension, Ja advises that you really do need to come to terms with the possibility of being rebuffed and to relax about it.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  That's actually the key. If I'm coming in and if I'm open to rejection, then I'm fine. If I give the other person the freedom to say no to me, I give myself the freedom to ask whatever I want.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  One way to do that, Ja says, is to explicitly admit that what you're asking for might not be doable and that it's totally cool if the person can't help you, that you know they're not doing it to spite you or because they don't like you.

• 35:04Speaker 03

  I say, okay, I know I'm making a big request here. I know this is a little bit weird, and it's okay if you can't do it. If I put that thing, what they're doubting upfront, it actually puts people at ease. He's saying that I can say no to this.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  And if you're still feeling guilty about your request, Ja suggests thinking back to how you felt when someone asked for help. Would you really be annoyed if the situation was reversed? Ja says he even thinks back to cases where he felt frustrated when good friends failed to call on him when they were in need.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  I had a friend, and he spent like almost a year looking for a job. And he didn't ask for any help. It was really hard for him. And I was like, you could've told me earlier. I, that job, I know someone who was hiring for that job. Why didn't you tell me earlier?

• 35:48Speaker 00

  But Ja has one final strategy that may seem counterintuitive given his own experience. He recommends not going as hardcore as he did.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Go outside of your comfort zone a little bit. Don't go like way out. You don't have to come in and ask for $100 like I did. That was a big step. It's like an exercise, right? If you've never lifted weights, you don't wanna come in and bench press like 300 pounds. You're gonna get crushed. But go out of your comfort zone a little bit and just test the water, and then gradually expand your comfort zone. You can start doing this again and again, and every time you do, you become so much better than before.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  And Ja should know, because asking for what he needed publicly and fighting his fear of rejection didn't just change his life.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Jackie from Krispy Kreme, right? The person said yes to me to make Olympic donuts. It changed her life, too.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Jackie Braun also went viral for those Olympic donuts. A viewer of Ja's video even made her a Facebook page entitled "Give Jackie a Krispy Kreme a Raise", and thousands of people signed the petition.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I mean, thank you very, very much.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  She received a personal visit from the CEO of Krispy Kreme, and she now stars in training videos that are used by the entire corporation.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  She became like a celebrity within her company just all because she said yes. Sometimes saying yes is more fun than saying no.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  And Ja thinks we'd all benefit from the fun of asking for help more often.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Rejection therapy has become a movement. It just fills my heart because I hope this movement can keep going and to help people overcome their fear.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  So many of us are missing out on making new social connections or deepening our bonds with existing friends just because we don't wanna ask for help or favors. That may be because we don't wanna appear annoying or vulnerable or because we fear the humiliation of our pleas being rejected. But the science shows that our worries about being pushy and needy are unfounded. People are way more happy to help than our lying minds think, and our reluctance to ask for help winds up preventing the people we care about from receiving the happiness boost that comes with being kind. So why not follow Ja's advice and push your rejection comfort zone a bit? You don't need to ask a stranger for money or demand specialized donuts, but you can make sure you give the people in your life opportunities to support and care for you.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  It'll make them and you feel much better than you expect.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  The Happiness Lab is co-written and produced by Ryan Dilly. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by Evan Viola. Jess, Shane, and Alice Vines offered additional production support. Special thanks to my agent, Ben Davis, and all of the Pushkin crew. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

• 38:51Speaker 00

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• 39:17Speaker 06

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• 39:49Speaker 02

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• 40:34Speaker 02

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• 40:37Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.