What’s your favorite dish? For me, it would be fried potatoes. And I make them really well — I even managed recently to cook a pretty decent batch for a whole boat of people: on an unfamiliar pan, with a mediocre stove, and using coconut oil I had never cooked with before.
But if you offered my potatoes to someone who’s confidently sticking to a diet, rest assured — they’d prefer to eat something else, maybe even a zucchini.
A friend of mine was once asked what one dish she would choose if she had to eat it for the rest of her life, and without a moment’s hesitation she said: “Bread with cheese.” But offer that to someone who’s lactose intolerant, and they’ll look at you with suspicion.
Recently I messaged Albert Safin — a blogger whose videos I genuinely enjoy — and suggested recording a small collab together for his channel. No mentions of me, nothing self-promotional — I just thought that since he has a huge production volume, and I’m someone who’s comfortable on camera and can help bring out the consumer’s perspective, it might be fun to try. Albert politely replied: “Thanks, but I have different priorities right now.” And that was it!
My suggestion was definitely not a bad one — just like bread with cheese or fried potatoes aren’t bad. It simply wasn’t the right fit for him at that moment. And such a refusal doesn’t reflect badly on either of us — it was just two confident people having a chat and realizing that the proposed intersection point wasn’t interesting to one of them.
Still, both I and many others often fear rejection and hold back from offering things: we don’t ask people out, don’t propose collaborations, don’t try to sell our services. As if a “no” to our offer were a verdict on us as a whole — like, “Misha, your nose is too off-center, so you must be a little rotten inside too.”
I think I accidentally did a pretty valuable exercise: I got rejected in a situation where I was a hundred percent sure about the value of what I was offering. When I ask for a discount in a shop or try to sell a consultation for €150, I can easily talk myself out of it — “How do you know the other person actually needs it? More than the product in stock, or more than the €150?” But when I can’t find a reason to reject myself, it becomes very clear that different people can simply have different assessments of the same thing — and that doesn’t change its real value.
And maybe the only way to stop fearing rejection is to remember that sometimes, even fried potatoes won’t appeal to someone — simply because it’s their day for zucchini.