What '365 days of rejection' is teaching this young Kiwi

Herman Jagpal has amassed nearly a million followers on his Instagram (@dailyrejection), where people watch him face rejection every single day this year.

But the Hamiltonian is also taking on the challenge of trading a paper clip for a house – emulating the famous story of Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald who reportedly did the same over the course of a year.

Jagpal is also planning to take the rejection therapy project to 30 countries in November, with the help of his sponsors. One of them even celebrated his 200-day milestone with a billboard in Auckland.

Jagpal says the seed for the idea grew from getting turned down occasionally in seeking out venues and sponsors for his events and clothing company, Skip The Boat.

He’s come a long way from his first request – where he spent a few minutes building the courage to ask if he could serve the next customer at a fuel station. Since then, he has asked to borrow someone's lawn mower and a construction crew’s equipment.

“I don't think I was always this confident with asking for things. So, I think just from doing it so many times, I'm just getting better at asking in the right way and just being more confident with my request as well,” Jagpal told Sunday Morning.

“It's really helped me just rediscover human connection again and that's one of the big reasons why I wanted to start doing this was that I feel like I wasn't interacting with people as much as I used to be.

“A lot of my days were just online, doing work from home. But this just forces me to kind of step outside every single day and meet someone new.”

His mantra is: it’s always a no unless you ask.

“If you sit there, always wondering what could have been, I feel like that is so much work than just hearing a ‘no’.

“If you look at rejection in such a bad light, where you think it kind of devalues your sense of value in the world, it's not going to do too well, but if you see it as ‘okay, this is actually redirection more than rejection, it's getting me one step closer to where I want to be’, it can do just absolute wonders for you.”

He's surprisingly had more people say yes than he expected. But some are telling him it's only because Kiwis are kind which is why he wants to go abroad - to show kindness exists everywhere.

“I feel like I can be a superhero. I think I can get anything I want in this life if I just ask. All it takes is finding the right person at the right time and I think that's something that everyone possesses and I wish they would understand it more … It's just about putting yourself in a position to be vulnerable and to hearing ‘no’.”

Meanwhile, he’s two weeks into his paper clip trading project, which has landed him a $20,000 voucher for solar panels and heat pumps.

To get there, he initially traded the paper clip for chewing gum then eventually an Xbox, a tattoo voucher, car wheels and a $10,000 renovation voucher from a builder.

He says it’s a bit of a struggle now to think of new ideas for his daily rejection project but he’s always open to hearing suggestions from his followers.

“I thought about going and doing everything that I've had a 'no' for and trying to get a yes for it as like a big finale, although I think that would take me a very long time to film.”