How is the fear of rejection holding you back? How would your life be different if you didn’t (subconsciously) care what everyone thought about you?
To answer these questions, we need to understand that the vast majority of our fears and fears amount to one thing: loss.
We fear:
Lose our youth.
Lose our social status.
Lose our money.
Lose control.
Lose our comfort.
Lose our lives.
We also fear, perhaps more than anything else, that we will be rejected by others. This type of fear is widespread and debilitating when not addressed. Why is this fear so deeply rooted in us? In ancient times, denial of community security could have meant death. No wonder we want to be accepted by others.
Fear is an instinctive human emotion that should make us conscious and safe – like the headlights of a car that clearly illuminate the twists and turns on the street. But too much fear, like high beams that blind us on a dark, foggy road, can cause the loss of exactly what we feared to lose.
This is especially true for the fear of rejection. Let me give you an example from my own life:
When I was a teenager, I was always the outcast who tried desperately to adapt to my colleagues. Within four years, I jumped to three different schools and different social circles in each school and faced rejection after rejection. I can still remember how I shot tires alone on the basketball court on numerous occasions, always the new child who always craves acceptance.
For a long time, I thought that these outcast experiences in my childhood were the main cause of my obsessive, philanthropic behaviors in my adulthood. In my twenties I was always looking for signs that others didn’t like me. I was looking for reassurance and always wondered what people really thought of me.
Are you also looking for acceptance and confirmation from others?
If so, you now know that you are not alone. And what I’ve learned over the years is this: constantly looking for acceptance and confirmation from other people is a dead end. These things can only be found in you, not by others. Because every look, word or reaction can be distorted and misinterpreted by someone else.
In this post, I want to give some tips that have helped me feel confident and that have finally enabled me to overcome my fear of rejection and my relentless tenancy to worry about what everyone thought about me.
- Realize that fear itself is the real enemy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt said so profoundly: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. This is especially true with regard to self-fulfilling prophecies.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a false belief in a situation that motivates the person with the belief to take action that leads to the belief becoming true. This way of thinking often kills opportunities and breaks relationships. For example, you might mistakenly believe that a group of people will reject you, making you defensive, fearful, and maybe even hostile to them. Finally, your behavior leads to the feared rejection, which did not initially exist. And then you, the Prophet, felt that you were right from the start: “I knew they didn’t like me!”
Do you see how that works? Take a close look at your own tendencies. How do your fears and beliefs about possible rejection affect your behavior towards others? Take position. Instead of letting fear show you what might be wrong in your relationships, look for signs of what might be right.
- Let go of your thinking about the end of the world.
All variations of fear, including fear of rejection, live from thinking at the end of the world. In other words, our emotions convince us that an undesirable result leads to annihilation.
What if you don’t like me?
What if he rejects me?
What if I don’t match and sit alone at the party?
None of these things lead to the “end of the world”, but if we convince ourselves of it, we will fear these results irrationally and give our fears control over us. The truth is that we humans are unable to predict exactly how we will feel from misfortune in the future. In fact, most of the time we avoid consciously thinking together about what only sustains our unconscious fears.
So ask yourself: “If a catastrophe occurs and my fear of being rejected comes true, what three constructive ways could I cope with and advance my life?” Sit down and tell yourself a story (write it down too, if it helps) about how you feel after being rejected, how you get upset for a short time and how you then start to grow out of the experience and go on. If you only do this exercise, you are less afraid of the possibility of rejection. (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of our brand new edition of 1,000 little things that make happy, successful people different.)
- Ask what “rejection” really means.
If a person discovers a 200 carat white diamond on Earth but thinks it is worthless out of ignorance and therefore throws it aside, does this tell us more about the diamond or the person? In this sense, a person who rejects another reveals much more about the “reject” than about the “rejected”. All you really see is a person’s often nearsighted opinion. Consider the following …
If J.K. Rowling stopped after being rejected by several publishers for years. There would be no Harry Potter. If Howard Schultz gave up after being rejected by banks more than 200 times, there would be no Starbucks. If Walt quit Disney prematurely after his theme park concept was devastated by more than 300 investors, there would be no Disney World.
One thing is certain: if you give too much power to the opinions of others, you will become their prisoner. So never allow someone’s opinion to change your reality. Never sacrifice who you are or who you want to be just because someone else has a problem with it. Love who you are inside and out and keep pushing. No one else has the power to make you feel small unless you give them that power. And if someone rejects you, you don’t necessarily feel that you are unworthy or unlovable. Because in many ways, all they really did is give you feedback on their own nearsightedness.
- Let your presence overwhelm your fear.
Have you ever noticed that people struggling with emotional challenges tell you how they don’t want to feel? Fair enough, but at some point we all need to focus on how we want to feel.
If you’re in a social situation that scares you, forget for a moment what you don’t want to feel. Figure out how you want to feel right now. Train yourself to live right here without regretting how others once felt or fear the possibility of a future judgment.
That is your decision. You can change your mindset.
If you offered your mother life-saving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in public, you would be 100% focused and present. You wouldn’t think about what others thought about your hair, body type, or the brand of jeans you were wearing. All of these unimportant details would disappear from your consciousness. The intensity of the situation would motivate you not to care what others think about you. This simply proves that it is YOUR CHOICE to think about what others think about you. (Angel and I discuss this in depth in the Relationships chapter of our New York Times best-selling book, Back To Happy: Change Your Mind, Change Your Reality, and turn your trials into triumphs.)
- Let go of your need to always be right.
The reason your fear of rejection sometimes gets the best out of you is because part of you believes you are always right. If you think someone doesn’t like you, then they certainly don’t. Law? NOT CORRECT!
People who never learn to question their feelings, especially when they feel worrying or anxious, make life much more difficult than it needs to be.
If your perception is always so precise, why are you making so many mistakes? I agree! It’s time to let go a little. Part of being more confident in life means not knowing what’s going to happen so you can relax and let things happen naturally. Relaxing with “not knowing” is the key to trust in relationships and peace in life.
Here is a new mantra for you – say it and then say it again: “This is my life, my decisions, my mistakes and my lessons. I have nothing to prove. And as long as I don’t hurt people, I don’t have to worry about what they think of me. “
- Embrace and enjoy your individuality.
Constantly asking for consent means that we are constantly worried that other negative judgments will be made about us. This steals the fun, ingenuity and spontaneity from our lives. Switch this habit over. If you’re lucky enough to have something that differentiates you from everyone else, don’t be ashamed and don’t change. Uniqueness is invaluable. In this crazy world that tries to make you like everyone else, find the courage to continue to be your remarkable self. And if they laugh at you because you are different, laugh at them because you are the same.
It takes a lot of courage to be alone, but it’s worth it. It’s worth not to apologize! Your real friends in life will slowly reveal themselves – they really know you and still love you.
Bottom line: don’t change so people like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you. (Read the championship of love.)
- Use rejection as a priceless growth opportunity.
Once someone criticizes you and criticizes you when you are rejected, you may think, “Well, that proves once again that I’m not worthy.” What you need to realize is that these other people are NOT worth YOU and your special trip. Rejection is a necessary medicine; Learn how to reject relationships and opportunities that don’t work, so you can quickly find new ones that do. That doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. It just means that someone else didn’t notice what you had to offer. You now have more time to improve and explore your options.
“Are you going to be bitter for a moment? Absolutely. Injured? Of course you are human. There is no soul on this planet who does not feel a small fraction of her heartache with the awareness of rejection. For a short time afterwards you will ask yourself any question you can imagine …
What did I do wrong?
Why didn’t they like me?
Where from?
But then you have to let your emotions fire you! This is the important part. Let yourself be driven by your feelings of rejection, feed and inspire a powerful opening for the next chapter of your story.
(Note: Angel and I adjust all of the above and implement them with our students in the “Back to Happy Course & Coaching” section.)
The floor is yours …
Looking back at your life, you will often find that you often thought that you were being rejected by something good and that you were actually redirected to something better. Just remember today that you can’t control everything, especially the opinions of others. Let go a little bit and let life happen as it should. Because results and interactions that you can’t change change frequently, you and your trajectory change for the better.
Leave a comment below and let Angel and me know:
Which point above is the one that appeals to you the most and why?
