How to overcome Fear of Rejection

“What ever you believe with conviction, becomes your reality, whether or not it is true or false”.  These are the words of best selling author Brian Tracy, who wrote many books on personal development including “Eat that Frog” and “The Psychology of Selling”

How many times in your life have you been rejected where it really hurt you to the core, and it ended up shaped your identity and the way you felt about yourself?

Research shows that the average is only 5-7 times in a person’s lifetime but for many of us, these events may have been so traumatic that it has left a mental scar in our sub conscious mind which is difficult to eradicate. So many people constantly guide their life by the fear of rejection, so they end up not taking action. They don’t start new things and they don’t chase their dreams, because they are too worried about what other people are going to think of them. They worry that they are going to be rejected and deemed unworthy or inadequate in some way.

Our fear paralyzes us from taking action

The fact is, we are scared of something that hardly ever happens, and we end up imposing self inflicted mental anxiety on our sub conscious mind. This fear of rejection paralyzes us from taking action and moving forward in life.

People naturally take action when they feel they have a higher chance of success but less so when they fear possible failure.  The higher the chance of having “bad” results, the riskier the action becomes and the less likely they are to take it.

Our subconscious mind has programmed us to be part of a tribe as a mechanism for survival. In ancient prehistoric times, if you were cast out from the tribe, it mean’t isolation and eventual death. Today, that kind of fear of isolation translates into the threat of being fired, receiving an opposing opinion from a work colleague, losing a job opportunity, or having a presentation go badly. Rejection to our subconscious mind translates to the fear of death.

The problem is that we have written a story up until a certain point in time without continuing to the end. That point in time is the precise point in time where our fears begin.

We unconsciously tell our subconscious mind that life stops at this exact moment, the moment of rejection, which causes conflict in our subconscious mind. We build this event up to be the one and only important event in our entire lifetime worth experiencing, without realizing that it is actually one of many. The weight of importance we give to this moment is completely unbalanced.

To overcome the fear of rejection we must continue to write the story

A story that looks beyond this moment and further forward into the future. Ask ourselves the question – What happens next, after the rejection?…what is the final outcome?, what is the worst possible outcome? – and then we need to prepare to try and improve on the worst possible outcome.

This exercise tricks your subconscious mind into thinking you’ve already been there and done it before, which means you’ve got nothing to worry about regardless of what the outcome is,  because you know the story always continues on…

Rejection vs Regret

Remember, rejection doesn’t hurt for very long time but regretting the things you did not do, can last a lifetime. The fact is, we can never fully escape rejection, but the more we try to hide from it, the more we shrink our world, living in the shadows, and the less chance we have of achieving our dreams.

So, what are you afraid of?

What’s holding you back from taking action and making a life changing decision today? Perhaps you’re afraid of loosing the income and security of a typical 9 to 5 type job and stepping into something completely new? Perhaps you’re afraid of how your friends and family may perceive your sudden urge to do something completely different with your life, something that you truly love. I had these exact same fears not too long ago and chose to overcome them and for my story to continue on…