Useful tips
Content: The
circumstances in which we are most likely to be rejected
Signs that tell us we're afraid of being rejected
How to overcome the fear of being rejected
Rejection hurts our feelings. It undermines our self-confidence and devalues our sense of self-worth.
The most unpleasant thing is that refusal gives us a feeling of fear and confidence that we will be refused next time.
However, there is a proven method by which we can learn to stop being afraid of being denied.
The circumstances in which we are most likely to be rejected
SHOTPRIME
How often do you get denied something? Once a day? A week? Or much more often? In any case, it is extremely unpleasant to hear the word “no”, as this not only means that we are not getting what we want. Rejection, in addition to devaluing our faith in ourselves, creates a sense of fear of getting that same rejection again, which makes us less persistent and successful.
It turns out that many of us seem to fall into the trap of living literally in a vicious circle: on the one hand, we are afraid of being refused, so we do not insist on our own; on the other hand, when we receive this very refusal, we stop insisting on our own, because we do not know how to work with refusals.
Read also: 11 tips on how to politely insist on your own if you are turned down
At the same time, it is not so difficult to overcome the fear that you will be refused, thereby restoring self-confidence. After all, the fear of rejection is nothing more than the fear of interacting with people. Because people are the ones we hear the word “no” when it comes to establishing personal relationships, career advancement, a friendly service, or anything else that requires the consent of others.
There are not as many areas of life in which people interacting with us can deny us something as it might seem at first glance. At the very least, they can be grouped into some major groups of areas that create certain circumstances where we are most often told the word “no”.
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In fact, all situations in which we can hear the word “no” that hurts us to the heart can be combined into three areas of interaction with people.
Work relationships
What can we be denied at work? Supervisors may refuse pay raises, career advancement, voluntary leave, and so on; colleagues may say no when you ask someone to replace you, when you need professional support in many other situations as well.
Another type of refusal related to work is refusal, in fact, to hire. Since many of us have to change our field of activity quite often, you have probably encountered this type of refusal more than once in your life. At least we are looking for a job more often than we decide to ask for a promotion in our current positions.
Friendship and friendships
The most natural situations in which friends refuse each other are requests to borrow a certain amount of money, refusal to provide a favor, and much more. In general, true friendship presupposes a certain element of self-sacrifice.
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However, in reality, the situation is often such that one of the parties is constantly acting as a petitioner, and the other is constantly acting as a donor, “alienator” or “service provider”. After all, you can also face a situation where you are denied at the very beginning of a friendly relationship — in fact, friendship is denied.
Love relationships
The most painful are refusals that are associated with love relationships. And here it does not matter at all whether a girl received a refusal from a guy or a guy from a girl — both sexes are very vulnerable when it comes to matters of the heart.
It is failures in love that can most undermine our faith in ourselves. And it is precisely the rejections we receive in response to our love claims that are the hardest to experience. Having received a turn from the gate a couple of times, we often withdraw into ourselves, stopping for a long time even trying to start a romantic relationship again.
All other life situations and circumstances in which we may be told “no” are
usually not so important to us (except for special cases, for example, interaction with banks, officials and so on). However, it is necessary to work with each of these refusals in order to:
– firstly, to overcome the fear of rejection in principle;
– learn to politely insist on your own if there are any prospects for achieving what you want.
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Signs that show that we are afraid of being rejected
The fear of being refused (to be rejected, for example) is characterized by quite certain signs that various psychologists have long described. These are the main signs:
When we're faced with rejection, we think about how we look in the eyes of others (it's understandable that we think we look in a negative light).
Rejections make us believe that we are not able to achieve our goals.
Every time we face rejections, we can't help but think about how uninteresting
we are to other people, how little they value us.
Refusals make us think we are not smart enough, prepared, and wealthy enough in any matters.
We can work hard enough on our tasks, but we try not to avoid people who can say “no” to us as part of this task. Thus, we unwittingly create the image of an unlucky person who is unlikely to achieve success in his endeavors.
The experience of numerous refusals leads us to believe that there are no significant issues in the world at all that we can succeed in.
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When we plan something that might be rejected by another person or group of people, we experience physical symptoms of anxiety. We are talking about a feeling of heaviness in the stomach (even pain), an unpleasant sucking sensation in the spoon, squeezing headaches, a strong heartbeat; all these symptoms can make us change your mind about acting for fear of rejection.
If we are able to avoid a situation in which we may be denied something, we are relieved to choose this path, although it can be much longer and more difficult to take in terms of other factors.
We are looking for reasons and excuses for our fear that would allow us to explain our reluctance to face circumstances that could lead to rejection (we complain about the lack of time, we refer to the low importance of the issue, and so on).
Now you have a better idea of exactly how the fear of rejection manifests itself. You may have experienced many of these symptoms more than once.
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Developing skills to deal with rejection and the ability to cope with your fear of rejection is a gradual process that is quite individual. However, the good news is that it doesn't matter at all whether you're trying to learn how to deal with rejection at work, in friendships, or in love — steps you must take absolutely are the same for all circumstances and situations.
How to overcome your fear of being rejected
Step one: Stop thinking rejection is inevitable
When we get used to being rejected by everyone, we feel hopeless that it is now our destiny to be rejected in any field. And we subconsciously begin to create situations around us in which refusals inevitably happen.
On a subconscious level, we send invisible signals to other people that push them away from us. Thus, our fears materialize. And we take each subsequent refusal for granted, as another fact that confirms our speculations and our inconsistency.
To put it rude, we are “giving” another refusal to ourselves. Therefore, we must stop fueling our belief that refusal is our destiny, unwittingly seeking confirmation of this. If you have identified signs that indicate that you are afraid of being rejected, then you have recognized your fear. Now it remains to overcome it by focusing on what exactly you are achieving.
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Step two: Focus on the goal
Answer this question: How exactly do you define your wishes: as things you don't want to happen or as things you would like them to happen?
If you're confused, here's a simple example:
you're planning to ask for a promotion (or a well-deserved pay raise). What do you think about your goal? “Just don't say no to me again!”?
As you can imagine, from a purely psychological point of view, formulating your desire in this way is to program a refusal in advance and, accordingly, another failure. And even the wording “I won't be refused this time!” Not very successful.
When planning a positive solution to the issue, the correct way is to think: “I want to get a promotion (or salary increase) next month.” Focus on the goal, do not nurture fears that prevent you from moving towards this goal. When you see the signs of fear of rejection that we discussed above, try to understand the roots of this fear.
Step Three: Identify the ins and outs of fear
annakraynova
When we learn how to increase our faith in ourselves, it's important to recognize what exactly that belief has been undermined. Since it's about overcoming our fear of being rejected, the right thing to ask ourselves was who taught us to fear rejection? When and what exactly happened that we became afraid of being rejected?
You might be surprised, but in the vast majority of cases people come to the same conclusion — this fear settles in us at a fairly young (if not at a young) age. And once you can specifically identify the circumstances that gave us the seeds of fear of rejection, we have an opportunity to challenge them. For starters, it's in my imagination.
Step four: Use your imagination
It is not necessary to immediately rush into the pool with your head, rubbing your hands, sweaty with excitement and afraid of getting another refusal. Overcoming this fear can start in your head. To do this, you can use your imagination by visualizing different situations.
Set aside some time each day to do the following: imagine yourself acting (or acting) confidently in situations in which you're not really very confident. In your mental pictures, you should not only have no fear of rejection, but you must be sure that everything is going according to your plan.
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This visualization exercise, if done often enough, will really help you morally approach practical situations in which you will gradually feel accurate as confident as in my mental exercises.
Step Five: Learn to Assess Your Real Chances
To ensure that the answer “no” does not discourage
you, assess the real situation before you express your request or desire. Using the example of working relations, objectively assess your willingness to receive a promotion, your chances of a salary increase, and your professional suitability.
The simple explanation is sometimes that we know we're not ready for either (or, let's say, we don't deserve it). By subconsciously understanding this fact, we already understand that we will be refused. And either we go ahead, getting a well-deserved refusal, or we simply deny ourselves trying to get what we want, arguing that we will be refused.
Step six: stop playing predictor
When we are denied something, many of us begin to believe that next time we will also definitely hear “no” to our request or wish. As we said above, a kind of vicious circle is forming. That's when the sacramental thing comes in — “Well, now I'm going to be turned down again.”
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However, it would be more correct here and now to realize the following fact: any outcome is possible. In other words, whether you hear “yes” or “no”, you should prepare yourself for both answers. This does not mean that you should not expect a positive answer! This means that we must be prepared for a negative answer as one of the possible options.
But if you're so sure you're going to be denied something again, why don't you try your hand at a lottery predictor, since you trust yours so much forecasts?! In other words, it is sometimes useful to doubt when it comes to questioning your own negative forecasts.
Step seven: Think more often about situations when you were not turned down
It does not matter at all whether it is a positive answer from your significant other when you proposed marriage to her, or a positive response from your superiors to a question about a salary increase boards. When you return to situations where you managed to get the desired “yes”, you once again learn to overcome the fear of rejection.
And next time you're going to ask someone with bated breath, don't ask yourself questions like “what if I don't say no?”
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Concentrate on the emotions you once felt when you managed to achieve what you wanted in a similar situation, and strive to get the same emotions again.
Step Eight: Realize You'll Survive Any Rejection
The fear of being denied something (even if it's not the first time) is just fear and nothing more. In other words, it's not the end of the world, and life doesn't end there. Failure in many cases is an unpleasant but natural result.
“What if he/she says no to me?” — we are thinking about another love partner.
“What if I'm not accepted?” — we think before the next interview with another employer.
“What if they don't give me a loan?” — we think, standing at the bank window.
There are no such “what if…” in almost every person's life. And if you see any refusal as the end of the world, as a personal tragedy, then any refusal for you becomes the end of the world and a personal tragedy. But as soon as you say to yourself — “Ok, I was denied, let me try it from the other side now” — the refusal you receive turns into a constructive event for your life.
Realizing that nothing bad will happen to you, regardless of whether you hear “yes” or “no”, gives you confidence. And your confidence is instantly subconsciously read by your counterpart, increasing the likelihood of a positive response.
Step nine: rethink the meaning of rejection
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Refusal is just a small step (however unpleasant) towards agreement. Everyone has had to overcome rejections, regardless of how successful a person is at this point in time. You can rest assured that advanced businessmen became so precisely because they often heard “no” and then began to act even more intensively.
Read also: 20 phrases that betray you as an insecure and weak person
Better think about this:
– Decca Records (once one of the most popular recording studios in the UK) refused to sign a contract with the Beatles. This happened in January 1962. And already in February, the Beatles recorded for BBC radio;
– the famous American basketball player Michael Jordan was once denied entry to the school basketball team;
– writer Jack London was tired of hitting the press, reportedly receiving several hundred refusals before his first essay was finally published;
– For many years, Vincent Van Gogh was denied genius by most critics.
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There are so many examples like this that listing them will surely make you tired.
Just because you've been denied something doesn't mean you're a worthless, unlucky, underrated, or undesirable entity. This only means that you have been given an obstacle (one of many) that you can overcome and will definitely overcome if you don't get too hung up on the word “no”.