The Fear Of Rejection Phobia
What exactly is the fear of rejection phobia? First, let’s define the word phobia according to Wikipedia.
“A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically, result in a rapid onset of fear and are present for more than six months”.
Having a phobia is no fun. It feels like something is eating your insides and wants to burst out of your body whenever you attempt to do (or sometimes even think) about that particular thing.
In this article, I’m going to focus on overcoming the fear of rejection phobia once and for all. All phobias can be conquered no matter how debilitating they may seem!
Why You Have The Fear Of Rejection Phobia
Look, we are all human beings – and as human beings, being rejected for something is not pleasant, but it is something that has happened, is currently happening, and will happen to everyone no matter who you are. This is especially true for men, as men will experience much more rejection in their life than a woman will.
Biologically, if you think about it, the fear is there for a reason. As human beings, we want to feel loved and accepted. Our feelings are hurt if we get rejected or experience loss. This is natural. However, the more you allow yourself to experience such things, the more you’ll become accustomed to them and not let them dictate your life.
Rejection Is A Necessity In Life
Rejection is almost as certain as death and taxes. It will happen, and it will happen a LOT. So why have we developed such a fear about something that we will certainly face? This is a paradox of life.
If everyone all of a sudden was able to rid their fear of rejection with just a snap of the fingers, just think about how crazy and hectic the world would be. Everyone would automatically be on the same playing field. No man would hesitate to approach a woman, there would be no competition and no “value” to accomplishing such a feat because it wouldn’t take any work.
Women know the amount of courage and confidence it takes to approach them, especially if they are beautiful, and even if they reject you, they respect you a lot more because you had the courage to actually do the approach. If you didn’t need to build that courage, there would be no underlying respect.
As a man, you just need to go for it and if it doesn’t work out, you move on and don’t let it affect you. But that’s easier said than done right?
Start With Baby Steps
I’m going to be giving advice for the absolute beginner here, but even for the veterans out there, just keep reading and you could learn something too!
Let’s assume you have an absolute horrid phobia of being rejected. It’s hard for you to just go outside and be around people let alone approach and converse with them. So let’s start at the absolute beginning and work your way up to the confidence level that you want to achieve.
First, I want you to pick a place that you like going to. This could be anywhere – an arcade, a mall, walking around a lake in nature, your favorite restaurant, a barber shop, etc. The more people that will be around, the better. However, it’s not necessary to have a lot of people around. Now if you’re extremely shy, I want you to just look at people in the eyes and smile when they look back at you. That’s it. You don’t have to approach. Do that with at least 5 people. Once that becomes easy for you, make it 10 people, then 20.
Slowly Increase Your Repetitions
After looking at people in the eyes and smiling becomes easy for you, I want you to increase the difficulty. I want you to start saying “Hi, how are you” to them when they look back at you. Do that 5 times, then 10, then 20. Once that starts becoming easy for you, start asking them how their day is going after you say hi. Sometimes they’ll start a conversation with you, sometimes they won’t. Do that 5 times, then 10 times, then 20. Are you starting to see the pattern here?
Once that becomes easy for you, I want you to try to have a conversation for as long as you can. Once you can’t think of anything else to say, just end the conversation with “well it was nice to meet you, I’ve gotta run!”. Do not have any expectations from these conversations except just to talk and get to genuinely know someone. Do that 5, then 10, then 20 times.
Now you can move on to just trying this with women. You can start off with women you’re not even attracted to as it may be easier. Eventually, you want to be comfortable doing this with women you actually want to meet and get to know.
You are doing it this way because this reduces the likelihood of you being rejected. Most people are going to be friendly and welcoming when you approach them with a smile and good energy. You might get 1-5% of people that are just in a horrible mood and having a shitty day. They might give you a cold shoulder or just not be up to talking but don’t take it personally and move on.
Give Yourself Time But Make Sure You’re Taking Action
You can approach this as fast or as slowly as you’d like – but the faster and sooner you start making the approaches, the quicker you’ll be able to reach your goals and get rid of your phobia of rejection. I would say to take no longer than 3 months to get to the point where you’re easily able to approach 20 women a day and have conversations with them.
That means you need to set some goals for yourself on a daily and weekly basis to make sure this gets done. Nothing great in life is ever achieved without taking some sort of action. Success favors the bold!
Reward Yourself For Success
Hey, what you’re doing is not easy! Reprogramming your brain which is hundreds of thousands of years old is a hard task and any amount of success you have should be celebrated. You deserve it. Smiled at 10 people? Buy yourself something nice or take yourself out to a nice dinner!
Made a conversation with 5 girls? That’s amazing!! You can play your favorite video game now for 1 hour. Giving yourself small rewards will help keep you motivated in the long run.
Enjoy The Fruits of Your Labor
Getting rid of the Fear of Rejection phobia is something that will greatly change your life. I think it’s one of the most important things a man can do in the course of his lifetime to really improve all areas of his life. This will improve your social life, relationships, and business ventures.
In the end, we are all human, and humans by nature are social creatures. We live and thrive on being social with one another. By overcoming this phobia, you give yourself access to be social with absolutely anyone anywhere at any time, and that is one of the most freeing feelings you could ever have.
