How I’m working through the fear of rejection

This year, I've done so much mindset work in my business. It's almost like I've started drinking the mindset Kool-Aid. Now I want to share the lessons I've learnt and how it can help you, too.

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4 ways I am working through the fear of rejection

 

When I first started working with my coach a couple of months ago, I was really holding myself back in my business because I was afraid of this rejection. I was afraid of pitching the media. I was afraid of pitching podcasts. I was afraid for reaching out for collaborations, for messaging people I looked up to on Instagram. I was just afraid of doing anything outside of just working away on my own little business, because I was afraid that people would say no, and I realized just how much this was holding my business back.

 

 

I've never actually consciously thought, I'm afraid of being rejected, but it was showing up everywhere, not just in my business. It was showing up outside of my business as well, like in dating. I'm actually going to use a few dating analogies in this blog. I don't often talk about my life outside of my business, but I do actually have one, believe it or not. I think business is a lot like dating, so I'm going to use a few of those analogies. But it also showed up even just asking, like asking friends for help. I was afraid to ask them in case I'd get a no. This all just held me back so much, especially in my business.

 

It's not me, it's them

So, how have I started working through this fear of rejection? I won't say I've fixed it, because there definitely still is that fear there and I don't think it will ever go away. I think I'm just becoming more comfortable with it. The first thing I realized was when somebody says no, when I get that rejection, it's actually more about them than it is about me. If I reach out to somebody in the media and they say “No thank you” to my pitch, it's not because I'm not good enough for them to write a story about. It's just because my pitch isn't a good fit for their audience, or they're too busy, or they've had 50 million other pitches this week and they have to choose a few. So it has very little to actually do with me and everything to do with them.

 

Rejection is just a feeling

Secondly, when I started working with my coach. I've been working with Celinne Da Costa, and she's been helping me to really work on my story so that I can go out there and pitch a story to the media that I feel really good about. But such a big part of the work we've been doing is the mindset behind the story, being able to actually embody the story that I'm pitching. A huge part of this was overcoming that fear of the feeling of rejection and learning how to feel safe with it, because after all, rejection is just a feeling. It just feels uncomfortable in our bodies. So what she did, what Celinne did was she challenged me for seven days to ask for a rejection. Just small rejections, little things like I had my dog with me when I went into a bottle shop, and I just asked them, “Hey, can I bring my dog into the shop rather than leaving him out the front?”, expecting them to say no.

It was actually kind of funny how many times people said yes to things that I was expecting them to say no to, but it taught me. These little rejections taught me to start to feel safe with the feeling of rejection. And then I started being mindful of where my thoughts go. If somebody says no, straight away my thoughts go to, “Oh, I always get a no. I'm not good enough. I didn't do this right,” These are all just made up thoughts. Like I said, the reason they rejected me is probably something to do with them rather than me.

 

Reframing your thoughts

Getting really clear on, okay, well, how can I actually reframe this thought? Because a lot of the time when somebody is saying no, rejection is redirection. I think about times in the past when I've been rejected. I think it's particularly like in the dating game, times when people have rejected me, and at the time, I've been absolutely gutted. And I look back now and I'm like, “Oh, I'm really glad that didn't work out.” But it's the same in business. When we get rejected in business, that's fine. There's actually a reason why that's happening.

 

Stop projecting

Then the last thing that I've been working on with the fear of rejection is to stop projecting my own fear of rejection onto others. I had this really bad habit of if somebody would pitch me to be on my podcast, I would just ghost them or I would be like, “Oh yeah, maybe next year.” Truthfully, a lot of the time I don't actually take that many guests on my podcast, so a lot of the time when I am saying next year, I do mean next year. But a lot of the pitches I was getting weren't people I was ever intending to interview anyway, but because I was afraid of this rejection, I didn't want to reject them because I was afraid that they were going to take it really badly, so I would just ghost their pitches instead. The same with dating. Rather than telling somebody, “Oh, I had fun on our date, but I don't think we're a good fit,” I would just ghost them, because I was too afraid to reject them.

Working with my coach, I have uncovered so many random little patterns that are not just in my business but are in other areas of my life as well, and I will be sharing a whole lot in this blog.

 

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