Conquering Rejection: Unlocking Your Full Potential and Turning Fear into Growth

Cracking the code to overcoming rejection and unlocking your hidden potential, that's what we're focusing on today. If fear of rejection has been holding you back, let me tell you, it's time to move through it. We've got the tools and techniques to help you rewrite your story, replacing fear with courage, and transforming rejection into a launchpad for personal growth. We'll tear down the walls that have been confining you and illuminate the path towards transformation.

As we continue our journey, we'll delve deeper into fear, self-confidence, and the power of goal setting. This is not just about avoiding rejection, but learning to use it to your advantage. We'll discuss how building self-esteem, focusing on what you can control, and practicing exposure to rejection can lead you toward unlocking your full potential. Now is the time to shift your mindset, challenge your fears, and start manifesting the life you've always desired. This episode will equip you with practical tools and strategies to transform fear into courage, rejection into growth, and dreams into reality. Let's get started.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Becoming your most powerful, confident self right now is easier than you think. Welcome to the confident, connected leader podcast. I am your host, lisa Jeffs. Today we're talking about rejection, or rather how to move through rejection and be able to create and manifest and achieve experience all that you desire.

Speaker 1: 0:53

So what prompted this podcast was I was on the internet earlier, scrolling, using my time wisely, and something popped up that said if you're afraid of rejection, you're afraid of life. And it really struck a chord because, while these fears are extremely valid, so a fear of rejection often comes from a deep core wound. Right, we have core wound of rejection or the core wound of abandonment that can really create us putting up our guards, holding back. And when you are ambitious and you have these big visions of taking your work or taking your business to the next level or simply fulfilling your potential here. So this is what I've been hearing people using these specific words lately I really want to make sure I'm fulfilling my potential and I truly believe that we all come here with almost an infinite ability. Our potential is like who's to put a cap on our potential, but our beliefs and our fears are going to dim that potential as long as we allow them to, and rejection, when we are scared to be rejected, which could be very valid. Let's not devalue this fear, because it is very potent when it's related to the core wound of wanting to be loved and wanting to be connected. As human beings we have those needs. But when you can get to a place where you are free of that fear, free of the fear of rejection and I want to say abandonment too, because abandonment is all intertwined with it when you are free of that and you are just, you know, I went to a concert last week. The artist's name is LP Absolutely brilliant artists and one of the things that LP often says is I live this shit out of my life. I just live this shit out of my life, so I have something to write about. Now you don't have to be a musician to do that. You have to live the out of your life to write music. But you're living that, so you can't tell your story. So you can tell a story, so you can share that story, whether that's with yourself, your kids, your spouse, your friends, your business, if you're a speaker, this is really potent information. When we do not live the crap out of our life. Then what do we have to do? What are we pulling from Right? This is when people start feeling stagnant, they start getting frustrated because they know their potential but they're just not taking the actions necessary to live it. So I'm going to give you a framework that's going to help you to move through rejection. If you're someone that's oh, I really want to do this. And let me backtrack a bit.

Speaker 1: 4:48

When we have a fear of rejection, it's often not like we're walking around saying I'm fearing rejection, I'm fearing that. We may be saying that Like I'm scared they're going to reject me. We may be saying that, but often it's just a fear that's there and we make excuses why we're not going after something. So we make excuses like oh, I'm just not ready yet, I'm just not going to put this offer out there, or I'm just not going to reach out to these people, or I'm not going to reach out to my superior and ask for that raise or ask for that next steps in a promotion. I'm just not ready, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, or we just procrastinate, we just put it off. So it's not necessarily that you're even aware that the fear of rejection is the issue or fear of abandonment, either one. So, when I'm doing work with a client in regards to, let's say, sabotage, those are fears we got to look at, right. Well, why are you procrastinating? Why haven't you taken action in three months, six months, a year? Well, there's a good chance that there's a fear of rejection or there's a fear of abandonment in there. And just if you're listening to this and you want to go deeper, I do offer a free breakthrough call. It's complimentary, so you can book that in the show notes. And this is where we can get really clear. What is that core fear that made me hold you back? But let's go into the framework right now, so you have something to leave this with.

Speaker 1: 6:32

The first step is I want you to refrain rejection. So why would we even be scared of rejection in the first place? Well, we are scared of it because we are giving it a meaning. We are giving it a meaning such as if I'm rejected, then I'm not good enough. And if I'm rejected and I'm not good enough, then you know, I guess I'm going to throw my dreams in the garbage. No point in dreaming anymore if I'm rejected. Right, these are stories, whether we are aware of them or not, or going on within us when we allow the fear of rejection to hold us back. So I'm not good enough if I get rejected. Or if I get rejected, it means that these people are better than me.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Let's say, if you're in a, let's say, a team environment and you're holding yourself back from going after something and you compare yourself to others a lot, and if you go after this and you don't get it, that means that all your fears are true and that these people in the team are somehow better. It can mean one of many things. Whatever, the story is, that we are telling ourselves is bigger than the well, what if this is the best thing that ever happens and you get a yes and it changes your life and everything after this is just a massive ripple effect because you have the courage to go after this thing, that you say that you want and you make the decision and you take the chance and you go for it and you don't get rejected. You get a big fat yes. So you know we want to reframe the stories we're telling ourselves about rejection, and one of the ways we can do that is rejection is, or just it's, part of the path towards our vision. It's part of the path towards what we are desiring. This is when we look at rejection as being the end-all, be-all. We're screwed. We're never gonna take the actions needed to make the progress that's needed to finally land at our vision being created. We have to reframe the stories we're telling ourselves. So take the rejection as being. This is information. I need to then tweak something, or, you know, just stay steadfast and persist, keep going, not allowing the nose to be a wall in front of me, but it's simply a step in the direction that I'm going. One powerful thing you can do is look at Google authors who have a list of rejections and then finally get the yes, and then they blow up. Not just authors, I'm just thinking authors, because I know that this happens a lot. There's a lot of stories with authors. It can be with anyone, right, google? How many rejections did this person get before they got the yes? That was the magic yes, okay. So that's the first step in a framework is re-framing rejection.

Speaker 1: 10:24

The next step is practice exposing yourself to rejection. Exposure is great for bringing down those fears. So where can you go? Where you'll be rejected? Or you can assign yourself a practice of getting nose Right. So I remember this when I first started my business, there was I don't know if this was a book that came out or it was something, but it was very common back then. I haven't heard this practice as much talked about lately, but really just sending yourself a path, a goal of getting a hundred nose. So go share your idea, go share your offer, go share whatever it is, but look for the nose, look for the rejection we set.

Speaker 1: 11:32

I'm not saying to just expect the worst all the time, but when we set our expectations at a level that we know we can get and we know we can all get a no and we start getting those nose, it takes a sting out of it. This is a practice we want to take the sting out. So there's no emotional Connection to that no, it just is what it is. Oh, it's a no, okay, great. Next, oh, it's that's a no, okay, that's my. Next. It's when we are hit and this goes into our next step in the framework of it that just was a the no as a dagger to my self-esteem. This is when the problem start, when we allow that no to hit our self-esteem to where we are now feeling less than this is where the problem occurs.

Speaker 1: 12:30

So how do we move beyond this? Well, we have a practice of continually working on ourself, working on our self-esteem, working on our self-confidence. This is going to hit things at the root, right, because you know, we can reframe rejection and we can do this work and it's very powerful, hey, but it's it's More of the surface level. When we go down and we work on ourself is seeing, and we work on our self-confidence, right, we Challenge the negative thoughts that say you're not good enough or this person is better, when we work on Self-love. And what does that even mean? I'm not going to go into a deep into this in this podcast, but what does that mean? To truly love and honor and cherish Yourself, because these are the keys to unlocking everything. Unlocking everything you want. When you have Unlimited confidence in yourself and you value yourself and you believe in yourself. This unlocks the door to everything. But that's the. The step in our, our framework is working on self-esteem. So these knows no longer hit like a ton of bricks.

Speaker 1: 13:46

And the last part focus in on what you can control. Focus in on what you can control. You cannot control what other people are gonna say you can't control what other people like, and the more you try, the more entangled and tangled up, and it just becomes a mess when you Simply focus in on and this is, you know, this comes up in my client post all the time because when we can master this, when you can master that, the only thing you can control in this world is your reaction to things. The only thing you can control is you, your behavior, your actions, how you react, how you feel about something, the inner workings. And I say this and it's a process because there are certain moments where you may be reactive to something and you feel like you have no control because something has been triggered and you have an instant reaction. That's I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, after the fact, when you're consciously able to process, how are you choosing to react? Well, if it is a rejection, do you go into a fetal position and hide out for two weeks, which, hey, there's no like. If that's what you need to do, that's what you need to do. Thor knows.

Speaker 1: 15:29

You know I've told the story enough. When I got my first negative comment, I went into a fetal position for a bit online. Now it's. I could care less, not that I even look for these comments anymore, but when I got that comment at the time, it was it stung and that was a form of rejection, right. Somebody was rejecting the idea that I had put out, that I had, you know, really, you know, tuned into my heart and I let it out and I thought it was oh, this is, you know, this is going to be meaningful to someone. I had great intentions and then I got a troll came and commented something on it and I'm sure he was just, he was just trolling. He was just trolling that day, I'm sure. But it hit. It hit me because I wasn't reframing what it meant, I hadn't practiced exposing myself to that and I hadn't done the work that I've done now on myself. So it hit my self-esteem and then I was affected. After that I didn't want to put anything out for a while because I was scared of the reaction.

Speaker 1: 16:50

And this is one of the most common things I see with self-sabotage, when people are sabotaging their progress forward, is that they are afraid of judgment and this ties into rejection. We there's nothing wrong with feeling the way we feel, but are we going to allow that to hold us back from what we are creating. No, no, we're not. We're not going to do that anymore. We're not going to do that anymore because everything you are desiring the impact, the income, the lifestyle, the relationships, the connections, getting your work into the world.

Speaker 1: 17:43

If you have a book that you want to write, that you want to impact people with, if you have a story you want to share with people, you have a gift you know is going to change the world. You have these things within you that you know you have for a reason. They're not here to just take up space in your mind. You have these desires. You know that you can be doing something more. When I say more, I don't mean just doing more work. I mean bigger, bringing more of your energy into the world.

Speaker 1: 18:28

You know that you're capable of this, but you're not, and there's a fear of being rejected either by one person or by a whole lot of people. So you're fearing a pushback. That fear, which we don't even know is valid or not, because there are some cases where you may get a lot of pushback If you have an idea or you have something that you want to share that is controversial, which is nothing wrong with that. We need people who are able to share those ideas because they challenge us. But if that is a fear, then now is your time to work through that, reframe it. Do the inner work, work on your self-esteem, work on your self-confidence, practice getting those knows. Focus on what you can control, not what other people are doing. And this leader is going to change your life and it's going to change your work and it's going to change the results that you get. It's a natural byproduct when you work on releasing these fears, you start showing up differently. It gets easier to show up.

Speaker 1: 19:55

I'm going to wrap it up. I'm going to call it for now. Thank you so much. If you're still here, you're still joining, you're still listening. I thank you. I'm excited to continue serving you on this podcast and let's stay connected.

Speaker 2: 20:13

Thank you for tuning into the Confident, Connected Leader podcast. Lisa Jeffs is committed to helping you break through barriers and climb to new professional heights. If today's episode inspired you, we'd be honored if you could subscribe, rate and leave a review To stay updated with practical tips and insights, follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. You'll find all relevant links, including those for our complimentary gifts and trainings, in the show notes. Until our next episode, embrace your confidence and stay connected.