How (not) to Combat Fear of Rejection

Does your heart beat faster when you're about to make a sales call, submit your work, go on your first date, make an entrance, publish a post, or deliver a speech...? If so you're experiencing the popular Fear of Rejection.

Normally, one would use one of these two strategies (or both) to overcome the fear, and while it might look like it works in the short term, it's a disaster for your future.

1st Strategy: Diminishing your target audience value "Who gives a da*n what they think" "Who are they" "No one's important enough to affect my inner value" "imagine them in their underwear". This strategy is very popular and offers a sense of protection simply since you made the subject of your fear so small that they can't hurt you anymore...

2nd Strategy: Increasing your offering value "It's their loss" "I am stronger than that" "I am amazing in other aspects"... You will lose sleep trying to make your work even more perfect (Although you know that it is good enough as is!) and spend your days in front of the mirror to increase perfection. This strategy too, offers a protection by elevating you above the fear and the pain. 

There's a reason why those are popular, they both work! Yet, both ways will keep you in the cycle of fear (Until you become so important or until you make so much money that no one threatens you) because at the end of the day we're all human, all equal, and we're all motivated by compliments and disturbed by criticism. That's reality, and while you're building a protection wall of dinstance, expect nature to constantly draw you back to earth, with every daily communication you're having, eg. in order to enjoy a compliment, you have to 'dress them up' and appreciate those people, which makes you vulnerable again, and the next day when you're on a sale? You've got to diminish them again.. and again.. and again.

I suggest that the best way to combat your fear is exactly the opposite. CONNECT, connect to your prospect, view your audience as human beings like yourself, with their own world, needs and feelings. The whole concept of needing protection from rejection is wrong. He or she is human exactly like you are, and if they don't like you or what you're selling, NOTHING HAPPENED! You DO like them, and what they sell! It's a shame it didn't work out and you're now free to go find someone that clicks with you or your product.

Rejection is bitter, but not unbearable. It's sometimes even personal! We err, and we move on. You're not what one makes of you even if you truly love and appreciate them, and to internalize that - you do not have to feel huge and make them small.