Rejection Has No Power Over You

When lists are compiled of the greatest fears that people have, the fear of public speaking is usually at the top of the list, with the fear of dying further down the list.  While that may be a surprising fact, another fear that is usually near the top of the list is the fear of rejection.  This fear is so prevalent that people will go out of their way to avoid it. 

One of the most lucrative careers is sales, but fear of rejection prevents many people from even considering it because of the discomfort they would feel having people tell them “no.”  The question is, however, does rejection really exist, or is it a creation of our minds and the way we interpret a situation?

If you are approached in a store by an employee and they offer to sell you something that you are not interested in, you would probably tell them that.  That usually ends the interaction.  You are not personally attacking the person, nor are you rejecting them, you are merely uninterested in the product or service they offered.  That is all!  The salesperson should not feel that they have lost anything either; they never had the sale, so when they asked you, they have lost nothing.  If you said yes, then they gain a sale, but a “no” is not a loss. 

These are two important points to consider when we feel rejected.  When someone says no, it is rarely personal.  They are merely saying that they do not want whatever you are offering, whether it is a product, service, help or your attention.  There is nothing more to it.  If we keep that in mind, most of our fear of rejection will be gone.

The second point is that you cannot be rejected from something you did not have.  If you ask for something and the answer is no, you never had that thing anyway, so you can only gain from a yes, there is nothing to lose.

If we think about rejection with those two points in mind, we should have no fear of it at all because it really does not exist and has no power over you.