How To Make Rejection Hurt Less

Welcome to Shrink for the shy guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome today's episode of the show. Today we have another show that has our co host, master coach, dating coach Amber with us. Hey, Amber.

Hello.

And I'm excited because we're going to get into something that I think is one of the master keys to life, but specifically your social confidence, dating, relationships, even your career, which is rejection. And it's a frequent theme of this show, as well as all my programs and events and everything I do. And one of the I was talking with Amber about potential shows we could do together, and she's like, let's do one on how to make rejection hurt less. Because that's really the name of the game, right? If we can tolerate rejection better, then we can get back up faster. And if it doesn't crush us, then we're more likely to take the risks. And if we do that and we can take the risks, and we can get recover faster and then take more risks. Well, whether it's your dating life or your career or your social life or anything, we all know that we're gonna progress faster and just feel more free and alive too. So I'm excited to dive into this. We're learning three ways and maybe more to make rejection hurt less. And so Amber has used her master skillset to come up with some core ways. And I'm gonna share some of my thoughts about these as well. And I encourage you to take notes if you're listening to this, because this stuff can life changing. So what do you think, Amber? What's. What's one of the core ways we can make rejection hurt less?

I think the first most important thing is understanding that rejection hurts because of the way that you interpret it. And so, for example, if you, Dr. Aziz, were single and you went up to a woman and you said, hey, I think you're really gorgeous. I'd love to take you out sometime. And she turned to you and said, you're so ugly, and I Hate you. Don't ever talk to me again.

Funny story. That's how I met my wife. No, no, no, she didn't say that.

Well, that would be a really interesting story. I'm excited to hear how you turned that around. And if someone said that to you, what would that mean about you? And whatever your answer to that question is, is the reason why rejection hurts or doesn't hurt or hurts less? Because I think it always stings a little and I think that's normal. But I've also coached guys that will be absolutely heartbroken if they approach a girl and she says she has a boyfriend because of all of the things that they're interpreting that means about them, their character and how they're not attractive enough and they're not manly enough and they're never gonna get a girlfriend. And all of these things that are not true.

Well, so that one's really interesting because I have a boyfriend is, you know, it's a pretty benign form of rejection. It's not the example you gave someone saying, you're ugly, get away from me. And yet even in that, the friendly, relatively friendly rejection, we can then load in a ton of meaning, which in these examples was, I'm not attractive. There's something, you know, I'm never going to get this. I'm never going to get a girlfriend. And so I guess the question is, if we knew that we were attractive, if we knew that, if we didn't have any doubt there, if we have full confidence in ourselves, do you think the rejection would still sting?

I think it definitely stings less. I think rejection is always kind of uncomfortable and someone doesn't like me, and that's never nice. Nobody likes to be rejected. But I definitely think you don't have to suffer when you're rejected. And I think it's important to remember that everyone brings their own experiences to every interaction. So if you think about everything that creates a human being, their parents, their environment, where they grew up, the media, their experiences, their schooling, their friends who they were introduced to, there's so many factors in the way that they think and the way that they perceive you. And that's why you'll never have two of the same interactions with anybody. And so I think the mistake is making it really personal and thinking that somebody that you just met for a few short seconds has the ability to perceive you in a correct and rational way.

Sure. And what I found is that most people are walking around with such a high level of self judgment, forgetting about dating for a second and just Looking at life, you know, whether it's, I didn't speak up well there, my shirt doesn't fit right, my nose doesn't look right, I got too much fat here, I said the wrong thing there. I'm never going to be able to create that. I'm going to mess that thing up because I'm not smart enough. I don't want to look dumb. I don't want to sound dumb in this situation. That was stupid. Like, just if you look at our internal monologue and that commentary about ourselves, I don't know if you'd find anyone where there's not a decent amount of self criticism throughout the day unless they've done a lot of work on this. And so then the rejection just becomes a place where we open up the floodgate and unleash all that self judgment that has nothing, as you're saying, it has nothing to do with. That person is speaking from their own experience, their own history, and yet we don't care. We're like, ah, here's an opportunity. Pour out all this self judgment on myself.

Yeah. And I think another mistake people make is taking that experience to the next one. So they take the rejection from one girl or man to the next girl that they're going to talk to and they already assume they know how it's going to go. Or they assume they take that experience with them and it makes them more insecure. But each person that you speak to is a fresh slate and a completely new interaction. And what happened with someone else has nothing to do with what's going to happen with the next person.

Yeah, that one's key. I think we take it from one to the next as a protective strategy. It's like, wow, that one hurt. Now I'm gonna kind of be a little more guarded with the next one.

Yeah.

Oh, see? Yeah. You rejected me too. I knew it. Knew that was gonna happen. And we get a little bit of protection, a little bit of safety, a little bit of certainty, but we don't ultimately get what we want, which is connection. Whether this is a dating thing that you're worried about getting rejected for or. Or social, personal, or even professional thing. Yeah. So what you're encouraging, which I think is so important, is to really let go. Like right now, as you're listening, everyone, there's something in your life that maybe you got a rejection around and you're thinking about doing this again, whether it's for your love life or maybe you're in sales and it's your next sales conversation or whatever. Just letting the next thing be totally unknown. It's a total mystery. I don't know what's gonna happen next. And just seeing because, you know, if you don't bring it with you, magical things can happen relatively quickly.

Mm.

Awesome. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break right now, and we get back, we're gonna talk about more ways to make rejection hurt less so you can get out there and crush it in life. We'll be right back right after this.

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Hey. Welcome back. Okay, Amber, what else? How can we make rejection hurt less? That woman just told me that I was ugly and she wanted nothing to do with me. I'm crushed. What do I do? How do I make this not hurt?

Well, one thing that I would tell you is that rejection happens to everyone at every level. It's not just. I think people think that rejection is a signal that they are ugly or not smart enough or not attractive enough or not masculine enough or whatever enough insert into the blank. And rejection isn't reserved for ugly people or poor people or nerdy people or deficient people. Rejection happens to everybody all the time. Even the most beautiful celebrities get cheated on, get broken up with, get rejected from movies, get rejected from jobs. The coolest person you know gets rejected. If anyone is ever trying anything in their life, they are going to get rejected at some times. And so it's not a signal of how worthy or how great you are. It's just the natural. It's a natural part of growing and evolving and trying things that challenge you.

Yeah, I think that's. That's really key. I love that point. And we tend to think that, right? It's like, oh, it's because I'm deficient in some way. In any of those ways that you listed or any other thousand things we could evaluate ourselves on. I'm deficient. And if I were not deficient, it's kind of like the unconscious or subconscious thought behind the I suck feeling is if I were blank, if I were as Good looking as that celebrity, or if I were as muscular as my friend over there, or if I was rich as so and so and had a nicer whatever outfit on, or if I was as confident as that guy over there and smooth talking as him over there, then I wouldn't have gotten rejected. And it can be so convincing, that story, and yet it's not true. No matter how confident and muscular and rich and whatever you are, you're going to get rejected at multiple places in your life by multiple people all along the pathway. So that's a great point.

And also it happens both internally and externally. So even if you're avoiding it, you're still going to face rejection because you'll reject yourself. And it's just, I feel like in the external world it's just a natural process of finding what's not right for you or what's not working. And it's uncomfortable and it stings, but it ultimately leads us in the right direction. At least that's what I like to think.

Absolutely. I mean, I think that a key piece of this and what this episode, hopefully this listening to this is opening up, if you're listening to this, is to be able to, you know, move towards and tolerate rejection better. Because that's really what we want. Because that's another way to make it sting less or hurt less is to experience a lot of it, to have exposure to it, Just straight up exposure. And we do this a lot at the live events and other things. Just have people go out and purposely get rejected five times, seven times. And it might sound so simple or oh yeah, I can in my head think about that. But actually viscerally doing it and feeling that shift in your experience of. Oh, and actually what almost always happens to the events is people find it funny after a couple, the first one they're like, ah. And after a couple it's almost like they're swapping stories of like ridiculous stuff, you know, ranging up to going up to someone who's carrying like a fancy bag from a designer store, you know, just walking up to them saying, hey, what's in your bag? Versus being like, why? You know, and then just going from there. And you know, people get lots of rejections doing that kind of stuff. But yeah, and it just lessens that. It takes kind of some of these keys that you're sharing. Amber and I found it takes them from intellectual and makes them emotional.

Yeah, Actually, funny story. My best friend in high school, first of all, when I met her in the first week, I thought she was so weird. And I didn't want to hang out with her, and I'd avoid her, and I just thought she was weird, and I didn't like her. And she ended up being one of the most special people in my life, and it just took a little getting used to her. And actually, in high school, one of the things we'd do after school is we'd go into the city. I was living in Switzerland at the time. And we'd go get rejected. And at the time, it wasn't for improving our social confidence or anything. We just thought it was really funny.

Like, what kinds of things would you do?

I remember we would go to the main station and, like, if there were a group of people standing in a circle, we would just join that circle and stand there and stare at everybody and see how long it takes them to mention, like, notice our presence and tell us to leave. Or we just prank people or, like, invite ourselves to other people's things. We'd be like, oh, hey, what are you up to? They're like, oh, I'm just going shopping and be like, okay, great, let's go. So just, like, weird things. We definitely toned it down as we got older, but I definitely feel like those experiments made me more rejection proof.

Yeah, absolutely. And isn't it fascinating? That's funny, because I had similar things that I would do in high school at sort of the peak of my social anxiety. Or maybe it got even more intense when I went to college. But, you know, in spite of that, in spite being afraid to talk to the women in my class and never really dating anyone, never really asking one out, I would still get together with a buddy and we would go do crazy shit like that.

Yeah.

And it was. And I didn't know it at the time, and I didn't really kind of use that. I didn't, like, say, oh, I'm gonna systematically keep doing this, that I can go do the things that I really want. It was just. Yeah, it was funny. It was. And I think it's like the. The deep cry for liberation that's in all of us that's, like, wanting to emerge. And it's like, I see through some of these things that I'm. That I'm held back by. I remember one time we. We got. His parents had some instruments in the garage that we found, and there was a trumpet in there and a tambourine and something else. And we're like, let's go down to, like. There was the Monterey in California area where there's, like, the wharf and all kinds of tourists from all over the world come there. Monterey Bay Aquarium is there, too. So we went down to this, like, little plaza area with the Trump. I had the trumpet, and my friend Chris had tambourine. Someone else had something else. And we're like, let's. Like, we set up a little stand and a bucket to get donations. And then we just started playing, like, the most terrible cacophonous. Like, I couldn't even play the trumpet. It was just like. And we were all off rhythm, and occasionally we'd sing really loudly off key. And it was hilarious. It was awesome. Just got a bunch of dirty looks.

That is so funny. Did you guys get any money?

No, we didn't get any money. We didn't even do it that long. We did it for, like, maybe five minutes, and we were just like, wow, this is intense. And it was, like, so hard to even try to play the trumpet that we just. We just gave up. It's awesome. Yeah.

These are all great ideas for audience to try.

Absolutely. And the key here is just your own creativity, what you want to experiment with. I mean, and this kind of stuff is, you know, we do it at the live events, and it's like, it makes it easier there because we're all in a group, and you have a lot of sort of inserting of really inspiring messages like this. And it doesn't have to happen there. Like, you can do this. If you can find a way to get a friend or something and go out and practice anything like this, it's gonna radically improve. And, you know, let's get one more in as we get closer to the end of the show here. What's one more way that we can make rejection hurt less?

Amber, be willing to. To feel rejected. Because as I mentioned before, anything that you do that requires growth on your end is going to involve some sort of rejection. And so if you really want the things that you desire most in your life, you're going to have to feel some rejection. And giving yourself permission to feel it and not avoiding it anymore is really liberating, I think. Sure.

Yeah. So really just the necessity of it, it's really a requirement to get to where you want to go. So a willingness to. Being able to face it.

And at the end of the day, like you said in your book, the Art of Extraordinary Confidence, we're just afraid of emotions, of feeling something bad.

Yeah.

And even better if you can do what we did, which is find some humor in it and enjoy it.

Yeah. And I think sharing that can sometimes be Helpful because we keep it to ourselves, it can just be this terrible, shameful thing. But if you can share it with someone and you know, this is something that I, I've had periods of this, I haven't been able to sustain it yet, but I believe it's possible. I love aspirational goals and things that I don't even know if they're possible, but I just want to see if they are. And, and because I've seen how the pain of rejection comes from that internal judgment and if we're okay with ourselves, then when someone judges us and rejects us, it doesn't have to hurt. I still hold that it's possible. If we can make self compassion and deep self love unconditional and like have worked on that skill for years, I believe it's possible to have rejection hurt less and less and less and less to where the vast majority of rejections would have no lasting emotional effect. And that's one of my goals, is to just see, well, how far can we take this? And you know, it's not some extreme feat of strength or something, it's just, well, all really it comes down to is like, how do I get on my own side? How do I stop rejecting myself after someone rejects me? How do I change some of these internal criticisms and treat myself with a lot more love and respect? And speaking of that. Oh, go ahead, share your thought there.

Yeah, I was just gonna say that I actually recently was in that place of I made a mistake and I was beating myself up over it and I was so angry with myself and definitely not being compassionate with myself and I was so embarrassed that I made this mistake and I told my boyfriend about it and I was crying and I didn't want to share it with him because now more people have to know what I did. And I told him about it and he kind of helped me through it and helped me find a solution. And at the end I was like, thanks for not like telling me I told you so or making me feel worse about it or being mad at me. And he was like, well, what would that help? And I was like, yeah, what would that help? Because that's what I've been doing for 24 hours. And I was just like feeling self pity. And as soon as I could talk to him and he was being compassionate, I could actually focus on the solution and move forward. And I think we think that beating ourselves up is improving ourselves somehow, but it's not, it's just preventing us from moving forward.

Absolutely. Yeah. It never does. And if you look at that. I mean he loves you so he doesn't treat you, he doesn't be like I told you so. And yet that's what we do with ourselves. So that's a powerful reminder and something that we can put into action. Time for action. Action. Action. So today's action step is, well, is a two parter. The first thing is to find a way to get rejected. You know, there's a lot of playful ways we talked about in this, this episode. I mean this, it's not, doesn't take much. If you just really willing to look for it, there might be an opportunity in your life naturally, you know, if you're want to approach someone, if you're single or you know, ask for something, that's kind of a big ask in your personal life or your work life or maybe you were involved in some sort of work with potential clients and sales, in which case rejections are going to happen. Or if you want to be able to make it happen right away, go do something, go ask someone for something, a question or go get yourself a trumpet and play in a middle of a street corner or go ask someone for $100. That will give you an instant rejection. And the key though, no matter what you do, no matter what you pick one, is to get rejected. But the part two, and this is the most important part, is see if after it happens, you can really slow everything down and if you can get to a place where you can just not have any distractions or TV or radio or anything and just close your eyes and notice, like listen to what's happening inside of you. And the key is how am I rejecting myself? Notice your pattern of self rejection after you get an external rejection. And that's the thing that you want to learn to release, let go of forgive, develop love for compassion, whatever it takes, figuring it out. And there's tons of episodes about this in this podcast, the Confidence Code. The whole first half of that program is about optimal self coaching that teaches you some strategies on how to do this. This is a theme in all my books. I mean there's lots of resources out there. So the key is not the how to, it's the desire to the commitment to. So the second part of the action step is to, is to be on your own side, find, study your pattern of self rejection and see what you can do to shift that and let that go. And that brings us to the end of our show today. Thank you so much for joining us, Amber and sharing these great gems.

Thanks so much. It was really fun.

Absolutely. And until the next one, and until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free vlogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.

Sam.