How To Stop Fearing Rejection with Scott Allan

Coming to you from the center for social confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to shrink for the shy guy helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. I'm excited to be with you today because if you're listening to this, then you are bold. I know that you're bold because the title of the episode is how to desensitize your fear of rejection. With my guest expert, Scott Allen, who we're gonna dive into that interview in just a minute. And if you're listening to a show called how to desensitize your fear of rejection, you're already facing rejection in a way that is more than most people. And you might be listening to this and thinking like, oh, this is for me because I'm shy or anxious or not as confident. There's something different and bad about me, which we'll also get into in the interview. But the truth is, the vast majority of people live a life of habitually avoiding rejection because the vast majority of people, AKA all of us on some level, are afraid of rejection, afraid of the unknown, afraid of taking a risk and getting a no or getting a no, thank you or getting a get the hell out of here or whatever we're saying. Specifically worrying about what's going to happen. Every human shares that. Even the most confident people, the people that appear extremely confident and as if they have no fear of rejection, guess what their secret is? They weren't born that way. They don't have just naturally, God granted, high self esteem. The truth is they faced that specific scenario dozens or even hundreds of times. That is how they gained that confidence in that area. That is how they became less scared of rejection in that area is through massive exposure, massive desensitization. So that's what you're gonna learn more about in this interview. How do you do that? How do we all do that? You know, you're gonna learn about how we deal with fear, about the rejection, why we're so scared in the first place. Why does rejection hurt? And he shares some great stories from his own life about how fear is a natural part of the process and how to use fear to guide you. So this is gonna be the first half of the interview today. In next week's episodes, we're diving into the second half of the interview, which is all about how to do stuff even though you're scared. But first, we're looking at rejection and really sink our teeth into that. And we're dive in just a second. So When I recorded this, his audio is great. Mine, unfortunately I had the wrong setting, so it was recording off of the mic on my computer instead of this fancy mic that you're listening to me on right now. So my audio is pretty good, but as awesome and so you're just gonna have to suffer through that. But I'm excited to share this with you. I'm also pumped because in doing this interview, my energy just kept going up and up and up. My mind started cataloging things that I was gonna do in my life and I just felt even more inspired, liberated and empowered and I trust that it's gonna do the same for you. So without further ado, let's dive into my interview with Scott Allen Exper. My guest expert today is Scott Allen. And Scott is an author who focuses on enhancing your life through changing old routines and overcoming self defeating behaviors. But one of his specific areas of focus and what drew him to me and my attention on him was he helps people deal with rejection and he believes in taking a series of small actions consistently, day by day in order to be empowered and create the life that you want. But he knows that involves rejection and he's written books such as the Rejection Reset, his new upcoming book, Do It Scared and basically how to do what We Want Even Though We're Scared and really how to deeply overcome this fear of rejection so it doesn't hold us back in our lives. And I think we're gonna learn a ton from him today. So thank you so much for joining me today, Scott.

Oh, thank you.

I want to dive in about rejection, but I think I have to start with why have you written numerous books on rejection specifically?

Well, that's a good question. Yeah, I've been writing for quite a while and when I started writing I was focusing on writing a lot of material on personal development, goal building, that kind of thing. But I felt like the topics that I was writing about weren't, weren't specific enough. And even though I was kind of passionate about what I was writing about, it wasn't something that, you know, it wasn't like the thing, you know. And somebody said to me, like I was telling a friend of mine, they said, you know, I said, like, you know, I'm doing all this writing but I'm not feeling really, you know, I'm not feeling it, you know. And they said, well, what's, you know, you should write about what you know about, you know, and like, what do you, what do you know a lot about? And I thought, well, I don't know And I thought, I thought a lot about it and I realized, like, overcoming fear and dealing with rejection, I guess a lot from my own, in my own personal life. It's one of the obstacles that's always held me back from a lot of things from ask. You know, for example, one of the things is, you know, asking for what I want. You know, a lot of people hold themselves back from asking for what they want because they think they're going to get a no and they don't want to hear that. So that was a big obstacle for me. So the more I looked into it, I realized like, hey, this is something that I actually know a lot about from personal experience. And the more people I talked to about it, it seemed like it was a common fear, common obstacle for a lot of other people. So I thought, okay, I can write about this, I can talk about it. And it's a pain point for a lot of people. So there's the possibility that it's going to help a lot of people out. And so that's what I did. So I went and I, you know, did a lot of research, I guess, and I realized, like, actually look, after looking into it, I realized that they're actually. Yeah, I found a lot of blog posts and stuff like that, and people were, you know, talking about the ways that they can get over rejection, but there actually wasn't lot of material on it. So I thought this could be an opportunity to expand on it, you know, and, and you know, I tell people like, I'm not a psychologist or anything, I don't have a degree in psychology or anything like that, but I do, you know, I do some research and then just, I draw from my own experiences and I put it into my writing.

So that is great. And I'm glad that you, you do that and you share these things because there's a lot of really good stuff in your material, in the books that you write. So the place that I want to start with is pretty much everyone universally can agree that rejection is not what they initially desire. It's uncomfortable. Maybe people are totally avoiding it. Or some people are like, okay, I gotta gotta face it. You know, we grit our teeth and we kind of try to push through it. So we'll talk more about, about that. But first I want to ask you, why do you think it's hurt so much for most of us?

Yeah, that's a big question. It's a good one, though. I think first of all, for many people, like, at their very core, a lot of people feel this Deep, I don't know, sense of defectiveness. They feel somehow there's something wrong with them. I mean, I did for a long time and I still experience that sometimes where I feel like this, like I'm defective somehow. Like, you know, if I try to go after this thing, they're going to reject me anyway, so what's the point, right? And that belief was so deep seated that I was setting myself up for rejection before I even took action, right? So I was in, basically I was defeating myself. You know, it's a sense of, I think I talked about this was a sense of like a self rejection, right? And you know, that, that, that can hold you back for, for decades actually. You know, and when I recognized that I was actually doing that and I talked to other people who said, yeah, you know, that's actually, now that you mentioned it, like that's the reason why, you know, I don't take action. Because it's not so much that the other side is saying no or opposing you. And maybe they are, but it starts with yourself, right? You know, it's like, you know, let's just say like, I don't know, going back in time, you know, I want to ask somebody out, right? Well, before I do, as soon as I decide that I want to do that, next thing you know, my mind starts working and it starts to go through all the reasons why they wouldn't go out with me, right? You know, it's like, okay, well, first of all, let's see, I don't have fancy clothes, I don't have this and that and that. And I started going through this checklist, like this mental checklist of all my defects, you know, and once those are all added up, well then it's, it's basically like, okay, well, I'm not doing this, you know, because if I do, she's just going to say, nope, sorry, you're not my type, you know, kind of thing. Another example would be going after like say a job that I really want. You know, there are lots of jobs that I think I wanted in my life, but I opted to take the jobs that I knew I could get because there is less chance of getting rejected. So if I take this other job that I don't really want, pays less money, I'm not going to have to face that shame of getting that rejection letter in the mail or maybe the manager of the company telling me, oh, sorry, but you just don't have the skills that we need, so take a hike kind of thing. So I think a lot of People, you know, they try to avoid the rejection by first, you know, they reject themselves and then they follow up with it. You know, they'll run through a list of excuses and justify the reasons why they didn't go after what they wanted. So if you recognize that, then you can turn that around.

So yeah, we're going to pause right here, take a quick break and then resume with that interview with guest expert Scott Allen. Do you want to rapidly change the way you see yourself? Do you want more confidence and better results in your life? If so, then you need to learn about cognitive rescripting. It's one of the most powerful tools that Dr. Aziz teaches. He is so adamant about everyone learning this life transforming tool that he is actually giving it away for free for a limited time. Go to www.confidenceunleashednow.com to claim your free copy of Dr. Z's new eBook and audio training program called Rewrite youe Story. Three steps to triple your confidence. So there's this kind of propaganda campaign almost inside that's like, don't do it. Don't go ask that person out. Don't apply for that more desirable job. Here's the all the reasons why you shouldn't do it. And that's pushing us not to. And then there's also this fear in there that we're somehow, or feeling that we're somehow defective or something wrong with us. And is the idea that if we were to go for it and the manager were to say not up to snuff or that person was like, no, no, you're not my type. That, that somehow you mentioned the word shame in there too. We would feel this welling up of I'm not worthy, I'm defective. Shame, badness.

Exactly. Yeah. And you know, I think that level of pain is different for everybody. And a lot of it can be traced back to, is traced back to, you know, your childhood. If you had a lot of, you have a lot of issues and you know, most people do, regarding childhood, maybe it could have been bullying, it could have been critical parents. Anything like that is going to trigger your rejection later on in life. So a lot of these feelings that we have, like, I'm not worthy, I'm defective. A lot of it can be traced back to when we were growing up. We experienced these things and in order to cope with it, to adapt to it, we set ourselves up kind of like a defensive barrier where it's like, okay, you know, I know that I'm different. You know, first of all, you feel different than everybody Else, right. You feel different from everyone, and because of that, you've got this wall where it's like you feel like you're constantly on guard, you know, you're protecting yourself. So if you ever do come across somebody who's, you know, like, later on in, you know, in our earlier years, you're being criticized or, you know, you get rejected for something, a lot of people get defensive, right? And that's just. That's. That's just one of the ways that we deal with it, you know. But as I talk about in one of my books, like, the way to, you know, one of the ways that to get beyond it is, first of all, to recognize that it's happening because it's so, you know, it's so deeply ingrained that, you know, we're just constantly reacting to the world as it's, you know, it's coming at us, telling us, no, no, no, no, no. And, you know, we're just thinking, okay, well, everybody's telling me no. I guess it's no. You know, okay, that's it. Then I'm going to go back to doing what I was doing, which was nothing. But when you turn around and say, yes, I'm going to go after this, and, okay, you can keep saying no, but I'm going to keep coming for it, you know, and then you keep finding. You keep going until you find that. Yes. Right. So that's kind of like the attitude that, you know, I'm trying to implement, I'm trying to teach is that. And part of that has to do with. I think I talked about it in Rejection Free is, you know, like, desensitizing yourself to it. And. Yeah, and actually, you know, really good book that I read was by Jia Jiang, and he wrote a book called Rejection Proof, and he did something really interesting. He went out and he. I think he shot like, 60 plus videos of himself trying to get rejected on purpose, you know, like trying to put himself out there and just, you know, he'd go out on the street and he would approach people, you know, like women, for example, he would approach them and say, hey, would you like to go with me tomorrow night? And they'd be like, no, and say. And he keep doing this, like, all day, you know, until it didn't hurt anymore. You know, it's like, oh, okay. She said, no. Well, let's try the next person. You know, he'd go to a restaurant and he'd ask the waitress to dance with him. You know, so just like things that most people normally wouldn't do. And he was doing it to, you know, induce rejection so that it would desensitize his pain a bit. So that was really an interesting idea.

Yeah, let's talk more about that. About desensitizing ourselves to rejection and. Or the pain of rejection. So what you're describing, there is just frequent ongoing exposure to it, seeking out opportunities to get rejected.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And yeah, it's really, you know, it's certainly. It's an interesting way to look at it because like I said, I think our instinct is to avoid it. Right. So when you avoid something, you look for ways to stay clear of it, but you don't actually grow. Right. You don't develop, you don't overcome this obstacle. It's always there. And because it's always there, you're always trying to maneuver around it or you're hiding behind it. Right. So that's why people will stay stuck in relationships they don't want to be in. They're stuck in jobs they don't want to be in. I don't know, they could be living in the same crummy apartment for 20 years. I don't know. It could be anything. Right. But because they've never actually. They've decided that, you know, they're not going to take action. And because they can't, they don't do that. They're not going to desensitize their fear. And the thing is, is that, you know, we talk about desensitizing fear, but it's always. You're always going to be afraid of something. Right. And that's good because every time you try something new, you take some action. Something that you have not tried before. Yeah, it's maybe as terrifying in the beginning, but the more you do it, the more used to it you get. And that can go. So once you've achieved that thing, then you can go for something else that's higher up on the plateau. Right. So it could be. Yeah. I mean, an example would be like, I went back to Canada last year with my daughter and we went. I think it was at line zipping one day. And I'm afraid of heights, you know, I'm really afraid of heights. And we went up on these, like. Basically it's like these lines between the tree. I don't know if you ever tried it, but it's like these lines between the trees, these zip lines, and you have to go zipping across. And we started out on the junior course, and as the course progressed, it got a bit higher and we Got to this one area where it was actually like. I think it was like a 20 meter valley. 20 or 30 meters is really high anyway. And basically how it works is you get to the point in the course where you can't actually get down. You can't get down. The only way to do it is to a call for help if you get stuck in that case, the staff will come, they'll rescue you from the tree. It's very embarrassing. And if you do it, I think if you do it three times in a row, they'll give you an orange hat that basically says, I'm a chicken. And I couldn't complete the course and we'd already done it twice because my daughter got stuck and we had to call for help. If we did it a third time, I would have had to wear the orange hat. So there I am stuck on a tree. She was actually on the ground watching. She wasn't doing this one. And I was showing her how it's done because I'm Daddy and I'm going to show you how this thing is.

Step aside.

Exactly. Yeah. So there I am on this. And I didn't realize that at the end of this route, I couldn't see the end of it because it started way back in. I didn't realize at the end of it was this big drop and I'm like, wow. And next thing you know, there's all these people watching because I'm up in the tree just kind of holding things up. And I had two choices. I'm going to call for help or I'm going to jump. Right. And I didn't want to do either. And that goes back to like, you know, a lot of things in life where like, you know, we just kind of stay stuck because we can't decide or can't take action. So I just thought, okay, that's it, I'm jumping. And I did. And I was terrified. But as I'm zipping along this thing, I think probably from the tree to the other side of the valley, it was like a good 40 meters and I was moving fast, you know, feeling the fear all the way. But by the time before I got to the end of it, like, I felt like my confidence level had gone from zero right up to, you know, it had just skyrocketed. You know, I got to the other side, jumped off, and I was like, oh, that wasn't so hard, was it? You know, And I felt like if I had to do it again, I could have easily done it again without. Without as Much fear. Right. And that's kind of like just an example of how I desensitized myself to getting over that, that hurdle. You know, I'm still afraid of heights. And I think that if I had gone to the next plateau, there was other higher places. They're like, like 50, 60 meter drops. I would have been more afraid. I would have had more fear because I hadn't gone to that level yet. That's what I look at. Tackling rejection, or any fear for that matter, is if there's something that you want to do, go and do it. The worst case scenario is you're going to get a no. And what we call rejection is it's really a deep seated form of fear where we don't want to relive that feeling of defectiveness or I'm not worthy. Like all those feelings we had growing up where maybe, like I said, you were criticized or put down, maybe whatever it is that happened, every time we get rejected later on, we're reliving that pain, which is what we want to try to avoid. And that's how, I guess that's how people end up getting stuck and not doing it. Scared.

So we're gonna pause for just one more moment and then return to the rest of the interview with guest expert Scott Allen. Does working with Dr. Aziz actually work? Can you really break free from social anxiety and live a life of confidence, success and happiness? Here is what one client had to say about his experience.

If someone is thinking to come to a Weekend intensive with Dr. Aziz, I would say go do it. Go do it. I know he's in Portland. You're probably somewhere in the east coast or Hawaii, who knows? But I'm telling you, it is worth it. Personally, for myself, I was really skeptical about coming here. You know, flew from Los Angeles, investing all my time, money. I don't know if it's going to work. There's parties back on waiting for me, you know, friends wanting to hang out with me this weekend. But now that I'm here, now that I'm almost done with this weekend intensive training, I said, well, you know, I'm not this Sunday now and I'm not the same person as I was when I was Friday. I have like this whole settlementality. I just feel like I am unstoppable. I can do anything. The world's mine. It's really, it's awesome.

To get started on your journey towards lifelong confidence with Dr. Aziza, simply go to social confidence center.com coaching yes. And what's coming through loud and clear in that story, which I love, by the way. And what you teach is that we have a choice, and the choice is to not take action to avoid which there's all kinds of consequences in. You know, you mentioned being stuck in the same apartment or the same job or not having a relationship or whatever it is, because that's what we limit ourselves to. And that the pull or the draw is to move towards what we want. And in order to do that, we have to be willing to face this fear, to step by step, do it again and again. So the question I'm curious about is what have you found in your own experience and writing and working with people and coaching? Is it for each person different? Because I know a question that many people have and I have had too. When we're working on something that's sort of our big thing, our volcano, there's a thought of like, geez, well, how many times do I have to approach or how many times do I have to practice this before this fear starts to go away or maybe even be totally gone?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'll give an example. Yeah, you're right. Everybody has. We're all afraid of different things, right? And one of my biggest fears has always been public speaking. For me, for many years, I avoided public speaking at any cost. And that includes interviews. That's why I love writing and putting my stuff out there. But when people would ask me for an interview or hey, can you do. Can you give some lecture on this? I'd be like, well, no, actually, I'm busy on that day, sorry. You know, I was still trying to avoid. Even though I was writing about this stuff, I found like there were things that I was still trying to avoid doing because I felt like, you know, who am I to. Who am I to talk about this? Who am I to, you know, who's going to come and listen to me kind of thing, right? And in talking with a lot of other people, they experienced a lot of different things. So like, one person, for example, that I was talking with just later last year, he went to a presentation or he went to a seminar where he was just supposed to be listening to some presentations and one of the presenters couldn't show up. Now, the presenter was going to be giving a lecture on something that he actually, he knew a lot about and everybody there knew it. Right? So he was kidding. No. And yeah, suddenly this presenter, I don't remember what happened, but he couldn't show up and he was asked to give a presentation. They had all the slides and everything, because everything was set up beforehand. He's like, look, you know, can you give the presentation? You know, the presenter can't show, it's in 10 minutes. What do you say? What do you do? Right? So you're being put into a position where you almost can't say no. It's like when I hit the jump, it's like basically you have two options. You either jump or you don't. And if you don't, there's going to be consequences, right? People are going to look down on you, which we don't want that, we've had enough of that already. Or you're going to feel that deep sense of failure and it's just going to, it's going to validate your fears of rejection even more. So anyway, he did it and he was telling me he got up and he was just sweating, his voice was cracking. And I can relate to this because I've been in a similar situation where I was just like, please don't ask me, please don't ask me, please don't ask me. And anyway, he got up and he did it and he said, like, yeah, the first five minutes was terrifying. And then he just. Something just took over where he just got over the fear. He told himself, this is silly. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get through this thing. And he did. And when he did it, he said, he said he was almost cured of that fear. Like, he thought, like, if I got through this, nobody left the room. I think he gave a, you know, he went on for 20 minutes, he made a few mistakes, but he quickly recovered. And at the end of it, he felt like, you know, a different person.

So in that case, that was just a one time thing for him.

That was a one time thing. He'd done presentations before, but he had time to prepare for it. And that's the thing. Sometimes, like, you know, we try to prepare for something, we're like, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. And you can actually get yourself to a point where you're so prepared that you're actually afraid of making a mistake because you want it to go perfect, right? And he said, like, actually it would have been worse if he'd had time to prepare for it because he'd given many presentations before. But he said he was always afraid. Even, you know, after it was done, he was like, well, thank God that's over, you know, so this was just one of those cases where he had no choice there's no prep. He just got up there and he just started speaking, really off the cuff. You know, he said he even barely. He barely looked at the slides. He was just speaking to the audience. So I really like that story because I think that's kind of, you know, it's inspiring. Right.

That brings us to the end of the episode almost. We're going to stop the interview for now and we're going to resume in next episode. We're going to cover the rest of the interview because he dives into more about how to do the things that scare us. And specifically doing the things that you want, going after what you want, really creating a vision for your ideal future and then being able to go do it and do it, even though there's fear and have this courage and consistent action that's gonna transform your life. So you definitely wanna stay tuned for that. Before then, though, we can't leave without putting all these great ideas into some sort of action.

Time for action.

Guess what your action step is for today. Oh, yes. Get rejected. That's right. So find a way this week to get rejected at least once, and it'll be different for everyone. He gave some examples. You can find stuff on the Internet about how to do it. You know, rejection therapy is what some people call it. You can look up Jia Jiang and see with some of his videos. And in case you're wondering how to spell it, I think it's Jia, J, A, N, G. I'm not sure exactly, but if you Google that, it will know what you're talking about. Or maybe that plus rejection. And you'll find some of the. Find out some of the things he does and just copy them. You don't have to reinvent the wheel here. I'm sure there's 1001 creative ways to get rejected, but just pick one of the standard ones and go do it. I call this rejection practice. And this is one of the things I teach in a lot of my programs, particularly Confidence Unleashed and at the live weekends, as well as in the dating program, actually dating at 30 days to dating Mastery. But it's rejection practice. It's going out specifically with the intention to get rejected on purpose, not in some weird, socially aggressive way where you're like, hey, you know, fuck you, man. But to just do something kind of benign, a little silly, a little out of the ordinary. Ask someone a question. Ask someone out on a date. Ask someone for something like, can you give me $100? See what they say. That's a little. That's one potential right there. But find one thing, and maybe there's more specific things in your work life, in your dating life, in your social life, in your relationships and your friendships that you could do whatever it is. Get rejected. Get rejected before you listen to the rest of this interview next week. Because if you don't, it's all just theoretical. You will not progress. You will not transform your life. You will not overcome social anxiety. You will not build extraordinary confidence just from sitting back and intellectually thinking this stuff sounds good, and maybe temporarily feeling excited or inspired, you must turn it into action. You must get rejected. So go do that this week and we'll speak again next week. Until we do, 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. Azeez. 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 blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.