Laugh At Rejection!

What's that? You don't like me. But seriously, you don't like me. What's wrong with you? No, okay, laugh at rejection. This is a simple, powerful technique that you can use to help you get over your fear of rejection so you can put yourself out there more. I mean, we know this is a fundamental thing to go from restricted, self conscious social anxiety to being more confident, free, expressive. The biggest obstacle is the fear of what other people are going to think. That fear of rejection. What if they don't like me? What if they think I'm stupid? What if they don't think I'm attractive? What if they're bothered by me? Whatever it is? And there's a million different ways we can approach that, but one simple way is to change your experience of the rejection. Because at the end of the day, a rejection is just data, it's information. Do you want to do this thing with me? No. Okay, now I know. Or maybe it's like, not right now. Well, why not? Wonder what's getting in the way or whatever it is. Like you can explore what their reasons are and maybe they'll tell you, maybe they won't, maybe you can convince them, maybe not. But at the end of the day, it's just information you get to work with. Now we don't take it as just information. We take it as this huge, you know, determiner of our worth and our value and what it means about me as a human. And we want to break that. That's nothing more than conditioning. That's just a pattern that you run, a pattern of implosion, of self rejection, of hopelessness, of embarrassment. All these things, imagining a lot into it. Like they said, no, that means they hate me and they're being upset with me means I'm a bad person, right? It's just like adding one more arrow after another. And then eventually, most people I work with, when I start working with them, they're like, I don't ever want to get rejected. It's awful. And so, you know, I practice a lot of bold action to transform our confidence. And so if I tell someone, like, go out there and get rejected a lot, and they have all these horrible associations to rejection. That's like saying, go out there and drink acid every day, you'll feel great after a week or two. And they're like, I don't feel great, so we gotta shift that. And one way to do that is to bring laughter into it. So I actually discovered this a long time ago, long before I learned any technique or anything. About this or knew what was happening. I actually just naturally stumbled upon this when I was doing friendly greetings. So friendly greetings, if you're not familiar with it, is one of my most favorite techniques. You just walk down a bus. Now in Covid times, you know, you can still do this with a mask on, but you walk down an area where there's people around and you just say, hi. So, busy street. Hey, how's it going? Hey there. Hey, what's up? How you doing? Again and again, again, person after person. Some people are going to say hi back to you. Some people are going to go, you know, look you up and down and reject you. That's basically. Some people are going to ignore you. You're going to get some range in there right now, those little ignorings or those looking you up and down and scoffing, those are what I would call micro rejections. You know, it's not you asking the love of your life out and them saying no, or you asking for promotion and your boss saying no and actually you're fired. Whatever. It's not these intense things, it's little things. And that's a powerful strength training to get exposure to rejection. And what I stumbled across is I would do these friendly greetings. And after someone said no to me, sometimes the rejection would be so at first it was terrifying, but after a little while, because I did a lot of this, like thousands of these over a period of months or years, I started to sometimes laugh at the whole thing. Especially someone who had like such a, like a like angry, angry reaction to my saying hi to them. I would just naturally go, like, now usually I'd be walking by them. Here's me, here's them. I'd walk by them, I'd say hi. They'd say nothing. And once I'd pass them, I would laugh. So I didn't like say, hey, how's it going? And then they didn't say anything. I'd go up to their face and go, ah. Although you could. That would be a whole different experiment. But anyway, I would just. They pass and I would just like chuckle to myself, like. And I didn't know what I was doing at the time. But then I discovered later when I learned some different techniques, it was like that's called a scramble pattern. So what you're doing is you're breaking the association between this is painful and this is something that makes me laugh. Because usually when we're laughing like that, it's something that's enjoyable or pleasant or shared. So you're kind of scrambling your pattern. So how do we do this on purpose? Well, just not that long ago I was talking with a client and he's becoming more bold and confident in dating and he says, okay, I can go on these dates, but I'm like a really friendly guy and I don't want to show my intent or my interest or do anything. I just kind of want to be like friendly and distant with them. So I want to be more bold, more direct, you know, give him a compliment. That's what I said. What would you do if you were more bold and direct? He said, I give him a compliment. I said, great. And what does he imagine? He imagines giving this woman a compliment, her going, ew, disgusting. Not only do I not like you and your compliment, I think it's inappropriate and offensive that you would compliment me even though I'm on a date with you. But our fears are not rational. So how do we work on this? Well, one simple way is to scramble it. So we did that in a group call. I said, okay, I want you to tell me that you know, I'm gonna be play this person reject you and I want you to laugh. He's like, okay. And I explained the whole reasoning and everything. He's like, okay. So you know, he says he gives me a compliment and then I'm like, ugh, disgusting. I don't like you. And he's like, hahahaha. I was like, okay, no no, no, we got it. We gotta do more. Get out of. Does this look normal or is this okay? Like just think of it purely as like a mechanical shift in your physiology, in your psychology and your body and your energy and your mind so you actually want to laugh and give it a full on belly laugh. So imagine I said something to you and you said like, ugh, I don't like you, Aziz. And I would say you gotta get the knee smack in there. Right? That's fun. Do you wanna do it with me? I know it's weird. And a lot of people have a lot of resistance to the laughter technique. They're like, oh my God, that's forced. That's weird. I don't wanna do it. Look, that's just all self consciousness. My motto for many years has been whatever it takes and whatever works. Let's fucking do whatever it takes and whatever works. To break free at the end of your life, would you to look back and be like, I could have been way more free, way more confident, way more alive, way more love, way more expression, way more purpose, way More meaning. But I would have had a done that weird technique. No, I'll take a limited life of dissatisfaction, thank you very much. Like, fuck that. Right, we're here. Let's shift this. So I just laugh. So imagine what's something that someone could say to you that would be like feel, rejecting, they don't like you, that you're ugly, that you're stupid, you don't know what you're talking about. This could be a romantic context, a professional context, anything. Okay, just imagine the thing right now. Give me three seconds to imagine what would they say to you that would sting. Okay, now let's laugh. I'm a big fan of doing the sigh after the laugh too. It's like good times, right? Okay, let's do that one more time. Think about the thing. Thing that could reject your zing. Ya ready? You ready? You know it's coming. Here we go. Let's laugh. So how do you feel now? If you didn't laugh and you just watched me, you were like, I feel like I'm watching someone who's insane, right? And that's fine, that's fine because do you sense a sense of freedom in me in these videos or if you've seen me on a live event or online or something? There are definitely moments where I get self conscious, where I get bound up. Oftentimes it's in closer interpersonal relationships, you know, with family, kids, wife, navigating stuff in business, and I can get still stuck in the nice guy stuff and have to navigate that. I think that's human. I think we all have that. But when it comes to being out in the world, it comes to speaking and sharing my voice in a book or in a video, or talking to a group of people, or interacting with strangers or all the stuff that used to trip me up, like, I just don't give a shit. I just, I really. It's really fine if someone doesn't like me, if someone judges me. And it feels so good having lived for so many years with so much fear about it. So if you want that, if you want that level of freedom, I would encourage you. There's nothing, you know, super magical about me or anything. It was just practicing the stuff that I'm sharing. So I encourage you to practice that laughter technique. Think about the thing that might reject you and just do it and really get into it. If you really, you can really shift something and all of a sudden in the moment someone says something, they don't like you, and you're just like, okay, you might even smile. You might even start to giggle. Fantastic. Thanks for being with me today. Until you speak again. May have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. I'll talk to you soon.