by Maynard Black

Created on: January 04, 2009

Your palms are sweaty as your heart beats heavily in your chest. Your mind races with possible outcomes as you struggle to bring your thoughts to words. What will she say? How will she react? Will she laugh at me? Will she think I'm a creep? She's going to say 'no,' I know it...

There are only two emotions that stem all others: love and fear. If you're afraid of rejection, it's because you aren't loving yourself enough. Everyone is going to tell you that confidence is key, and they're right. But how are you supposed to get that confidence in yourself?

It sounds so easy doesn't it? Just be confident. Sounds simple enough. We should all just be able to shout, "I'm confident!" and all of our insecurities are banished! Try it. Did it work? I'm going to assume that it didn't.

The first thing we need to do is REALLY get to know ourselves. We need understand why it is that we don't believe in ourselves. These insecurities that are causing this intense fear of rejection need to be flushed out. Why do I feel this way about myself? Why am I automatically assuming that she's going to reject me? Why does it matter whether or not I have her approval?

THE FIRST STEP:

Get out a piece of paper and write down everything you like about yourself. Write down all of the qualities about yourself that you LIKE. What is good about you? What do your friends say about you? Are you smart? Are you funny? Can you draw or paint? Do you like kittens and children? Seriously, anything and everything that you like about YOU.

You need to start with the things you like about yourself, because being afraid of rejection means that you're constantly bombarding yourself with self-defeating beliefs. These negative thoughts are like poison in your brain, and it's spilling over into everything you do. You have to stop this at the source by training your brain to think positive thoughts about yourself, which is what you're supposed to be doing right now. Are you still writing down those good things about you? Good. Keep it going.

You really need to be realistic with yourself here. If you're not, it's not going to do you any good. It is way to easy to think negative thoughts, and predict that things will work out badly. Stop and take the time to MAKE yourself think positively about who you are. You're a great person, so stop trying to tell yourself otherwise.

THE SECOND STEP:

Okay, now it's time to write down all of those negative thoughts that you have about yourself. You need to be extremely honest with yourself.

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