The fear of rejection.
This is one of the most common fears that hold people back from speaking effectively.
But what we don’t tend to realise is you can only get rejected if you reject yourself.
There’s a super simple way to flip it upside down, get past that fear of rejection completely and step into your confidence, and that’s what I’ll be sharing with you today.
What’s Happening Inside Your Mind
What often happens when you first start out speaking is you’re in front of an audience, looking around and deep inside you’re thinking “oh my God, I want to be loved by everyone. I don’t want to be rejected.”
And as a result, when you get up and speak to your audience, you’re on edge.
You’re never really grounded in your body, and it’s noticeable. Maybe you’re rubbing your hands, touching your face face, or even your body.
It doesn’t look solid and only adds fuel to your fears.
You start noticing small signs of disconnection in the audience – a sudden loss of eye contact, a small smirk on the corner of someone’s mouth, a lack of attention, there’s someone looking at their phone or talking to a neighbor etc.
And what ends up happening is you start to react to your audience.
Your confidence starts to plummet as your mind starts circulating a downward spiral of thoughts like:
- “Oh God, I’m boring.”
- “I’m not good enough”
- “They’re hating me”
The audience begins to pick up on this as your self-doubt begins to become more and more noticeable, and you start to panic.
You start gravitating towards trying to win your audience over, but it doesn’t seem to be getting better.
“Oh God, how much time do I have left for this?”, you start thinking to yourself, waiting for this all to be over.
I remember when I first started with speaking. This was one of the top fears that came up – this fear of rejection.
But here’s the thing – it’s deep inside of ALL of us. We want to be liked, but then when too focused on this when we’re speaking, it’s counterproductive.
Thankfully, there are 4 ways you can overcome this fear of rejection.
4 Ways To Step Into Your Power
1. Realise You Can’t Be Liked by Everyone
Winning your entire audience over is impossible.
Okay? It’s impossible.
Whoever is your top role model, think of a big name – Gandhi, Oprah, Mother Theresa, whatever.
Someone that you really look up to.
Go online and look up hate comments about them.
Everywhere, there’s gonna be people talking all types of crap about Oprah, about Gandhi, about Mother Theresa, about any big figure that’s out there.
They’re gonna have people that love them, and there’s always gonna be some people that hate them, and so it’s no different for you.
2. Polarize
So the first part is to understand that you cannot try to win everyone over, but it’s about coming from a place where you are here with only ONE objective:
to attract and work with your ideal clients
In other words, focus on your target audience and speak only through to that.
Winning everyone in the room is not gonna happen. So instead, flip it upside down.
It’s a mindset shift where you come from the place that, I’m here to only attract my ideal clients, only the people that love me, that resonate with me.
When you do that, what happens is you lose a lot of that fear of rejection.
And you start stepping into your confidence because you’re not trying to please people and win everyone over and go on this impossible task that’s just gonna be rooted in neediness.
3. Focus On Your Wins Instead Of Your Losses
You can only be rejected if you reject yourself.
I had a client recently who gave a great talk.
50 people in the room, went and saw it. I was all excited. Then, the next day after, I followed up and said, “How do you feel?”
He instantly deflated and said, “Oh, I don’t know. I made all these mistakes” and this and that, beating himself up.
I go, “Why?”
He’s like, “Well, after the talk, a couple people came up to me and they asked me if I was a bit nervous. I was. I just-”
I go, “What happened?”
And he said “Well, I felt like I wasn’t good enough, and I didn’t perform well, and I embarrassed myself.”
I’m like, “What? Because 2 people out of 50 came up to you and said, ‘You looked a bit nervous.’ Speaking in public, this is one of your first talks, and you’re in front of all of these people. 50 people in this room, you’re speaking from your heart, sharing something that’s exciting, and you don’t have much practice in it. Two people come up and say that you looked a bit nervous doing something that 90% of the population would be very nervous doing.”
Looking at this, we can see he was rejecting himself.
So how do we flip this upside down?
The answer is simple.
Ask yourself these 2 questions:
- “What is it that I did well?”
- “What wins did I have?”
And then ONLY after you’ve asked yourself those above questions:
“What refinements can I make next time?”
4. Celebrate Your Actions, Not Your Results
Remember, the only way that you get rejected is if you reject yourself.
Focus on self-love and congratulate yourself on the action, not the result.
That’s gonna increase your internal confidence, and that’s gonna just completely destroy this fear of rejection.
When you’re coming from a frame that you’re getting better every single time, you’re celebrating the actions, not the results. And you’re not here to win the entire audience over.
Level Up And Become The Best Version Of Yourself
You’re here only to attract your ideal clients.
When you focus on that, you’ll share a message that inspires, and you’ll achieve your dream potential as you go on this life to become the best version of yourself.
Lucas Mattiello,
Level Up Living
P.S. I’ve worked with multimillion dollar business owners who still find public speaking terrifying.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter how outwardly successful you are – the fear of rejection still gets to you.
If you’d like to learn how to develop rock solid inner confidence that gives you feeling of freedom to seize every opportunity, share your message, increase your income and make a bigger impact in the world, then I’d like to invite you to download a free copy of my “Get Confidence Now” report by filling in the blue box below.
Your approach resonates with me and jives with some of the things I think about when my confidence is low. I liked this article a lot and it also gave me some new ideas. I remember you from when you came to present to our peer support workers. Keep up the good work!
Renea
Thank you Renea! Great to hear that it resonates and helps. I appreciate your kind words and remember that event fondly 🙂