fear Archives - Inner Confidence

Why Getting Rejected Is Good

Why is rejection so scary?

Our society does a great job of instilling shame in men. Growing up as kids, and even into our adult lives, we’re told toxic messages that can hold us back for a lifetime.

Sometimes this shame originates from the people around us. Our parents or friends tell us these messages explicitly: that guy’s a player and you shouldn’t be like that. Or they could be more subtle messages from the media and movies: in order to get a girl to like you, you need to be nice and submissive.

People mean well when they give us this kind of advice. Despite their good intentions, they miss how these messages teach men that their desires are unacceptable, and that being masculine is a bad character trait. Compound this with all the men who have grown up without a strong father figure, and things get even worse.

As a result, men today are scared. They’re scared to approach beautiful women. They’re scared to be masculine for fear of stepping on toes. They’re scared to express who they really are. They’re afraid of meeting women. They live their lives devoid of meaningful companionships, opting instead for the comforting yet numb experiences of internet porn and video games. They walk on eggshells and don’t express themselves.

Men have become deathly afraid of getting rejected by women.

You don’t have to live this way.
It’s ok to be a sexual being.
It’s ok to want to sleep with hot women.
It’s ok to want to sleep with multiple women.
It’s ok to express your desires, feelings, and fears honestly and openly.
It’s ok to be rejected.

What’s the antidote for feeling scared and weak? It’s being a man and facing your fears head-on. With dating, that means getting rejected.

Learning to deal with rejection teaches you how to be a man. Part of being a confident, masculine being is accepting that sometimes things don’t go our way, and being composed when the inevitable disappointments occur.

Connection and companionship give more purpose and meaning to our lives than anything else. You must get rejected to find and create meaningful these relationships with women. Relationships are built on vulnerability. You can’t be vulnerable without risking rejection.

The ONLY way to get better with women is to get rejected more. I wish there was a “hack” or a way around it, but sorry, there just isn’t. Robbie is better with women than anyone you know because he has been rejected more times than anyone you know. And even a guy like Robbie will only expect to connect with about 3 or 4 women out of 10 during day game.

But if there was anything that’s close to a shortcut, it’s this:

The fear of rejection hurts more than actually getting rejected.

Anxiety doesn’t exist in the present moment. Anxiety is only something you feel about the future. When you’re actually feeling it in the present, it’s only fear, which is much easier to deal with. Any amount of fear is something you can and will live through.

The pain of rejection is a short-term experience. Pain is what you experience when you push yourself outside your comfort zone. Think of the struggle of a hard workout at the gym. It’s uncomfortable while you’re experiencing it, but it goes away. You become stronger as a result.

Our minds are amazingly skilled at (wrongly) anticipating how bad it would feel to get rejected. They jump to conclusions, and imagine the worst possible scenario where everyone is watching you, and where you’ll run into the girl you approached again and be embarrassed.

Fortunately, that’s not how it goes. A girl who isn’t interested moves on and forgets about the interaction. Unless you choose to ruminate on it, you do too. You learn something you can use next time. It’s never as bad as you expect it to be.

You will always thank yourself later for being vulnerable and improving your social skills.

There is rarely a downside to being assertive and asking for what you want. The happiest, most fulfilled men are the ones who go after everything they value in life, and it’s not a coincidence that these men are the ones that women are the most drawn to.

The men who get rejected the most are the ones who succeed the most, and so getting rejected is crucial to your dating success.

When You’re Objective, You Take More Risks

by Tyler W 2 Comments

One of the most effective actions you can take to improve your life is developing your ability to think objectively.

Most people think emotionally. Yes, this includes men, who often assume they are rational and impervious to the effects of emotions on their thinking. Men tend to have blind spots in this area just as much as women.

People usually look at their situation, whatever it may be, come up with one possible outcome, and only focus on that outcome happening. Emotions drive the estimate of the outcome occurring.

This human tendency is the reason why the mainstream news media focuses on catchy soundbites rather than objective statistics. Our brains just aren’t wired to naturally think in terms of statistics, and instead we latch on to the stories that are the most memorable.

Case in point: take all the recent media coverage of terrorist attacks, and their appeal to everyone’s innate fear of terrorism. Despite the fact that the odds of dying in a terrorist attack are 1 in 20 MILLION, it’s a natural human tendency to be TERRIBLE at estimating the real risk of low-probability events.

Ok, so what if I’m more scared of terrorism than I should be? Not a big deal right? Well, take a look at how this type of thinking carries over to other areas of your life. Most people don’t think probabilistically in any areas of their life. They look at the world through the lenses of their emotions, never challenging their deeply held beliefs about how the world functions. People overestimate their ability to predict the future, especially about the events in their own life.

This can screw you over in countless ways. In the Leverage Program, we coach guys to stop overestimating the risks associated with actions that can improve their lives, like approaching more girls, quitting a job to become an entrepreneur, or developing a more assertive communication skills. And we also teach people how they tend to underestimate some of the more dangerous risks that people overlook, like texting while driving and eating processed carbohydrates.

Remember how I said people make most of their decisions emotionally? That’s the reason it’s important to be objective about your emotional states.

So a guy who is afraid to approach girls focuses only on the outcome of it going badly, without estimating the likelihood that he will actually get rejected.

Most guys who are bad with women start out from a place of neediness. He needs attention from a woman. He needs to not be rejected. He needs to KNOW an approach will go well before he commits to it.

These are gut-level emotional reactions, and they’re difficult to overcome. But having that kind of emotional response doesn’t have to harm you. As long as you recognize that it’s just a thought and that it’s not actually helping you, you can begin to realize that your subjective emotional experiences are not always indicative of reality.

The more you put yourself in these challenging situations and come out the other side unscathed, the more that snap emotional reaction will lessen. But in the meantime, it’s crucial to remember that this inner dialogue is not helping you, and that if you fuse with those thoughts, they’re only going to prevent you from reaching your goals and improving your relationships.

Thinking probabilistically removes the reckless emotion from your decision-making habits. When you know that you went into a decision making the right call based on all the information you had available at the time, there’s no rational way to second guess yourself afterwards. You don’t regret things you’ve done that went wrong if you came to that decision probabilistically. But you do regret them when you let your emotions decide for you.

This also improves your life by getting you more of the things you want and value. Thinking probabilistically helps you take the right kinds of risk: the ones that have a huge upside of improving your life. Let’s face it, a lot of the things we want are risky. Become more assertive and confident. Making valuable male friendships. Building your career. Telling women how you really feel without being needy.

Socially agile people can be cooperative in difficult situations, use anger effectively when someone blocks them from reaching a goal, or boldly state unpopular opinions in group settings. These are all risk moves.

Do this: Take more risks. Play to win. Be objective. Remember that your thoughts are just thoughts.