How fear of rejection ruined my life.

I'm not a brave person. At least, I'm not as brave as I look like.

I traveled alone a couple of times to countries that were more than 5000 miles away from my home.

I once saw a super hot guy I didn't know nothing about and went straight to him saying: "Hey, I don't know why, but I really want to kiss you and I can feel that you want to kiss me too".

(And yes, we kissed).

I sang a song in Chinese in front of almost 100 total strangers.

Those things can make me appear as a brave person, but in fact, I'm not.

Truth is, deep down, I am scared.

My biggest desire is to be loved by people I care about. By biggest fear is to be rejected by them.

So, in order to cope with my fear of being rejected, I developed two mechanisms:

1. The first one it called perfectionism.
2. The second one is called the pursuit of success.

Indeed, with these two mechanisms, I convinced myself that as long as I'm perfect and I succeed in whatever I do, no one will reject me. But as you know, nobody's perfect, and failure is part of the learning process.

Life is imperfect by nature, and going against the laws of nature is a lost battle.

Seeing life through the lens of perfectionism and success leads to the "all or nothing mentality".

I'm either perfect or I'm not worthy. I'm either successful or I'm a failure.

You can already tell that it is a very unhealthy way of living your life, right?

But what's worst is that, what constantly aiming for perfection and success did to me:

• I didn't take a lot of great opportunities because I felt that I wasn't "perfect enough" or wasn't sure I was going to succeed
• I didn't show things I created because I thought my work wasn't perfect
• I often didn't dare to ask questions because they seemed stupid to me
• Whenever I fail, I'm having negative thoughts about myself and I'm entering a vicious circle of self-sabotaging myself
• I did things I didn't want to do in order to fit to the "perfect" vision of myself I thought people had of me

And maybe, your fear or rejection did this to you too.

There is no secret cure or any quick hack to get rid of your fear of rejection. But as you force yourself to develop self-awareness, you'll be able to stop living on autopilot and break repetitive destructive patterns.

So here are some questions that you can can begin with that will help you to overcome your fear or rejection :

1. Where does this fear come from? Most of the time, our fear developed in our childhood to protect us from something/someone, or to compensate a lack of feeling of security, love, and recognition.

For example, when I was a child, my mum would only show me love and affection if I had a perfect score at school. So I developed a strong belief that in order to be loved, I have to be the best, I have to be perfect, and I have to succeed.

To have a better understanding of where this fear come from, ask yourself: Did you feel in your childhood that in order to feel loved, secure, and recognized, you had to do something or to be someone ?

2. Now, take your limiting belief and answer to these questions:

• Is that true that if you don't act a certain way or are not perfect, you won't be loved/secure/recognized.
• What do you feel when you have that thought?
• Who would you be without that thought?
• What would you feel without that thought?

3. Take the answer to these two last questions and think about small daily actions you can implement now to be the version of you without that thought.

Maybe this version of you embraces imperfection? Maybe this version of you is grateful for the failures you had because they taught you so much. Maybe this version of you is compassionate, harmonious, appreciative ?

Take small actions. One step at a time. It will be OK. You will be alright. You are enough.

And don't forget, your are not your thoughts.