Why do we allow our fears to keep us stuck, shut us down, dissolve our confidence, sap our energy, extinguish our enthusiasm, and steal our dreams? Fear manifests differently for each of us; and yet, it can be as basic as this: We simply haven’t thought it all the way through to a positive outcome. Often, we won’t even attempt something new because we are afraid we’ll be rejected.
Here’s an example that demonstrates an instance of my own fear of rejection: I’ve been divorced since 2011. It was six years before I began to consider dating again. Yet, I was all talk and no action.
The last time I “dated” I was 22. At that age, I was oversensitive. It didn’t take much for me to feel rejected. Back then, my lack of confidence in my looks, my smarts, and my talents, left me scrambling to deal with one perceived rejection after another. If I liked a guy and he didn’t like me, I felt crushed. Every time! So now I was clear that I didn’t want to be my 22-year-old self.
Intellectually, I realized that as I continued to put myself out there, I’d meet and like some men; but not all of them were going to like me. I got that. I had to get my head in the game before I started dating again.
Take my recent experience on a popular dating site. My profile got a lot of views. I mean, a day didn’t go by without multiple men checking me out. Granted, on the surface, most of these men were not “matches” and yet, when I reviewed their profiles, I found quite a few very interesting, eligible men in my age group that I felt could be a match. They’d check me out, they even “liked” me, and yet only a few reached out. And I found myself wondering, “Why the hell don’t more men ask me out? I mean, look at me! I’m a catch!”
Then I began to take the lead and send them a note. In most cases, I’d get a nice note back. But often times, they never responded. Nothing. Not a “No thank you,” or a “We don’t seem like a match.” Radio silence! In this situation, my 22-year-old self would have rocketed into feelings of rejection and started making things up like, “I’m not attractive enough – interesting enough – or smart enough to capture their attention.” But today I refuse to go there. Instead, I’ve created the mindset that whether or not I attract attention from the eligible bachelors I find interesting, I am still marvelous!