Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome to today's episode of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. This is episode 31. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. If you've not yet done. So hit the subscribe button, so you never miss another episode of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. If you're out there and you love this podcast. Well, you know, tell your friends and give it a review on iTunes or Apple and give it a rating.

It'll take you about 20, 30 seconds for you to do so. And it makes a big difference. It starts to show up in the organic search, makes a big difference, gets the word out and helps more people. Today's topic is overcoming the fear of rejection. Something that I must work on all the time. And I'm going to give you three actions that you can take today to overcome your fear of rejection.

I've been sharing at the beginning of every episode of risks that I've recently taken. Well, the risks that I've taken is I actually do struggle with the fear of rejection. As I mentioned, I've invited some people to watch the Superbowl at my place, and they're not necessarily people I would normally invite.

So that opens up new relationships also opens up new reasons why somebody can. Come and I can translate that in my mind that a bunch of different ways. So, but that's the risks I've taken. I've actually, haven't gotten a yes yet, but I'm going to keep trying right there. So, I, like I said, I'm Adam Gragg. I'm your host, I'm a life coach and mental health professional been doing this for over 20 years. My life purpose is to help people find transformational clarity that propels them to overcome their biggest fear. I like nothing more than seeing people tackle their fears, face them head on. And seeing that on the other side is growth.

I also like to talk about stuff that would make sense to a six-year-old that you could explain to your six year old and the concepts are simple enough and basic enough and practical enough that they would understand. And they could actually describe to you what you're saying. So it's stuff that I also struggle with myself.

Like I said, I'm a fellow traveler. I have my own anxiety fight every day. I've every day. I have my own anxiety fight. I mean, I could wake up in the morning, usually the toughest time for me. And I can think of all the scary things, all the things that are going to go in that could potentially go wrong during the day.

So today this topic is super important. One is. This fear of rejection leads to missing out on life. I mean, it's like you miss out on all the best parts of life, because you're afraid of what other people think and how other people could treat you. You can think of it, you know, I mean, it leads to decrease self-esteem it leads to your fears actually growing because you're avoiding them and fear.

Good acronym for is, is false evidence appearing real. There's a difference between danger and fear. Danger is legit. You know, dangerous that house is on fire. That's gonna burn you. It's gonna kill people in your family if you don't leave. Fear is anxiety. It's false evidence appearing real, you know, the cost of fearing rejection can lead to health problems.

It can lead to isolation, you know, and isolation can cause all kinds of issues. Loneliness. Causes major health problems. In fact, there's been a number of studies out there that have shown that loneliness puts you at risk in some cases, at significant risk of a number of health elements. It also leads you not being your truest self you're hiding you're.

You're afraid to show the world that this is me because of their opinion, which is the world's opinion. And it's totally going to keep you. Stuck. So I get this question quite a bit. Wha why do I have this fear of rejection? I mean, it's a very, very common fear. I think it's one of the most common fears that I ever hear from clients, the fear of rejection, and it's something that everybody has at some level and everybody experiences at times, it in a very strong.

At times in their life, it's built into us, it's built into our DNA. So, and you've probably heard this before, but we're tribal beings. You know, we used to live in tribes of 100, 200 people. And if you were excluded or rejected from that tribe, for whatever reason, then you were left in the [00:05:00] wilderness where you could be eaten by some kind of.

And you had no support. There may not have been another tribe for a hundred miles away. So you'd either have to find another tribe, get re acclimated with the current tribe or die. But for most people in a lot of cases, it was death. And so it was a legitimate danger to be rejected. Nowadays being rejected does not mean you're going to die, but you still are going to have these feelings, these strong feelings at times of man, this is so dangerous, but really it's just fear and anxiety.

We're going to feel like it's so incredibly dangerous because again, it's built into us and we don't want to get hurt. You think this negativity that we can have. Fear of rejection is negativity negatively analyzing all these different relationships and saying, this is going to go wrong. That's going to go wrong.

They're not going to like me. This person is going to like me. I mean, I invite somebody to come over and watch the super bowl. One of my first thoughts can be, well, they're going to have something else to do. They have other friends that have already probably invited them to do something. They're going to want to go do something with those other friends, not with Adam, but then I can overpower that and rise above it and say, well, Hey man, I'm cool too.

You know? And maybe not. If they say no, well, at least it starts a conversation that we can find the time to do something in the future. So I avoid a lot of different things because of my fear of. And again, it's, like I said, in previous podcasts, it's easier to be negative because there's a benefit there's pay off negativity keeps us safe.

It keeps us from trying. And then it keeps us isolated where we can't really get hurt from this rejection. But ultimately we're hurting ourselves in much, a much, much greater way. So, so things that I have avoided personally, because of a fear, objection, not quitting, a toxic job, not applying for jobs that I wanted to not asking people on dates.

Not starting a business. It took me probably a decade to start this business in 2012, because of my own fear, which I can't believe, decide your legacy is almost 10 years old. So asking somebody for help, you know, asking somebody over, asking somebody for coffee, being assertive, standing up for myself, all these things are things I can avoid trying something new.

Even a new restaurant, a creature of habit. I mean, I know this restaurant is going to give me a good meal. So why would I go to a new restaurant? So here's three actions that you can take. Cause I don't want you to die and to regret not taking action and living the full life that you can live, living the best life that you can live.

So the first thing. Is figure out what, whatever that fear, whatever that fear is with rejection, you know, figure out what the worst possible outcome could be. You know, the worst possible thing that could happen in this situation, if you were rejected. And I would suggest that you write it down, you know, my fear is, you know, that.

I'll be rejected and they'll laugh at me and no one will ever want to date me, or I'll never have the job that I want to have, or I'll never have the financial condition that I want to have. There's a L there's something that you perceive as legitimate behind. If you unpack that fear of rejection, something that's there.

And then I want you to write down and think about how you'd handle it, if that thing happened. So like, if, for example, if you went broke, what would you do? Or if you really legitimately, nobody ever wanted to have a relationship with you, then what would you do? How would you handle that? You know? And then you answer that honestly.

Well, it's not probably true. It's not, you know, cause you'll see that as you look at these fears, this worst possible outcome, you'll see that about 90% of it is a bunch of bogus. I mean, it's a bunch of BS and can happen. It's just stuff you've manufactured in your mind because our mind can just make things 10 times worse to protect us.

And then when we get. Keep it in our minds, it actually stays in a place where we have it's has ambiguity. It's fuzzy. It's not clear. It's something that has a lot more power just in our minds than it does when we put it on paper when we type it out. So you got to figure out the worst possible outcome, how you will deal with it.

And then at some level you're starting to actually trick your brain because your brain, it thinks you're going to die. You know, if I face this thing and it's telling you, you're going to die, it's dangerous, but you're looking at this evidence and you're saying, you know what, I'm not going to die. It's not going to kill me.

You know? So it'd be great to even write down somewhere and post it in your bathroom, which I've shared about posting goals and purpose statements and things. You're, I'm not going to die because of rejection. It's a hundred percent likely that I will survive this rejection. And, you know, it may hurt, but I'm going to survive this rejection and then you can start shifting and you shift this shift starts happening.

It's actually going to the best outcome or the most likely outcome. [00:10:00] The best outcome or the most likely outcome. And when people start doing this, when you see that you can start handling the worst outcome, then it starts battling. You start thinking healthy, start thinking clearly, and you start fighting, what's called confirmation bias.

And now confirmation bias. Is that what we feel or what we believe. We're going to find evidence in our environment consistently. That's going to confirm what we already feel or believe it's a, it's like if there was a taxi cab company, In Seattle and they had 20% of their taxis were yellow and then 80% of their taxis were.

So I've never seen a green taxi. I'm sure there green taxi somewhere, and you call the taxi at the airport to come pick you up. The likelihood of you looking for a yellow taxi is extremely high because your perception already is that a taxi should be used. Yeah, this company that's not true. It's more likely you're going to actually have a green taxi pull up and you may be just waiting forever because these green taxis keep passing you by that's confirmation bias.

So if you think people aren't going to like you at the school dance, and aren't going to want to hang out with you. You'll find evidence when you go to the school dance. Oh, there's somebody ignoring me. Oh, there's somebody that's having more fun or their dresses nicer, or their boyfriend is much more attractive or whatever.

You'll find evidence that confirms this thing that you already at some level are starting to believe. So we have to start creating opportunities and we're going to get to that in the podcast, taking actions to create new evidence. So situation I had recently was that I was thinking, I go to this church called life church, and there's a bunch from all over the country and they're really volunteer orient.

And I remember when I first started volunteering there, although I have done a lot of things that are fairly scary in my life launch things started a business done that I was terrified of that first day volunteering there. And it has people wear red shirts and they're very friendly. They're welcoming.

And I look at that and I think. Those people. I bet. I bet 80% of them are probably pretty terrified when they first start doing this. And when they greet people and they talk to strangers, but it's what makes that environment so positive. At least one of the things that makes that environment so positive, it's contagious.

When you see people taking risks to actually face their fears and to reach out to people. I've had challenges with clients many times. In fact, I have a challenge to a client right now to post a and then he confirmed that he would do it and I'm going to see him next week. He's going to get a YouTube video filmed for his business that describes.

The product, and it's going to describe some information about the product and he's going to film it on his own and get it launched and sent out to all of his friends. But the next time we meet, which is next Monday. So that is a situation where you, and he had to go and say, the worst outcome is, Hey, they laugh at me or they.

That, you know, he was worried actually about somehow giving statistics that were inaccurate. And I was telling him, I said, well, then you have to apologize on the next podcast. I mean, you wouldn't do that intentionally what'd you know, of course not. So that's something you can do is just, you know, go ahead and.

Identify the worst outcome, how you're going to actually handle it. There's a great Ted talk and there's a link in the show notes. It's called what I learned from a hundred days of rejections by judging. And it's excellent. I mean, I'd really recommend that you check it out. He gets rejected every day for a hundred days, and it's just about his experience.

If you like what you've heard so far, I would encourage you to really sign up for my email newsletter@decideyourlegacy.com. You're going to get three extremely valuable tools, 50 relationship building questions, 12 life balance tips, and five days to overpowering anxiety. This is stuff I sell on an E a popular ebook that you're going to actually get from.

Some more things when it comes to the worst possible outcome, you can visualize and do a meditation even, and look for meditations on visualizing the best and start seeing well, if I was really confident in this situation or I handled this well, here's what actually would happen. I recorded my last podcast was on.

Was on kick-starting your self-confidence and there's a worksheet link in that podcast too. If I had more confidence and it's basically I help people visualize what they would be like if they had confidence on a scale of one to 10, you know, and I clarify that self-confidence is this overall, I can do it.

I can handle the situation. It's different than confidence. Confidence can be very specific. I can be confident as a CEO and I can be insecure as a father. I can be confident as a pianist and insecure as. You know, a husband. So it's, it's something that's specific, but check out that podcast in that worksheet and that link because it'll help you see how you would behave differently.

If you did have confidence at a very high level. So the second, the second action you can take. The second action you can take to overcome your fear of rejection is to clarify, identify and clarify your life purpose. And your life [00:15:00] purpose is something that is unique to you. It's why you exist. It's why you're here on earth.

It's the why, it's the, it's the why? The, the foundation of why you do what you do. So clients will come in to me sometimes and say, well, Hey, I want to start a business and I'll ask them why. And they'll say, because I want to make more money. And I'll say why? Because I want to. Be able to buy the car that I want to buy because that's a sign of success.

And I'll say, why. And sometimes we'll have them define success because that's going to identify their why as well. And eventually, if they're honest with self honesty is kind of a tough thing to do because you really have to dig deep and it can take a while to do it. They're going to come to the conclusion at some level, if they're a good person, which most people are.

I know there are bad evil people, selfish people out there, but most people's why I've found has been it's altruistic. It has to do with making other people's lives, better making the world. That purpose that you find when you find your, why, which I'm going to link to a book called start with why by Simon Sinek, that actually covers a lot of this, and you can look up his YouTube Ted talk on, start with why I'm as well, which is very, very popular, which I'll link to as well.

This clarity when you know your what, when you know your why. And in many cases I've seen, like in this one example, the why was so I could die with knowing that my family would want to see me as a role model. And this client didn't believe she was actually had lived that kind of life right now. But her why was like, I, I don't want.

I don't want to hesitate anymore. I want to take risks. I want to reach people. I want to build relationships. I want to die with the legacy of man. I want to be just like my, what my grandkids to say. I want to be like, grandma. I want my kids to say, man, my mom overcame a lot of things. I want to be like her.

That was her purpose, her, her why? And, and so that motivated her. And I think she's going to clarify it more. She goes, but once we clarify that, why then I can see. I see how it overtakes people and it starts to give them this confidence. It's almost like once somebody is in that state, which I like to look at my life purpose statement every day of helping people find clarity and overcome their biggest fears so they can live their fullest life and impact other people and not hold back.

I like to focus on that first thing in the morning, because if I do it can give me and put me in this state where it doesn't matter what people think about me. You know, I'm going to sit down with clients, I'm going to create things. I'm going to do whatever I can to get and spread that purpose of helping people find clarity and facing their fears.

And, you know, fear is just such a big deal to me because it's held me back so much that I want to help other people in that area. I saw I had a client just today who he, has had a struggle with with depression. and really, I don't think lifelong struggle, but basically. Came into my office a couple of weeks ago.

And it was like a new man. I mean, it was like, who is this guy? Cause I saw this level of confidence I hadn't seen for a long time. And basically what happened is the guy had found an opportunity professionally that aligned with his life purpose, which. Was in is altruistic it's to help other people. And it aligned really well that it just started to give him purpose.

Like I can do this, I can go out and I can help other people through this new role that I found. And so he described it to me. It made a whole lot of sense and that why has been propelling him ever since. And so, and it will keep propelling him as long as he keeps it at the forefront and at the center and it'll move him forward.

So I've seen people as well. They, they find, they find their life purpose and. It aligns with a career, a job, or aligns with a role in their life. Or they see that man, this my life purpose is related to my kids. And then they start taking better care of themselves and they start, you know, dressing differently and exercising differently and eating healthy because they have this clarity that this is why I exist.

This is why God made me. And this is, this is my purpose in life. And so it's like I said, it's going to be, it's not going to be selfish. It's going to be general. As you find your life purpose. I did a podcast on this by the way. So it's episode 14 and on, there'll be a link to that in the show notes to decide your legacy podcast, episode 14.

But when what happens is, is that, is that that confidence overtakes you, it's going to be generous. And you know, I love the parable. This is in Luke 1218 in the new Testament it's of the rich fool. And so the rich fool, it's like the guy who. Stores up all this grain and, you know, I can read from it basically.

It was inspiring to me to, to think about it. It's in Luke 12 and it's, Because he's wealthy. And he says, I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will store my supplies and grain. And I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years, take life easy, eat, drink, and be Merry.

But God said to him, you fool this very night. Your life will be [00:20:00] demanded from. So it's like, you know, that to me inspires me that like my purpose in life is to help other people. If I just hoard it, keep it to myself, you know, I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know if I have another day, you know what I'm best friends in the world.

had a stroke 40. And, you know, he's struggling right now and I think he's going to have a full recovery, but you know, it can happen at any moment. And I had a very good friend, have a heart attack at age 48 last week. So, and this guy, my buddy, who had the stroke, I was with him over Christmas. And he's the healthiest, one of the healthiest friends that with all these people, I know, I mean, as far as taking care of himself, eating healthy, everything, this random thing.

Adam Gragg: And so our life purpose is going to be generous. It's going to propel us. And once you start. That's going to keep you from, from holding on to things. You're going to have to let go of some things, honestly, because, because it's going to be something that's going to cause you to change. And it's going to be hard because, you know, we want to hold on to things.

So. That thing, that propels you is going to help you face those things, those potential rejections in your life. What happens when we start to realize our life purpose and live? Our true life is we can start to self-sabotage and I want to do a whole podcast on this at some point, but that thing self-sabotage is a big deal.

I mean, it's something that. Comes up. You think of addiction as one or toxic relationships again, again and again, or choosing bad relationships again and again, or, you know, drugs, nicotine. I mean, all these ways that we can pollute ourselves to kind of get us out of ourselves, but actually it's keeping us away from our true self we're hiding from that.

So it always comes up. Our true self has all our life purpose is never going to let go. I mean, a lot of you already know it. You've never articulate. You've never actually gone through a worksheet or gone through some kind of coaching that's helped. That's going to help you to clarify it the way that that I actually do people on my team actually do.

So you're, you're going to have to fight that self-sabotage. Now, if this life purpose topic is inspiring to you, I will encourage you to check out tuna for life. It's my coaching course. There's a whole section on life purpose. And if you go in and you enroll and you as a coupon code, my life purpose, you get a hundred dollars off the course until the end.

Commitment number three is to take action. And if you listen to my podcasts before I always end up at some point challenging people to take action, because sometimes I'll have clients who are so negative that, and they're trying to overpower their negativity with gratitude, and they're doing a really good job with it.

They're actually working. Some worksheets that I haven't go through and they're doing the daily five and five, and they're engaging positive people, but they're realizing, and they're seeing that something is not changing in me. I'm still having an waking up with these same doubts. I still have the same fears.

I still am afraid of rejection. I still have these, you know, these things holding me back. And the reason is, is because you don't fix ultimately a thinking problem with your mind. You have to fix it with action. You have to fix it by taking some kind of action based on that new truth or that thing that you know is true.

And people usually know what they need to do. I mean, most of the time when clients talk to me, I ask them questions that help them to see that they already know what actions they need to take. I'll give them tools. I'll give him ideas. I'll try to inspire them, but they already know what those actions actually are.

I mean, nine times out of 10, if they start taking action, then they start to get evidence. That's contradictory to their fear. So that fear of rejection, if they start reaching out to people like I did. And I talked about this in my last podcast, I reached out to five strangers at Starbucks. Every one of them was nice and funny.

And the first time I reached out the first person, I thought, man, they're going to think I'm strange. They're going to laugh at me. And then they were friendly and then I'm like, Hmm. Okay. So I'll talk to someone else and they were friendly. And then I'm like, oh, let's talk to three more people. And they were all friendly as well, but I did have some apprehension in every situation.

I did have, I did, it had less with the fifth person that I talked to than I did with the first, because Hey, I mean, I had to get out there and I was challenging myself to do something that I was afraid of that could have led to rejection. But what does that rejection even mean? I mean, what if I was rejected?

What if somebody said, Hey, you know, I don't want to answer that question or get away from me weirdo or, you know, I'm at Starbucks, come on, leave me alone. I'm trying to study something like that. You know, anything that I imagine could happen? Well, what if it did happen? No. It's like, okay. I learned something.

I learned that, you know, some people don't want to be bothered. And I learned that, yeah, there is a small percentage of people out there that can be kind of mean at times if you catch them in the wrong situation or the wrong nude, but it doesn't define me because I can go onto the next situation and see that.

Okay. Here's evidence of somebody not rejecting me. So you start to build a series of successes in your life because you're putting yourself out. And we actually feel, we feel different as we go ahead and take risks in our lives. I like to think that facing by taking action and facing rejection, by being vulnerable [00:25:00] with people, putting myself out there, I think that's the best anti-anxiety antidepressant medication I could ever take or prescribed.

I think it's absolutely the best because it's giving me the evidence that's going to really long-term change my thinking ensure. I mean, I had a client recently. They. Put themselves out there, they were vulnerable with somebody and they perceived it as rejection. When I perceived it as a great success and I didn't even perceive what they had received as a rejection.

I just perceived it as a boundary that was being set. But this client was having to recalibrate his thinking in his mind. And I knew it would take some time to start seeing that, Hey, that was actually a success. Because he did something in the face of his fears and he actually did get evidence that there was a good response.

And eventually, as he keeps doing that is going to get more positive responses and things are going to change. I'm always happiest when I'm putting myself out there as well. That's when I find that, okay, I can do this, I can start this. I can create this. It builds confidence in me. Like no other thing than facing actually rejection in my life.

It gives me the confidence that I need because those new results start proving to my brain. That good stuff can come out of facing my fears, false evidence appearing. Real psychologists have found that 90% of that stuff that we imagine is not going to actually come true. A book that I would recommend as well on rejection is go for the no.

And it's about getting rejected. Keeping your head high, go for the no is yes, this is the destination knows how to get there. The link is going to be in the show notes and another is called top five regrets of the dying life transformed by the dearly departed and something that I found fascinating that they found this was a.

Person working in hospice, who's interviewing people who are dying. And one of the major regrets of people who are dying is that they wish they would have taken action and been their true self. And I translate that as they wished they would have done these things, they were afraid of reached out to those people that they love.

Paid more attention taking those, you know, face those fears that were holding them back and actually moved forward. That's a regret that I don't want you to have. That's a regret I don't want to have. I do not want to have, because we have the ability to decide now to face our fears and to move forward in our lives.

I love the quote by Winston Churchill. Success is not final. Don't get too high on yourself. When you have success. Failure is not fatal. It's an opportunity to learn and grow. And usually it's a sign of you're moving in the right direction. It's the courage to continue that counts. And I have found in my life that when the fear is the strongest in my head, often I'm can be relaxed in my body.

My central nervous system is actually much wiser than my head than my thinking. And there's a lot of evidence and other stuff I could talk to you about that. But when I have the strongest fear in my head of facing something in my life, whether it was starting a podcast or a business or. Asking someone out or, you know, sharing something with somebody that I care about.

That's when I'm the closest to a breakthrough towards growth. That's an indication that on the other side of our fear is the strongest and the biggest opportunities for growth, which is what I want to see for you. If you found this podcast helpful, you found this podcast inspiring. Please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me, Adam Gragg, G R A G G.

That's the Decide Your Legacy Instagram page, subscribe to it as well. I love to have you see more of the inspiring, encouraging things that I post on Instagram as I do that more. In the near future, I have three podcasts coming. So one is tips for social skills, success. And I like to think of, Hey, if you improve your social skills are gonna make more money, which I truly do believe how to practice mindfulness, you know, the mindful lifestyle.

And I'm actually gonna give you a mindfulness meditation as well, and then how travel can transform your life. And I'm going to have my sister on that podcast who is an international traveler. She's actually. Been in over 60 countries. She's an elite travel agent. She leads retreats over all over the world and her name's Erica Gragg, same last name.

She's got red hair. She's going to be on the show with me. If you found this information, helpful purchase, tune up for life, eventually I'm going to have. Legacy like a flagship course. And for those of you that purchased tuna for life, you're going to be grandfathered into that course. And you're going to be purchasing it at much lower price point, especially if you use the coupon code from the day show, which will expire at the end of the month.

So if you're interested and you like my style, go through this course. It has a 50 page workbook has a bunch of bonuses. It's going to challenge you like nothing else. So the first section is on healthy thinking skills, having the right perspective, it's going to be on understanding your value as a person and identifying the traits in you that are intrinsic, that make you so valuable.

It's going to teach you about [00:30:00] life balance. Assess your life consistently. It's going to have this section on living from your core, identifying your core values and making it, helping them align with your life, your life purpose statement. Like I said, you want to identify that and post that somewhere and make it simple and inspiring.

As I said, it's can help you overcome your fear of rejection and then how to set the right goals and create the right habits. And again, if you want to purchase that, use the coupon code, my life purpose, and you'll get a hundred dollars off the tune-up for life. I'm going to end this podcast the same way I do.

Every podcast make a decision. You get to decide your legacy. And your legacy is going to be something that makes you, it makes the world something better. If you decide it, I promise you that it will be altruistic. You decide not other people, other people don't tell you how to live. Other people. Don't tell you they don't define you.

You can face your rejection. You decide your legacy. Go out there, face your fears. You decide your future. No one else. And I'll see you next time. Thanks for tuning.