Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.
OPRAH WINFREY
Fear of failure can be paralysing. You’ve heard of the fight-or-flight response to fear – but did you know there’s also a ‘freeze’ response? It’s when we get stuck in inaction and procrastination.
We know that if we don’t try, we’ll fail by default. But still, a lack of confidence and self-esteem holds us back from going for the jobs, relationships or friendships we want, from starting businesses or attempting new hobbies. For some, it’s about what people will think if we are seen to try and fail. For others, it’s what people will think of us if we succeed. While failure is a frightening prospect, success can sometimes seem even scarier.
As women, we seem to struggle with criticism more than men. As we discussed before, from a young age we’re socialized to care what others think, to keep the peace, to please others, to do things correctly. We’re more likely to get wrapped up in cotton wool and be overprotected by our parents. I wrote about this phenomenon, ‘the skinned knee effect’, in The Anxiety Solution. Boys are encouraged to play rough, get muddy and climb trees, while girls are told to stay safe, to ‘be careful’. If a boy falls over and skins his knee, he’s told to get on with it, while girls are more likely to be coddled. We’re praised for being ‘good girls’, but because ‘boys will be boys’, they’re expected to be more unruly.
Being protected against failure like this, we don’t learn to handle things in the way that’s expected of boys. In numerous ways, we don’t develop the confidence to cope with challenges because Mum and Dad are always there to scoop us up and keep us safe. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every girl, but it could partially explain why the millennial generation of women struggles so much with a fear of failure and with low self-esteem.
Rejection may be a biggie for you – it is for lots of us. Rejection is the ultimate fear because we make it mean that we are not enough; we’ve done something wrong, displeased another person or not been good enough. We take rejection as a sign that we’re unworthy or unlovable. And we are ultra-sensitive to it. Women’s leadership coach Homaira Kabir told Forbes: ‘[Women’s] fears are far more about rejection than they are about failure. Subtle shifts in mood, lack of adequate approval or an uninviting stance can make some women feel small or doubtful starting at a very young age, causing them to go to extreme lengths to avoid those feelings as often as possible without rational awareness of why they may be doing so.’1 Who else feels as though they are highly attuned to the slightest facial expression that might suggest displeasure or irritation in another person? Having been raised to please others, it’s especially painful when we feel we haven’t.
Hands up who’s ever experienced rejection? Oh, that’s 100 per cent of us then!
Who’s heard the following?
I have an impressive track record when it comes to being rejected by men. I was seventeen when the boy I thought was my forever-boyfriend (I mean, what did I know?) took me to the corner of the pub and solemnly told me, ‘I like you, I just don’t want a relationship.’
It stung like hell. His words ricocheted around my head and I walked around with a heavy, dull ache in my heart for months. As a highly insecure teenager, his words seemed to confirm what I’d always feared was true, that I was never going to be good enough. Not for him … and not for anyone else.
My brain searched for evidence from my past to support the belief of my unworthiness. I remembered feeling ‘abandoned’ by Dad when he worked away for weeks at a time. I recalled the look of disgust on a classmate’s face, after I’d planted an unwelcome kiss on his cheek in Year 4. Oh, and there was the guy I liked in Year 7 who only had eyes for my best friend. This pattern continued into my late teens and early twenties.
Let’s be honest – rejection sucks. If you’ve ever felt slapped in the face by it (and we all have) it won’t be too much of a surprise when I tell you rejection activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. It’s no wonder we try and avoid it at all costs!
We try so many ways to contort and limit ourselves in the name of avoiding the agony of being rejected. Just some of them: people pleasing, saying yes to things we don’t want, keeping quiet about how we actually feel and holding ourselves back.
But the truth is, rejection is not all that it seems. Rejection itself isn’t so bad. It’s the meaning we give to it that is.
Because when you’re rejected, most of the time you won’t actually have lost anything.
You didn’t have the guy before, and you don’t now.
You didn’t have the job before and you still don’t have it now.
You can’t have something taken away from you that was never yours in the first place. The only thing you’ve lost is an idea, a story. Even if you thought you had a future with that person or career path, that’s still just a story.
Your Tinder date doesn’t ask for a second date … so you tell yourself you’ll be single forever (and that you’re basically unlovable).
You view seven flats you found on SpareRoom.com and each one gets filled by someone else … so you tell yourself everyone must hate the sight of you.
You make twenty-two sales calls and don’t manage to close any … so you tell yourself you’re rubbish at your job and are bound to get fired.
The first part of each of these sentences may be fact, but it’s the second part – the story you make up about the rejection – that hurts, and is usually pure fiction.
I’m not trying to make light of the real pain you might be experiencing if you’ve just lost your job or been left by your partner. But you can bet the story you tell yourself about what has happened has the power to make you feel much worse – or to empower you to make the best of a bad situation.
With that in mind, here are some simple ways to soothe the pain of rejection.
Success coach Jack Canfield has a saying: ‘Some Will, Some Won’t, So What? Someone’s Waiting.’ He calls it the 4 SW’s. What he’s saying is that some people are going to say yes, and some are going to say no. And so what! Out there somewhere, someone is waiting for you and your ideas. Every no gets you closer to a yes, it’s just a matter of time. So ask yourself:
In an episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast, Maria Sharapova, one of the world’s highest paid female athletes, opens up about rejection. And guess what? She doesn’t believe in it. Her father taught her that a ‘no’ opens you up to other opportunities. She advises that we ‘turn a no into something that brings you to a better place’.
No may bring you one step closer to a yes, or it can help you adjust your approach or change to a better direction. Either way, it’s just a bump in the road, not a dead end.
We evolved to feel the pain of rejection for a reason. Remember I explained how, when we were cavewomen, being ostracized by the tribe was a life or death situation? We evolved to avoid rejection. That shit is hard-wired!
But now? It’s an out-of-date, evolutionary leftover because even if you lose a friend through an argument or growing apart, it may be sad, but it’s not a threat to your survival. And thankfully, most of us have our own tribe of friends and family who love and accept us no matter what.
So spend some time reminding yourself of how warm, lovable, frickin’ hilarious and irreplaceably gorgeous your friends and family think you are, to soothe that out-of-date rejection fear. Spend time with people you love, reach out and ask for help, send out an SOS to your WhatsApp group of besties and remember that you are loved beyond belief. I’ll talk more about connecting with your tribe in Chapter 38 ‘How to find your people’.
You say no to things all the time, I’ll bet. You ‘reject’ things for a whole host of reasons, some rational, some totally random. If you’ve been rejected, often it’s not personal, it doesn’t mean you’re bad, it’s just down to the other person’s preference. And that’s A-OK.
I personally don’t like certain varieties of things. I can’t bear quinoa porridge (just no!), I can’t wear nineties clothing (it never worked for me the first time around) and I don’t find hairy chests attractive (luckily my current beau is as smooth as a dolphin). It’s not to say these things aren’t great for other people, they’re just not my preference. My (not) boyfriend at seventeen showed he wasn’t keen on the ‘Chloe Brotheridge’ variety of girlfriend. No problems there, really! It’s just a preference. There are many, many would-be friends, lovers, clients and employers for whom you will be just their thing.
Tara Mohr, coach and author of Playing Big, offers a reframe to help us remember that everyone is disliked at some time or another. She suggests this:
Read the reviews of your favourite book on Amazon. Some will be rave reviews, others will be stinky ones or will seem mean, illogical or random.
Realize that even if an author is world class, there will always be people who ‘reject’ them and their work. Even though you love the book, others will hate it – and there could be a million reasons why. It doesn’t make the book ‘bad’; it’s all just opinion. It’s impossible to please everyone.
Now repeat: IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE EVERYONE.
How would they answer back to that rejection story you’ve been telling yourself?
If you find yourself, post-rejection, reeling into ‘no-one-will-ever-love-me-I’m-terrible-at-my-job-and-will-die-alone-surrounded-by-cats’ type thinking, consider what rational, loving and wise words a friend or family member would have to say about the situation.
Oh, and they’re right!
‘I’d much rather be someone’s shot of whiskey than everyone’s cup of tea,’ said Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City. Not everyone likes whiskey, but that’s OK because for some people you are the absolute DREAM and they will savour you, cherish you, breathe you in and talk about you for many years to come.
Hold out to be someone’s whiskey.
★ Because of how we’re raised, women often fear failure more than men.
★ The story we tell ourselves about having been rejected is often the most painful part; but we can change the story.
★ It’s impossible to please everyone, and we are all rejected at some point or another.