Hanna"
Welcome. This is Episode 25 of Let’s Talk Dirty.
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Alrighty who’s in bed with their brains today? I was fully immersed for a few days. I’m talking under the covers, in my birthday suit, dry humping the shit out of my brain because I just think she’s really on to something about how much I hate, can’t stand, am totally freaked out by and don’t ever ever want to be REJECTED.
My brain said that I got rejected, and I hate rejection, and I jumped right in bed with her and started cuddling up with those thoughts. And now I am here hating myself a little bit, feeling totally down and not really knowing what the point of my life even is.
So I am going to talk through rejection thoughts today so I can crawl fully out of bed and so can you, if you’ve ever had this thought that you got rejected and you hate it, or you hate rejection so you have to protect yourself from it.
Ok, so two things we’re going to focus on today: The idea of fearing rejection.
And the idea of having been rejected. Two things that are interconnected and probably stem from similar thought processes, but have really interesting results when we think these two types of thoughts. OK?
So let me tell you, I went into a rejection and self rejection spiral because I was told that I need 40 more hours of Coaching work before I can move forward in the hiring process for this position I’m wanting with the Life Coach School. And so that felt like rejection for me. I have actually been applying for this job to teach at the Life Coach School and I have been fumbling through my own feelings and rejection is coming up for me with respect to this job but I know alot of you might hate rejection or feel rejection or try to avoid rejection when it comes to things like relationships, like dating or from your partner if you ask for something and they might say no, or maybe rejected by a friend group or coworkers or maybe if you run a business and you are marketing your business or yourself online you fear rejection from potential customers or even if you aren’t selling anything, I know fear of rejection from the world comes up and stops us from showing up as being ourselves. Right like agreeing or appeasing because of the fear of being rejected by others for not being however you think you should be.
And what do we do when we think we hate rejection, can’t stand rejection? We either don’t do anything. We’re like, freeze, stop, don’t move. Don’t move a muscle don’t even blink because it might initiate a rejection. Or we do stuff that is trying to make people like us and we reject ourselves upfront.
Yeah that’s the sauce.
I’m preaching a truth here about self rejection. When you think you are going to be rejected and you don’t move forward in your truth you are self-rejecting.
I think the fear of rejection is one of the things that costs us a lot. The cost of buying into fear of rejection is your potential energy, your potential life. That’s what you pay in exchange for sitting in fear of rejection. And buying into the hate part, you know, this episode is called “I hate rejection” well, that’s what makes it easier for your brain to feed you fear. Like, you know how I love wordplay and I am just a sucker for anything done creatively with the human language, and I think that sometimes that earnest delight I take in analyzing and playing with words really helps me to figure out what the fuck my brain is doing up there when she cooks up these thoughts.
What is she doing up there? I never know what she’s doing.
But listen to this theory about how your brain uses words to trick you: When your brain offers you a thought like “I hate” what you feel in your body usually isn’t hate. It’s usually fear. Your brain KNOWS, she knows, that the most visceral haunting and blinding pain she can cause you is the emotional sensation of fear. But she also knows you’re smart enough to know that saying something like “I am afraid I might die of rejection” isn’t really true. So she offers you this word “hate” instead. “I hate” sounds like power sometimes to us. But your brain knows that thinking “I hate rejection” actually causes you to feel fear about rejection. And when we are in the pain of fear, we are most easily manipulated.
Stay with me, what does your brain ultimately want? Your brain ultimately wants you to stay as you are now. She wants you to stay stuck, play small, do nothing to rock the boat because what you have now is plenty, according to your brain. Yeah? And if she can trick you into fear without even using the word afraid, it’s more likely that you’ll stay there. It’s more likely that your human brain won’t catch on, because maybe you’re okay with being like “I totally hate that”. “I hate rejection.”
So this is where I start to nit-pick my own thoughts and start to realize that my brain has found so many work-arounds by using my human language against me, to keep me stuck.
Ok so I hate rejection, makes us fear rejection and it keeps us stuck or keeps us putting on a facade. Ok?
Now listen to why your humanness is so admirable. Being ostracized by a community or group of people or even one other single person, to your primitive brain, that’s basically the same as death. So we are wired to belong. You are doing humanness perfectly if you think you hate rejection.
Approval lets us know that we are going to live. So there’s nothing wrong with you if you wanna live! Haha.
Let’s foster the ability to laugh at ourselves a little bit we we figure out that we’re totally doing the opposite of what we’re trying to do when we buy into what our primitive brain is pushing.
Your brains like AHHH I wanna live! Don’t get rejected! And you’re like okie dokie brain I’ll just sit here, not LIVING, in order to stay alive.
We see how ridiculous this is but also understandable right?
Someone I’m working with now in private coaching is working on building the confidence to start dating again after a breakup and she’s like I don’t want to date because I might be rejected. And I’m like wait, sooo you’re just gunna go ahead and self eject, er, self reject on purpose?
Haha.
I want to offer that fear of rejection now is rejecting ourselves ahead of time.
We spend our time hiding out and doing nothing, and not risking death by rejection when we think that we hate rejection or can’t stand rejection.
But we need to risk rejection in order to truly live. Because on the real: rejection is inevitable throughout your life so do you want to just go with the normal level of rejection that everyone experiences throughout our modern world, none of which will kill you, or you wanna compound that rejection percentage by self rejecting ahead of time and killing your spirit?
People are always like but I know you have a secret Hanna, like, How do I not get rejected? Listen, I can promise you this: the only sometimes effective way I know how to avoid rejection is to hide. That’s it. So like if you’re into hiding and killing your spirit then there is your sweet sweet solution.
But this is good thing to notice because you can count on at least some of the people not being on board with you. So you don’t need to be afraid. You can choose not to hate rejection if you don’t want to. You can choose to see it as a measurement of your courage and confidence.
What if you were like, “reject me”! C’mon, do it! Like if you were ready for rejection and knew it couldn’t kill you then could you just be like c’mon let’s get to the point, yay or nay on me? If nay, no biggy, because I’m yay on me anyways.
Right? So, I will not reject myself in order to prevent rejection from others.
We have to be willing to lose the approval of someone else in order to gain our own approval.
You might as well experience rejection while you’re doing what you wanna do and being who you want to be, instead of while being something you’re not. Because it’s going to happen either way.
So for me, with the rejection I’m experiencing with this job I want. I’ve decided already that I am willing to risk them say no 1000 times to me. So far they’ve said no about 2 times. Actually they said “not yet” but my brain interprets that as rejection. See how that works? Trixie little primitive brain. The didn’t even quote reject me and my brains like BAHHH you’re dying.
But I have 997 more times to go before I am willing to consider giving up and entertaining the idea that this isn’t for me. That teaching for the School isn’t for me.
Because the hiring team saying “not yet” to me. Or your date saying “not interested”. Or your husband saying he wants a divorce. Or your friend not inviting you to the party. Or any other rejection you’ve gotten…that doesn’t tell me anything about you, just to know that someone said no to you. Think about that. Being rejected by someone, doesn’t tell you anything about yourself. It might tell you something about them, but who you are has zero to do with what someone else chooses or doesn’t choose.
So let’s talk about the thought “I got rejected.” Because I actually totally think that this is a thought, not a fact.
Ok so we’ve gotta get over hatred of rejection so we can take risks and live full out but we also have to deconstruct this thought that I got rejected because even that word rejected is subjective and it’s loaded with emotional trigger.
So think about when you think you got rejected.
Is that really true? You can’t be rejected by something that wasn’t meant for you now. The you of this moment was not meant to have this thing. Prove that with your brain. And rejection is a story we tell ourselves that makes us feel like someone else hurt us.
Someone else can’t hurt you. You do that with your thoughts.
So this story that I got rejected by this person or the job rejected me…you are rejecting you.
I’m not good enough, is what that means.
I’m going to say something confusing and controversial now.
Rejection is not something that happens to you. It's a feeling caused by a thought.
It’s the story we’re used to telling. You know how I talked in I think the third episode about where thoughts come from and how they grow as they stay unchecked in the unconscious mind. I’m not good enough. They rejected me. No. The reason we didn’t get the job is not because of either of those things. It’s because you were never meant to have it, in this way, right now.
This is a hard concept right like just believing that what is meant to be will be sounds pretty woo woo to me. It kinda freaks me out. How can we create our life with our thoughts and also believe that what’s not meant to happen just isn’t going to happen?
We create our life within the context of what the universe gives us.
I am not going to be a professional nfl player. Because within the context of who I was born as, a 5 foot 4 woman, my physical body is not going to be able to play in the nfl.
Now I could really love playing football and go meet with a coach and try to get recruited to play football if that felt important to me, and I wouldn’t make the team not because I as a person am not worthy or good enough. Within the context of my life, playing professional football is not gunna happen. I don’t beat myself up. I don’t think the nfl rejected me, I am such a horrible person and unworthy. No. The reason I don’t play in the nfl is because I’m not meant to. It’s that simple.
So the reason why we know things are supposed to happen the way they do, is because they do.
It’s the same with dating. This is an easy example for me because I see this alot when women are dating and someone says to them I am not interested or feeling a romantic connection and they say “I got rejected” and I am like well were you meant to be with that guy right now? And they are like I don’t know! And I’m like of course you weren’t because he said he wasn’t feeling a romantic connection. You didn’t get rejected because of something you're doing wrong. There’s nothing actually wrong at all with him not feeling a romantic connection with you. You just know now that that relationship isn’t meant to continue. You don’t have to feel rejected if you don’t want to.
I was watching this movie with Michael about the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus and actually I guess it was more so even about their father Richard Williams who is played by Will Smith. And there was a quote that I kinda latched on to in the film, Richard Williams says “my mother told me that the most dangerous creature on the planet is a woman who knows how to think.”
And then he said to the girls like do you know how to think? And they both said yes. But I just loved this because I believe it like learning how to think, consciously, on purpose, is so much more…not more complicated..but just MORE than we think that it is. Like people say all the time I think for myself. Or we tell our little ones that like learn to think for yourself, but we don’t actually teach them or demonstrate HOW to think for yourself. It involves some work it’s not just like oh this is what I think. It’s like IS this actually what I think and why? Do I like it?
Do I like thinking this way? If I don’t I can change it. I have that ability to choose what to think that serves my life and go ahead and quit the thoughts that I don’t like. That’s how we think. Not alot of people know how to do that as adults and so we don’t teach each other that.
So my point of that is do you like thinking that you got rejected? Do you like it? Seriously. Some people might say yes I am steadfast in that thought but even if you’re like 100% I’m in on thinking I got rejected, do you like it? If you don’t like thinking you got rejected, do you know you’re allowed to believe something else?
You’re allowed.
Like there’s not any rules about what you’re allowed to think even if everyone else you know is like “Oh girl I’m sorry you got rejected.” Or that’s what you’ve been thinking every time someone doesn’t like you or leaves you or whatever in your life, you’re allowed to think about it differently now if it serves your life better.
So what does it feel like in your body when you think, and believe “I got rejected”? Do you like how it feels to think that?
When I think I got rejected and I FEEL rejected in my body I literally can’t stand it. It’s like gut punch and throat punch. I’ve never actually gotten punched in either of those places but the feeling of rejection is what I imagine it might be like to have someone karate chop the front of my neck. And it’s like my heart hurts. And when I feel like that I usually do a few things. I try to make it go away so I do some kinda of buffering, or try to stuff the rejection down with something like eating an entire box of Newman O’s and convincing myself that they are healthy because they are vegan. I am like ick ick I hate this feeling I’ll just drown in Netflix but also simultaneously overthink everything I’ve done recently and critique myself to no end. The other thing I do when I feel the feeling of rejection is I lash out at people because I am like acting out my rejection to show that I reject other people too. Raise your hand if you do this so I know I’m not alone. Like, you feel rejected and you get agro. And then I hide and and shame myself into not going all in on anything to try to avoid feeling rejection because now I’m onto the I hate rejection thought.
Yeah? So we choose all that. Feeling rejection is a choice.
I hear you arguing with me right now about whether this is a thought or a fact. You’re like no but I WAS rejected. That's just the long and short of it. And if you’re there that’s okay. You want to feel rejected or be mad and and act it out that's cool with me.
But notice this: If you only allow yourself to see someone not liking you or not choosing you for something as rejection, you miss opportunities out the ass. You miss what is meant for you.
So when you think “I got rejected here”, it doesn’t matter whether this was meant for you or not, because with that thought, you’ll never know the difference.
And, if it’s possible for you to not drown yourself in a tub of icecream or lash out at people or feel sorry for yourself, then why not see whether rejecting the idea of rejection might work for you.
Thinking “I got rejected” relinquishes power over your life to another person and reinforces the idea that someone must choose you for you to live the life you want to live.
And only you need to choose you.
The rest of it means fuck all when you can decide to choose yourself and be a win in your own eyes every time.
So next time your brain tells you you got rejected, notice what you want to make this situation mean about you instead. You might surprise yourself with how powerful you are.
If you’re liking what you’re getting here on this show, you’re going to love working together in my Private Coaching Program. Sign up for a consultation now to get started working on your thoughts and creating the life that you want.
See ya next time.