ABHISHEK KUMAR

Entrepreneur | Writer | Speaker

WHY ARE WE AFRAID OF REJECTION?

Human beings are an extremely cooperative species. Their strength lies in collaboration. They don’t have fangs, claws and are not very strong or fast. Their survival chances dip to zero in the wild, unless they are in a friendly group. Anyone expelled from the tribe will most likely perish.

This is also probably why we have such a intense primitive desire to be liked.
In today’s big cities, it probably doesn’t matter – but in a tribe in a jungle, being approved of by enough number of colleagues could mean the likelihood of not being expelled from the protection of the group – which could mean the difference between life and death.

Everytime we are rejected, our primitive brain counts it as an increased probability of not being taken care of by the group. Our brain actually thinks the chances of death have increased because of the rejection. However, this is an illusion driven by an ancient evolutionary response that’s just not true in our modern reality.

You can conquer this fear by reminding yourself that the ‘fear of rejection’ itself is just a instinctive, biological reaction – like Blushing and does not in itself mean anything. There is no need to feel bad for having the fear or to be afraid of the fear. You just need to shake it off.  In your modern reality, your physical well-being and survival do not depend upon not being rejected. In fact, in the modern society – the survival cost of being rejected is absolutely zero. You could try anything. Get rejected. And you wouldn’t be worse off from when you started.

You could even ask Mila Kunis out

 

and the worst that could happen is that you would hear a no, or nothing at all. You would still be alive and breathing and be exactly where you started.

Or she could say Yes 🙂

‘She’s just a normal girl, we had a blast’: Sergeant Moore gushes about his ‘memorable’ night with movie star Mila Kunis 

So, Ask! 🙂