A big obstacle to self-expression is the fear of being rejected or opposed. Great People are taken to their graves today with music, song, art, for the fear 0f being rejected. Whereas, Bo Bennett said that "A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success".
Lost opportunities, an improvement/betterment to life - all diminished or disappeared because of this unreasonable fear. This fear of rejection, at best, can be annoying. At worst, it can have devastating results on the individual in question. The fear goes a long way in creating another reality for him/her and the results, depending on how it was handled by the individual.
The ability to even learn how to handle this fear of rejection successfully, you must at least first, understand it and its nature. Fear of rejection is like a phobia, an excessive, irrational fear of something that is actually meaningless or not in existence. This fear is an inflated dread of a menace that doesn't exist. Nothing more, nothing less.
The worst tangible effect of rejection is to your ego or self esteem, it gets a bit dented. A dented ego hasn't yet created any life-threatening scenario. But, someone in a paroxysm of fear of rejection will not be able to see that. Like any other fear, the fear of rejection serves as the stimulus, to which the reaction is exaggerated and would trigger the "fight or flight response."
A person with a fear has his/her own reality. A mild threat would be discerned as a major catastrophe that would have overwhelming or deadly response is of such unbalanced proportions.
Purging that fear of rejection calls for a process in relation to desensitization. All possible effects of rejection must be rightly examined and analyzed. You could ask yourself, "what will happen to me if someone expresses, verbally or in action, disapproval, resentment, criticism or rejection?"
When we have our bearings on straight, we will realize that the worst consequence to a rejection is merely a bruised ego. And even that can only happen when we allow such rejection, action, reaction, disapproval, resentment or criticism to affect our ego or self esteem. Words alone are powerless, cannot hurt us, unless and until we allow them to.
The deeper we look into the tangible effects of rejection, the more we get to comprehend its minimal significance, or non-significance. Someone disagrees with us, or doesn't like us, there's nothing extra ordinary or special to it. Everyone has a right to his opinion, either to agree or disagree. so, what's the case with disagreement?
No one goes through life without coming across a relative number of people who will disagree, show needless resentment and express some form of rejection. That's a package deal in life. Winners, leaders, champions, they all know and understand that that's a very paltry exchange for living a life they enjoy.
As of time immemorial, rejection meant exclusion from the clan and its support and resources. The rejected persons have to carter for themselves.Rejection then is a different thing from what we are discussing now. Rejection could mean saying NO or disagreement to a particular opinion. A nobody is not worth any attention, much more criticism or rejection. A rising star, on the other hand, gets the attention, and with it, some opposition and/or rejection.
Of course, we don't like to be criticized or rejected. But, dissenting opinions or actions have to be taken in the right context. An opinion distinct from yours doesn't affect you or your value. It takes a great man/woman to be compassionate, forgiving and tolerant. Not everyone gets to that level of humanity. But you can
do it just believe. Don't let anyone else rain on your parade, it's not worth your time and effort. Go on give it a try, if it works , fine and if it doesn't work fantastic!