Hey, my friend what is up and welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big Today's episode is going to be awesome. It's going to be all about overcoming this fear of rejection and where this actually even comes from? Like, how do we actually all of a sudden decide that we have this fear of rejection, right? You know, over the last 10 years of coaching people, this is literally one of the biggest things that holds people back is the fear of rejection. Usually, the top one that I help people with is this fear of failure, but fear of rejection is right up there with it. And it's really more of a subconscious thing that boils down to not truly loving and accepting yourself. Now, hear me out. You know, if we look at the fear of being rejected, what is the opposite of rejection, right? The opposite of rejection is acceptance, which means that we are afraid of rejection, which also means that at the end of the day, what we really want is just to be accepted. And I can even flashback to a long time ago, years ago, where I had this fear of being rejected. And yes, it did boil down to me just wanting to be accepted. In terms of my relationships and my friendships that I had, I would never really fight for what I truly wanted, or vocalize what I was truly feeling because I didn't want to ruffle any feathers. And I didn't want to get anybody upset. And I just wanted people to like me.
So I would almost kind of just sit back in the corner and just be a little bit like vanilla so that I could kind of fit in with the people who I was with because I just wanted to be accepted. But what that led to was me having several friendships with people that didn't really respect me and love me as a friend. And that was something that I had to learn the hard way. But it all boiled down to this whole idea of I just wanted to be accepted. So what you're searching for, is acceptance, being accepted. You know, you're looking out into the world, and you're searching for acceptance of people. But why is this acceptance important for you? Why do you want other people to accept you so badly? And I'm going to tell you why. And this is where we're going to get a little bit deep here. But I can tell you why you're searching in other people, what you're actually wanting from yourself, what you're searching for from other people, is the love you're searching for from other people is all because you haven't yet been able to fully 100% Love and except yourself. And so you try to find it in other people. And if this is you don't feel bad about it.
This is most people and it's okay, this is all about self-discovery and improving ourselves, right? But doing that when you're going out and you're searching for this love and acceptance from other people to try to fill that void that you don't have within yourself. Doing that basically is just like pouring water into a bucket with holes, right? There's no point it's pointless, you aren't really going to be able to fill yourself up with other people's love if you don't actually love and accept yourself first. So now, let's take a step back just a little bit. And let's ask ourselves, alright, well, why do I have this fear of rejection? Well, because I want to be accepted. Why do I want to be accepted from other people? Well, because I actually want to be accepted for myself. And why don't we accept ourselves? You don't accept yourself and love yourself fully because you don't want to accept what you're not. Right that one down. You don't want to accept what you're not you.
Your true self does not want to accept what you are not. You know, when you were a child, you were your true self. That was when you were your true self. Right? You were loud, you were silly, you were fun. Think about it. If you're a parent, and you have a little child at home, right, and you see how they act, they don't have a cure in the world, right? They're running around naked, do whatever they want to do. They don't give two shits about what anyone thinks about them, right? So when did we start caring? Because we all came into the world not caring what other people thought about us. And somewhere along the way, it was programmed into us that we need to care about what other people think about us, right? And then take a wild guess as to who you think the first person was that we cared about what they thought of us was? Yeah, you're right. It's your parents, right? Those are the first people that you care so, so, so, much what they think of you, right, you want to make sure you're doing the right things all the time, you want to make them proud, you want to make them proud parents, and all of that. And then what happens is, we learn all of us learn how to just fit in, we learn how to be quiet, we learn, you know, don't act like that, that's too loud, don't touch that, blah, blah, blah, all these things. And most parents reprimand their children eight times more than they do praise them.
Now, there's a little statistic for you. Now, this isn't done intentionally. But what this does, is it causes the child subconsciously, to think what's wrong with me. And that subconsciously, they just know that they're doing things wrong eight times more than they're doing things, right. And so we are conditioned to be this way. So now we have your true self. This is who you were, as a child, how you came into this world. And then over time, you develop your conditioned self. This is what society has taught us, our parents have taught us and it goes on and on and on. It's all coming from external sources. This is how you're not supposed to act, this is how you're supposed to talk. This is how you're supposed to dress, and yada, yada, yada. So now you have these two versions of yourself, right. And your conditioned self, is who you've learned to become over time. And this is why it's so hard for you to love and accept yourself. Because you're trying to get your true self to love and accept your conditioned self. But your true self deep down inside of you subconsciously knows, this is not who I truly am. This is not me, this is who I've been told to be. And some people are conditioned way into their adulthood, like things such as; this is where you should go to school, this is what you should go to college for this is what you should do with your life after college. And the list goes on and on and on. This is why you have this fear of rejection because you have this constant battle going on between your true self trying to accept your condition, self. And so what do we do?
We search for acceptance outside of us from other people, please love me, please like me, please want me around, please accept me, because I don't know who the hell I am. So we look for this acceptance from all these other people. And then you mold yourself into someone else. You know, I mean, just think back to even middle school. I mean, still to this day, my friends that I talked about how cruel the kids in middle school are, they can be so mean, I remember being made fun of constantly for the gap that I had between my two front teeth, and for just being ugly. And these cruel, mean, people, when you're in middle school, right? You get conditioned by these other kids as well. And then middle school is over. And then you go to high school. And that can be really fun for some people, but it can be really tough for others. And then you end up becoming this person that just fits in. And when you change yourself to try to fit in, you're changing your true self. This is where you're going to feel like there is a void and something is missing and something doesn't feel right within me. And this is why because of this battle between who you really are, your true self, and who your conditioned self is. And now you're 20, 30, 60 years old, and you don't truly love or accept yourself because you've lived a life of this, and you have no idea who the hell you even are. And so you search for that love and other people and you just hope that they will show you some form of acceptance. And sometimes we can become a chameleon, right? You ever known someone like that? Where they act one way when they're around one person and then a completely different way when they're around the other person. It's exactly how this plays out in our life.
And at the end of the day, what it is, is that you want to really discover who you truly are, we need to get back to who you truly are. And that's why your true self will never accept your conditioned self, because your conditioned self isn't really who you are. It's just a character that you've been playing. And it's a bullshit character, right? And you've made it all up, and it's been conditioned, and you've been living this way for so long. And you feel this resistance and something doesn't feel right, and you feel off. And this is exactly where it's stemming from. Now, most people don't know this. They don't know all of this information that I just told you, which is why most people feel this void. And then we go out, and we try to fill this void. And so it's this character that we've built up over all of these years. And so now, we now we figure this out, right? You're listening to this episode? And you're like, Okay, that's great. Well, now what the hell am I supposed to do? Now that I realized this about myself? Listen, first of all, just relax, chill out for a second here. Nothing happens overnight. It's great that you're here listening to this working on yourself as it is. So kudos to seriously that's amazing. So many people fill their head with so much crap. And you're sitting here filling your mind with good stuff, because you actually give a shit. And that's amazing. Nothing is going to happen overnight. All right, you aren't going to leave today's episode and be like, awesome. Now I have it all figured out. Thanks, Kathi. That was fantastic. No, really, what you need to do is you need to use this episode today to discover who you truly are to go back to who that person really is. Who are you to start to go down the path to rediscover who you are, can you do that? Some things will be really obvious to you when you sit down and think about this. And you'll be like, oh, you know what I used to love doing when I was a kid that I haven't done in a long time. Oh my gosh, yeah, that's right. I used to love going hiking, or I used to love painting. Why did I stop doing that? Right? And there'll be obvious like that. And there'll be obvious things like that, that you can slowly start to incorporate back into your life so that you can start to bring your true self back to life.
But sometimes it's not always that obvious. Sometimes it's going to be something very, very subtle. It's going to come down to you having that awareness or building that awareness of; yeah, who am I? Who do I truly want to be? What's my inner child calling for? What were you like as a child? What were your hobbies? Right? Did you do sports? Did you like to play with Legos? Did you like to paint? What was it? Right? You know, that little child has been literally sitting in a corner waiting for you to come back for decades now. And to do the things that you truly love to do. Now, listen, don't get this twisted. I am not saying that you should just go quit your job right now and go back and play with Play-Doh or Mr. Potato Head all day long. I'm saying, can you take that little version of yourself and start to integrate it into your adult self? Where are there areas where you can stop being so serious all the time, and just start having a little bit more fun? We need to have more fun, right? Some of us have gotten so far away from that. And we're just all serious all the time. And that just sucks. Have more fun, smile more, do the things that are going to light you up and make you happy and bring you joy.
What were the things that you love to do before you were told who you should be? Think about that? What were those things and just start to rediscover yourself. And listen, like I said, it is not an overnight thing. This is a rest of your life kind of thing. And you got to go on a journey for it. And it's totally worth it. Right. There's no finish line here. When you're working on yourself and you're working on personal growth. This is something that you do. This is why you're listening to this podcast right now. It's something that you do and you incorporate into your life every single day for ever. Because growing into the best version of yourself is important for you. And you want to be able to lead by example, for your family and you want to be able to look back and know that hey, you know what, I worked on myself. Sure as hell, I wasn't perfect. But I worked on myself day in and day out. I learned so much about myself, I lead by example. I really, really worked hard to improve on things that I need to improve on. And I was constantly growing. And that's so important. So ask yourself, Who is my true self? And what do I love and just start to bring some of those things back into your life slowly. Because always what you are searching for outside of you is what you're searching for in sight of you. And that's why you're afraid of rejection. And that's why you care so much about others think because what you're searching for is what you want from yourself. You want that love and acceptance of yourself.
So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you so so much for listening in. If you haven't snagged it yet I have a completely free workbook where you can start to reprogram the way that you think you can start to get rid of those limiting beliefs that hold you back and start to replace them with more empowering beliefs. And that's how you change your life, change your thoughts, change your life, just head on over to Kathireuter.com/thinkthisnotthat I will put it in the show notes. It will be a game-changer for you. If you haven't got it already. Grab it and print it out. And thanks for being here. You know, I love you. You know, I think you're awesome. And I will see you the next time. All right, see ya!
