The fear of rejection is incredibly common, and incredibly debilitating.

It always stems from childhood, around the time you became a pain in the you-know-what.

If you’ve got kids, you know what I mean. When they’re young and cute, and can barley walk and talk, any step forward is a literal miracle.

However, once kids can move completely on their own, they stop being little bundles of happiness and become a stress inducing source of terror. What if somebody takes them? What if they get hurt? What if they run away and I can’t find them?

So we all go through a transition when the adults (or gods as we think of them at the time) stop smiling at everything we do, and start yelling at us, or looking at us with those angry faces.

Since we still think they are gods, the only conclusion we can make is that we did something wrong.

The only problem is we NEVER really have any idea what is “right” and what is “wrong.”

All we know is sometimes they smile, and sometimes they get angry.

Here we are as adults, and we still have that deep fear. We want to express ourselves, we want to take action, but part of us isn’t sure what’s going to happen. Maybe they’ll smile, maybe they won’t.

The trick is how you present yourself to others. If you present yourself as something that can be accepted or rejected, then you may get rejected.

For example, consider this common question, as guys ask girls on dates:

“Will you have dinner with me?”

She can say “yes,” she can say, “no.”

One is good, the other is bad. She says “yes,” it’s 100% success. She says “no” it’s 100% failure.

One simple shift in how you “ask” can make all the difference.

A common strategy is to say something like this:

“I’m going to Roberto’s for dinner tomorrow night. You can join me if you like.”

If she says “no,” it’s only about a 50% failure, 50% success, since you’re going anyway.

If she says “yes,” then it’s a 100% success.

But why even let them say “no?”

There’s a way to communicate with others so they wouldn’t even dream of saying “no.” Because you won’t be talking about  you, or your ideas, you’ll be talking about them.

The things they’re interested in. The things that fire up their imagination.

Then later on, (if you want), after you’ve built up a huge bubble of positive energy around them (a filter through which they’ll now see you) you talk about anything you’d like.

And because they’ll now start seeing YOUR ideas through THEIR desires, they’ll almost always go along with them.

Whatever they are.