Turbo Leadership Systems^™

You can never make everyone happy

A major source of stress in life is the natural "fear of rejection," the "fear of criticism." This fear of rejection manifests itself in an over-concern for the approval or disapproval of your boss and others. The fear of rejection is often learned in early childhood as the result of parents giving their children what psychologists call "conditional love."

Many parents made the mistake of giving love and approval to their children only when their children did something that they wanted them to do. A child who has grown up with this kind of conditional love tends to seek unconditional approval from others in their life. When the child becomes an adult, this need to approval from the parent is transferred to the workplace and onto the boss. The adult employee can then become preoccupied with the opinion of the boss. This preoccupation can lead to an obsession to perform to some undetermined high standard.

Doctors Rosenman and Friedman, two San Francisco heart specialists, have defined this obsession for performance as "Type A behavior." Experts have concluded that approximately 60% of men and as many as 30% of women are people with Type A behavior.

This Type A behavior can vary from mild forms to extreme cases. People who are what they call "true Type A's" usually put so much pressure on themselves to perform in order to please their bosses that they can burn themselves out. They often die of heart attacks before the age of 55. This Type A behavior, triggered by conditional love in childhood, is a very stress-related phenomenon in the American workplace.

You must also develop a detached, objective awareness if you are in sales that most rejection is not an objection of you at all; it's really a reaction out of fear on the part of the other person. It's purely a defense mechanism which is rooted in the desire to survive. One of the simple strategies you can use is just to keep rigorous score on the number of people who actually do reject you, who actually do say "no." My experience in training thousands of salespeople has shown me that most salespeople don't statistically keep track of their effectiveness. They don't

know how many times they ask for a "yes" before they get a "yes." They don't keep track of how many "no's" they actually get. Each "no" feels like a ot. They attach a great deal of emotion to those rejections. They don't celebrate enough, they don't load their successes with emotion. If the average professional football, baseball, or basketball player took it personally each time they missed a tackle, failed to catch a pass, swung and didn't hit the ball, or missed the basket, they would never have made it past Little League, back lot hoop games, or pickup football games.

Here are two things you can do to deal with an unhealthy fear of rejection, criticism or disapproval:

First, realize and accept that the opinions of others are not important enough for you to feel stressed, unhappy, or over-concerned about them. Even if they dislike you entirely, it has nothing to do with your own personal worth and value as a person.

Second, refuse to be over-concerned about what you think people are thinking about you. The fact is that most people are not thinking about you at all. Relax and get on with your life.

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