Ep #48: Rejection In Business and Dating

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:09.6] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach podcast. The only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here is your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:32.5] What’s up my brothers? Welcome back to the Alpha Male Coach podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. This is a beautiful time of year, the autumn equinox and moving into the holiday season. I just love this time of the year. I will be taking some time of this year but fear not my brothers. I will record all the podcast ahead of time so they will come out every week on schedule. I love the idea of being committed to getting so much done now that I get to take time off later and that’s pro-activation, right?

That’s the opposite of procrastination which we talked about on the last episode and then in the Elevated Alpha Society Spartans, we are shifting from our 30-day goals into managing our minds around money. Wealth building and wealth management. To make that transition in themes, we are moving from September to October and I picked the topic of this podcast on purpose.

Here’s the thing guys. I am very grateful to have chosen the path of the causal coach because I am able to work with any problem my student has. It was very similar to owning a gym because I met all kinds of people, right? I would have lawyers training next to plumbers, I would have landscapers next to teachers, investors, people who would invest and would create, they would have seven figures, they would make seven figures for themselves a year.

You know, millions of dollars and they were working out next to college students who are going in debt, paying for their college education. Everybody was working out together and everybody just wanted to get in shape.

As a causal coach, all the work being cognitive so I don’t have to niche down the way a lot of other behavior coaches do. I get to work with people no matter what their problem is because all problems are thoughts. That’s why I’ve coached men into starting their own business and wanting to conquer social anxiety and men wanting to stop watching pornography and men who want to bring their marriage back to the honeymoon phase, you know? It’s all the same.

Because it’s all in your brain. I mentioned all of this because I see the exact same thought patterns holding my clients back in dating and in their business if they’re entrepreneurs. Even if they’re not, right? Even if it’s just your work life. Entrepreneurs especially and it could be coaching or it could be being a personal trainer or an interior designer and you know, a musician or anything else that you’re essentially selling a service that has to do with you, right?

That has to do with who you are that you attach your identity to. People in sales have this thought pattern as well like if you sell cars, you sell real estate but not to the same degree as my students were selling a service that has to do with the story they tell themselves about who they are.

Again, these thought patterns come up in men who work in companies, right? In professional none entrepreneur roles too. Even if you’re not dating or do not have a business, I do recommend that you listen to this podcast episode, you’re going to want to hear it because what it’s about is rejection.

That’s what’s at the heart of all dating and entrepreneurial problems is this fear of rejection and the unwillingness to take massive action if it might involve rejection. Now, both concepts are important on their own, right? You guys have heard me talk about massive action before.

Massive action and rejection are both very important things to understand in terms of not having the knowledge and the application of massive action and rejection but these two concepts combine in a very specific and insidious way when it comes to sales-based businesses and dating.

Again, even if you’re not dating and even if you don’t have a sales-based business, you’re going to get a lot out of this episode if you ever dealt with your fear of rejection, right? Meaning that you’re human and if you listen to this podcast, you probably are human. Don’t turn this podcast off.

Those of you who are married and don’t sell things, right? It’s still going to be relevant for you. Let’s just first review massive action because some of you probably don’t know what massive action is. Massive action means that when you set a goal, you commit to taking action till that goal is achieved. No matter what.

Hear me when I say this. No matter what, okay? You don’t take action until you get tired or until you get bored or until you get insecure and doubtful or until you get hopeless or until you take enough action to where your buddy or your girlfriend or some expert on the internet tells you you’ve done enough and everything should be working. None of that matters.

The only thing that matters is that you take action until you get the goal accomplished. When I described what massive action looks like to my students. I say it looks like Jason Bourne, okay? From the Bourne Identity, right? It looks like Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible. It looks like committing yourself to a result and nothing is stopping you from achieving it. Nothing.

Massive action means that if you don’t get the result, if you don’t have it in your life, the only lesson you draw from that is that you haven’t taken the amount of action that is required to get the goal, right? To get the action or to get the result. I am going to say that again so that you don’t have to stop and rewind the podcast, right?

Massive action means that if you don’t have the result you want, if you don’t have what you want in your life, whether that’s a certain title at work, whether it’s a certain amount of revenue in your business, a certain partner that you’re married to or not married to, right?

Whatever that thing is you want, running a marathon, killing your desire for video games or alcohol or pornography, getting a meeting with Gorgon Gecko, right? Whatever it is, right? Your Martin Sheen, right? You want to get a meeting with Gordon Gecko, whatever the result you want, if you don’t have it, the only thing we know is that you have not taken the amount of actions required for you to produce that thing, okay? When you absolutely know that to be true, when you understand that concept around massive action.

Not intellectually nodding your head saying okay, yeah, I get it. But actually existentially knowing it to be true. Like when you know that you’re going to drop an object, it will fall to the ground, it’s not going to levitate in the air. Then this concept alone will change your life, I guarantee it, brother. You could pay me all the money in the world for this one pair paragraph and it would be worth it and that is the understanding, the concept of massive action.

Now, why do people not take massive action, right? That’s the question, why don’t we have what we want in our lives and there basically two categories of thought patterns to get in the way, the first one is the fear of failure, the first one says, I can’t do this, it won’t work, I won’t succeed, I’ll fail. There’s something wrong with me, the reason I don’t have it is because I’m broken, not because I haven’t taken action.

Now, massive action itself is a concept that actually takes care of this. If you truly commit to it. If you truly commit to massive action, then failing is not an option because you’re just going to keep taking action until you get what you want, right? We go back to Jason Bourne, there was never a fear of failure because he never failed, his cognition was ever like well, I failed, I’ve run into a wall, a road block, I guess I should just quit. He never thought that.

You watch the movie, he runs into a wall and he just keeps going, right? What’s next, how do I get this mission complete? If you’re truly coming into massive action, there’s no reason to be afraid of failing because you are committed to taking action until you succeed. Failure is expected, failure is required.

Most of us don’t commit that hard and that’s why we’re afraid of failing because we’re not committing to failing as a part of our journey to success as a concept, massive action takes care of that. The other thought pattern that gets in the way is the fear of rejection and that’s what the episode is today.

If we are paralyzed by fear of rejection, then even if we’ve committed to massive action, it will still take us forever and we may never even get off the ground because we’re so scared of how we will feel if we put ourselves out there and we get rejected, right? That’s the move, that’s the difference. Can you see how this relates to business and dating?

What do sales-based businesses and dating have in common? They both require massive action, number one and they both require experiencing a ton of rejection to get what you want. Where we go wrong is believing that dating or business is supposed to work magically, right?

It’s just supposed to magically be easy and if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with us, that we’re broken or that everyone else is broken. Check this out, follow me here, if you have a business, if you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t have the client base you want, you will either believe that you’re a failure or that people don’t want what you’re offering, right?

You’re broken or they’re broken. You feel me? If you’re trying to find a partner and you don’t have the relationship you want, you’ll either believe that something wrong with you, that you’re broken or that other people don’t’ want what you’re offering and there’s something wrong with them. That they’re broken.

It’s either you’re wrong or they’re wrong but here’s the secret brother. I want you to know this. No one’s wrong, right? You just have not done what it takes to succeed and a lot of you are going to be agitated right now because you heard me say that, right? Because you have a business that isn’t succeeding, and you take a lot of perverse pleasure in being the victim of that or in your dating life.

Your dating life is a mess or you’re not even working on it, right? It’s just nothing’s happening, and you have a very real story in your brain about how you’re always the victim and how there are no women in your town, right? Or they aren’t interested in bald men or you don’t make enough money or you’re not good enough, right?

That’s always attaching your experience of your romantic relationships to this story. But none of those stories is true. You just haven’t done what it takes to succeed, you have not made enough offers. That might be an offer to hire you or it might be an offer to go on a date with you, right? Business, dating, it’s all the same, it works exactly the same way.

The only way to get the result you want is to take action. Now, take me for example, right? The Alpha Male Coach podcast, why don’t I have 500 podcast reviews? Because I haven’t asked you, right? Because I haven’t specifically made the offer, 500 times even for you guys to give me a review. Which is why I’m going to pause right now and remind you to go and rate and review this podcast so that other men can find it, right?

Quote this podcast for you and I’m willing to try to use guilt to get what I want. You know I don’t believe in manipulation and obviously, I don’t cause your feelings. I can’t cause guilt, right? I’m still going to ask you to go and rate and review the podcast so that other men can find it because check this out brother, this is the truth. Men need to know what’s in this podcast because nobody else is teaching it this way.

The fear of rejection, it’s silly, right? I want to stop talking about this too because I know you want me to get back to telling you about how silly rejection is and how you can avoid it in your life or get rid of it in your life. Because your brain is creating this irrational fear and I’m going to do that. But, you need to go and leave me a review for this podcast.

Five-star rating and a review, even if it’s just an I love it, it’s awesome, because otherwise I’m going to keep talking about it every episode and interrupting the teaching. Okay, now that we’ve put that out there, you know why it was so easy for me and I didn’t stress about doing that at all and I will continue to do it until we get to 500?

Because I don’t’ fear what you’ll think about me, guys, I don’t fear rejection, you’ve heard me talk about the Elevated Alpha Society Spartans and all the amazing results that guys are getting in there dozens of times. I’ve made dozens of offers for that society to you. I believe in it, I will continue to offer it. The reason you don’t make enough offers in your own life and again, that could be your service but that could also be in a second date, right?

That could be on taking on a project and work or it could be asking for a raise or asking for a promotion. Those are all offers in their own way and the reason why you’re not making these offers is because you are afraid to experience rejection. Because when you do make an offer and the person doesn’t want to buy from you or doesn’t want to date you. You make it mean something terrible about yourself.

You feel like you’re going to die from the shame and humiliation of this rejection. In order to succeed in your business or in dating, you have to be able to reframe and deal with rejection because you’re going to hear no. Let’s start with that. Let’s start defining rejection. Rejection is just a feeling in your body, brother. It’s just a physical vibration, right? It’s a vibration in your cells.

For most people, it feels like shame, okay? Your face gets hot, maybe you get a pit in your stomach, you want to go hide, right? You want to withdraw, your mind kind of swirls and feels foggy, you can’t really come up with your cognition, you can’t hold a thought. I think some people also experience it with a kind of edge of anxiety, if they’re having thoughts about what the rejection means about their future prospects, in their business or in their love life but fundamentally, rejection is a version of shame, it’s a derivative of shame in my opinion.

Remember, as a human, your brain is wired to be particularly responsive to rejection and shame. I mean, I’ve talked about this on previous episodes and I’m going to talk about it again, we talk about social anxiety but we’ve evolved out of the hunter gatherer tribes that depended on social cohesion to stay alive.

Many of us, we have this hard wiring to be kind of constantly vigilant about being rejected and to avoid that shame as if it would literally kill us because that’s what your brain thinks. Now, I want you to also know brother that there is an extra layer to this because as men, we are also taught to think that there’s basically nothing more humiliating than rejection.

I actually read this somewhere and I know this is a thought brothers, I know this is not a fact by any means. But I read this somewhere that the biggest fear that women have is being physically hurt by a man and that the biggest fear that a man has is being rejected and humiliated by a woman. That has to do with the opposite sex, obviously men can fear other things but when it comes to what do they fear about women, they fear being rejected and humiliated and what do women fear about men, they fear the physical, the strength that men have.

Especially men fear that social rejection which comes up in the business context or that sexual rejection which comes up in the dating context. You know, as us guys, we’re especially socialized to think that sexual rejection is totally devastating, right? It’s like this huge humiliating thing for us. Not only do we have the instinctual desire to be a part of the tribe, right? Out of the fear of death.

That cavemen instinct was if we were rejected, we will be accessible to predators and exposed to the elements, right? We won’t be a part of the group; we’ll be out on our own in that hostile world. We also have this conditioning of our current society that says your value as a man is based on wealth, right? Your business and your money and women, the quality and quantity of women, however you wanted to find that.

We see this all over, right? Sex sells in TV, movies, billboards, magazines, these subjective stories of what makes a man valuable. We grow up to believe that money and sex are so important then that we should be driven by sex and that the most important thing is being accepted and not being humiliated or rejected. To be powerful leaders and confident.

Everything else is weakness, right? That’s sort of like our socialization as a heterosexual man, right? That a woman rejecting you is basically interpreted by your brain to mean that you’re not a man. That you have no value as a man and that you should be ashamed for even existing. That’s what society is telling us in the 21^st century. Now this canard, this lie is so engrained that often when I teach this to clients, they don’t even understand how it could be possible to view sexual rejection as not being a big deal brother, right? It is not a big deal or when I tell you it is not a big deal you’re like, “Of course it is a big deal” right?

Because it is so engrained in our brain and think about it guys, I mean look at the chess game that has occurred from this simple lie. So here is the lie, the lie is the value of a man is based on his ability to be accepted or to not be rejected, right? So based on that lie, first we are taught that in order to measure up as a man we have to be accepted and that comes in form of friends, money, power, influence and sex, which are all external and erroneous, right?

They are all these external measurements that have nothing to do with what is a man. Then we are taught that we are supposed to the aggressors that women are supposed to be demure. So it is the man who is conditioned to approach, combine this with the fear of rejection and we have a situation where we are actually taught to not take no for an answer, right? To not take no for an answer and this creates and produces a lot of action and behavior that we don’t want.

And so now based on that behavior is a series of chess game there is a backlash in the first place. You know the action came from fear, the fear of rejection, her saying no but that fear was greater than the perceived consequence of unwanted action. So the action taken out of fear is never desired and the result is always unwanted. So now there is feminism and Me Too and MGTOW and all of this other stuff going on because men haven’t been acting or behaving as the best versions of themselves due to this simple insidious pernicious lie.

Which is the value of a man is based on his ability to not be rejected or more individually, my value as a human is based on being accepted by others. Now, listen to me when I say this brother, I am obviously not suggesting that all the men who didn’t take no for an answer were in the rights, okay? Or no am I suggesting that feminism, Me Too and MGTOW, you know that men going their own way are in the wrong.

I am saying that all of this is the manifestation of what happens, manifestation in the world, it is the result of what happens when men behave out of fear of rejection and not from their alpha, which is the best version of themselves and what I am trying to show you is that feeling like you will die of shame if you suggest a romantic or sexual interest in someone and that someone turns you down is not – if you feel shame or rejection, it is not because it is inherently humiliating and that you should feel terrible.

The truth is it is because you have a very specific set of thoughts that you have been taught to think because you have been socialized as a man. Now, do you see how similar that socialization is for dating and business or any area of your life for that matter? Even if you are not dating or have a business, you can probably see this pattern in your existing relationship. I have a lot of students who have this problem with their girlfriend or their wife.

Where they take this sexual rejection to be humiliating and they say they feel like less of a man or in your work life even there. Even if you work in a big company, how much you hold yourself back just so you don’t have to experience rejection because your brain tells you that that’s humiliating and fatal, right? You are in a business meeting and you don’t share your opinion because you don’t want to be rejected and the flip side of that is if you are willing to experience rejection, you will be unstoppable in going after what you want.

That is the truth, when you are willing, when you are open, when you are vulnerable to rejection you are indomitable and the crazy thing about that is that most of the time rejection isn’t even really rejection at all bro it is just a thought. If it is rejection it is just a vibration in your body. It is a derivative of shame but what your brain interprets as rejection, what interprets and creates shame actually has nothing to do with you.

The cognition that creates that shame that feeling of rejection is a lie. Your brain’s answer is always because you aren’t good enough and no one wants either what you are selling or you’re going to die under a bridge, right? If you never make any money you’re going to die under the bridge with the homeless, right? The truth is other people’s actions are about how they feel and about how they think. So let’s brain storm something else, what else could your brain think about your business and your customers?

Maybe the person didn’t need your services or didn’t think they needed them, maybe they didn’t see the value either because you didn’t explain it very well or because you did explain it well and they just had different thoughts, right? That telephone game, you know that telephone game of you think it and say it and there could be a disconnect there and then they hear it and they make it mean something and there could be a disconnect there, right?

Maybe their thoughts about money told them that they couldn’t afford it. Maybe they were scared they would fail and had nothing to do with what you are offering, which is how they thought about themselves. They thought they were going to fail and they didn’t want to try. Do you see how it has nothing to do with you? How all of those thoughts what they have in common is that they are all going on in other people’s brains?

And even if somebody really didn’t buy your service because their thought is that they don’t like you, it still has nothing to do with you because some people do like you and some people don’t like you. Now if you’re the one who determines who like you and who doesn’t like you then how do you explain that some people like you no matter how bad you treat them and want them to leave you alone and some people don’t like you no matter how much you try to get them to like you.

You can’t explain it because it has nothing to do with you. It has to mean it has nothing to do with you. It only has to do with their own thoughts. Now why doesn’t someone want to go out on a second or third or fourth or a 10^th date with you? Let’s go back to the dating thing. Your brain is probably always telling you that it is because you’re not good looking or it is because you are unlovable or you’re not a man or you are not an alpha and you’ll end up going to die alone.

You are going to die old and alone but what are some other explanations? What are some other truths? Maybe they didn’t experience a chemical attraction because your immune systems, your immune system and her immune system didn’t match up the way they needed to in order to produce those pheromones. Maybe they are still hung up on their ex. Maybe they aren’t really ready to be dating again. Maybe they were intimidated by you.

Maybe you reminded them of their third-grade teacher. Maybe they just only like redheads and didn’t tell you and none of that has anything to do with you even if you think it has something to do with you brother, it doesn’t like the redhead thing. You think that they didn’t like you because they like redheads and you don’t have red hair, but it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with them liking redheads not because you don’t have red hair.

It is their thoughts and again, what is our proof. I can guarantee you that at some point in your life someone has expressed romantic and sexual attraction to you. I am fairly confident about that and if so, if you were really the problem, if you were really unlovable or unattractive or just this hideous not alpha, this beta horrible male then no one would ever be attracted to you but that is not the case. It is not about you, it is about them.

So whether you are selling a product or a service or you are selling yourself as a date, you get to choose what you make rejection mean and even what counts as rejection. So I want you to try this thought experiment with me because this is really powerful, what if I told you that science had proved that the most successful business men are those who get rejected 100 times before they get their first sale or if you are dating, what if I told you that science had proved –

It’s a scientific fact that the happiest people go on 100 first dates before meeting their soul mate. If I told you that and you believe that and we could prove that as a scientific fact than if you got one or two or a dozen or 50 rejections, it would be no big deal, right? You would just keep going. You keep taking massive action because you’d know. It’s like, “Okay, fine. I am at 50. Sweet, I need 50 to go” right? And what if we could change those numbers up?

I could easily say to you that you have to get to 500 rejections or go on 500 first dates. The only difference would be your thought about it. So right now, if you don’t close a sale or if someone doesn’t want to go out with you, you think something has gone wrong. You know you think there is something bad here. You think I’m broken this shouldn’t be happening. Everyone else is doing it better, it worked out for everyone else. There must be something wrong with me.

But the truth is, if you believed, if you just had the thought, “Oh this is normal. I am supposed to get rejected a 100 times or 500 times” then your thought would just be, “Oh right, this is exactly where I am supposed to be. This is exactly what’s supposed to happen. I am right on track. I am just counting these up, I am just taking numbers and you would be excited bro. You want to go out there to rack up more rejections because you would know.

That every time you heard the word “no” that you are one step closer to getting to your goal, which is a “yes”. So you are allowed to think this. You are allowed to think this right now even though I don’t have the actual data on how many times businessmen have been or have to be rejected or how many first dates you have to go on. I don’t have that data. I don’t know how many times it is for you but here is what I do know:

Every “no” gets you closer to the “yes” you want and the only thing holding you back is your unwillingness to hear the word “no”. You see your problem hearing “no” is because you think you should always be hearing “yes”, right? You look around at other people’s yeses, you look around and see successes and you don’t see all those no’s that it took for them to get to their success. You just think that all they ever heard was “yes”. You know you can look at me and see how I’ve had built multiple businesses in a decade.

And think that all I’ve ever heard was “yes” and you would be so wrong. I guarantee you, you would be so wrong. The people that have lived with me over these years they know how wrong you are. I have heard “no” so many times. You can’t imagine how many people even now read Alpha Male Coach and never go further to discover the skill of cognitive mastery because of their own thoughts about the connotation of alpha male.

You know I wasn’t able to accomplish what I have or get here this fast because I only heard “yes”, bro. I was able to get here this fast because I was willing to hear “no” so many times and it is such a short amount of time. Brother, your problem is because you hear a “no” and you make it mean something about you, about your product, about your service, about your skills, about you as a person or potential partner about how you look.

You know whatever it is that you make it mean about yourself but if you understand that hearing no is a crucial part of the process, then you wouldn’t have to take it so personally and you wouldn’t have to make it mean anything about you. You know it kills me when I see entrepreneurs, you know these amazing ambitious intelligent men they just want to go after it and get it done on their own and they’re trying to console each other by telling each other that the market is saturated.

Or you can only make that as an artist of you are willing to sacrifice wealth or you have to be selling business coaching because life coaching or relationship coaching doesn’t work or a thousand other small lies that are meant to be kind but they’re really not kind, right? If you really think about the way those thoughts create limiting beliefs and not hear guys console each other in the dating scene as well, right? They say things like, “Oh it is just luck. It all comes down to luck.”

Or there is no good women out there and probably the worst of it, which is that all women are bad, which is erroneous biologically as well as cognitively. We don’t want to start believing that as an end that all women are bad and a thousand other small lies that are meant to be kind but they’re really not. The intention is kind but the results is that they’re just justifying and giving credibility to you believing your negative thoughts are true. That’s all that is.

And what does that get you, brother? It gets you more of the same results because the more you believe the thoughts that you have, the more of the same results you’re going to get. So here is the truth, if you don’t have what you want it is because you are not taking the action required to get it period. All results come from action and if you keep taking rejection personally and making it mean something about you, you are never going to get the results that you want.

Because you are never going to take the action required. So think about what it would be like to build a business or pursue a career or find love if you didn’t take a single thing that happened personally. If you believed you would succeed and get what you wanted as long as you kept taking action until you got it if you understood that you have to make a certain number of offers and you have to hear “no” a certain amount of times to ever get to the yes that you want.

The yeses there but you have to go through the river of misery, right? You have to go through the “no’s”. Building a business and finding love are way more in common than people think. They both require putting yourself out there again and again and again and they both require being willing to experience rejection and to understand that it has nothing to do with you and the value that you bring either to your business or to other people.

And both in business and in love, the number one predictor of whether you will get what you want is how willing you are to try and fail and try again and that is true to get the business or to get the relationship and that’s true when you are in the business and in the relationship. So, brother, go out there make the offers, hear “no” and try again. You can do it. You will succeed. Do this, count up the ‘noes’, because I want data.

I want to know how many no’s it takes before you get to the yes. Be brave my brother and until next week, elevate your alpha.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:31:31.8] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha: Your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset, at the alphamalecoach.com/unleash.

[END]