We all fear rejection to a certain extent, some of us more than others. As humans we long to belong. We want to be loved and accepted by others. When we think that we are going to get “kicked out” of the tribe it incites a fear response in us. This is our natural human response. Our body instinctively goes into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, whichever we have conditioned it to do. When we think we are getting “kicked out” we will do whatever we can to stay part of the tribe.

We look to the people in our lives to make us feel loved and accepted. We want our spouse or our children or our co-workers or our parents or our friends, someone in our lives to validate us, to tell us we are enough. We seek other people’s approval in an effort to prove our own worthiness. We think if other people accept us then we will feel good about ourselves. And we all want to feel good.

The only person who can fill this need in our lives is our loving heavenly Father, God. We have to choose to believe in His love for us. We must choose to believe that we are enough, that we are worthy, that we are loved and accepted because He says so. We have faith that what He says is true, is true. We must practice believing that what He says about us is true. We practice believing until we believe. We receive His truth about us in faith.

When we depend on others to make us feel loved and how we live our lives is affected by their answer, we tend to show up needy and weird. We are always adjusting our behaviors to try to affect their response. We tend to not show up as our authentic selves because we fear others’ response. We lack confidence in ourselves because we are afraid of doing something “wrong” or not being good enough.

When we do this, we are not trusting completely in God. We are not claiming His truth over our lives and resting in His love for us. We forget the power we have of the Holy Spirit living inside of us and we doubt. We tell ourselves a negative story about us instead of telling God’s story about us.

We try to people please to get the results we want but that just leads to us not being our true self and usually leads to us becoming resentful. We expect someone else to give us what we need and then when they do not, we get bitter and resentful.

Our fear of rejection may cause us to reject ourselves and blame others before they can reject us. We try to do whatever it takes to get others to love and accept us, but no one can ever make us feel loved and accepted.

We must do the internal work of believing God’s truth about us. We must choose to agree with God about who He says we are. It is not other people’s job to make us feel loved and accepted. We decide what we believe with the thoughts we think. We must choose to tell ourselves God’s story about us. We must stop looking for acceptance and approval and love from people who are not equipped to give it to us.

We must be honest with ourselves. Honesty makes a way for connection with ourselves and with others. We must stop worrying about what other people think about us. We must stop trying to manage other people’s emotions and take responsibility for regulating our own. We must stop asking other people to make us feel a certain way and start telling ourselves a beneficial story about ourselves and generating for ourselves the feelings we want to feel.

We decide to be the best version of us we can be believing God’s truth about us. We root and ground and center ourselves in God’s love for us. We stand firm in His Truth. We believe He is with us and for us and working all things together for our good. We know we are a beloved child of God and find our worth in Him. We decide that God’ opinion is the only opinion that matters.

Our human nature will keep going back to wanting validation from others. We must practice awareness of this tendency and redirect our minds/thoughts to God’s truth. We take our thoughts captive. We must focus and refocus moment by moment and hour by hour and day by day. We, with intention, renew our minds on His truth and over time He transforms us. We practice believing God!

We must pay attention to the thoughts we are thinking and the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves. Then we must practice telling ourselves God’s story about us. We must rewire our brains to God’s love. This will take time and effort. Our human tendency is to go to the negative, to doubt, to fear, but we choose the thoughts we think. We can choose to tell ourselves a painful story or a loving truth story, whichever story we choose to tell will be the evidence we find in our life.

Our brain will offer us unhelpful, negative thoughts because that is how our brains work. We must practice being aware of the thoughts we think. We must intentionally renew our mind on truth redirecting our mind to beneficial thoughts. Instead of just believing whatever thought our brain offers us, we get curious about our thinking and then choose to think the thoughts that create the feelings we want and motivate us to the actions we want to take in our life.

Our brain wants to avoid pain, so it offers us unhelpful thoughts as its way of protecting us. Our brain seeks pleasure, so it offers us thoughts that cause us to not want to do the thing because then we don’t do the thing and our brain doesn’t have to work. We must direct our thinking. We decide if we want to think a thought or not.

Thoughts are powerful.

We have a lot of faulty thinking. We tell ourselves a bad story about ourselves and about our life and about other people. We think negative thoughts. We worry about what others will think. We tell ourselves “We can’t,” “never will,” “aren’t’ good enough.” We make excuses for how we are thinking, “this is just the way I am.” We think we are telling ourselves the truth and that we have to think this way. Good News, we don’t have to think this way! Good News, all thoughts are not true.

We can choose to believe, tell ourselves, “I can,” “I will,” “I am enough.” We can remember that it does not matter what other people think. (Because actually we can never control what other people think or how they feel, that’s on them.) It only matters what God thinks about us and He thinks we are capable, resilient, and strong. He made us to be creative beings, to be always in the process of renewal and becoming.

Our experience of our life is based on our thoughts. The thoughts we think generate the feelings we feel. From our feelings we take actions which give us the results in our life. We must pay attention to our thinking. We have the power to choose our thoughts. We decide what we make everything in life mean by the thoughts we think about whatever is happening or whatever the person is doing.

Our actions start as thoughts. As a man thinks in his heart so he is. We live by what we believe. We become what we think. We will find evidence for the thoughts we think because our brain wants to prove our thoughts true. So, we must become aware of our thinking and intentionally tell ourselves a good Truth story! Think, believe, act, until you become. We become the person who… and our actions will follow. We “be” before we “do.”

Other people get to be what they want, do what they want, and we don’t have to make it mean anything bad about us. What other people do, or say, or how they are in the world, shows who they are and has no bearing on who you are. We cannot control what other people do or say or how they are.

There are also a lot of external things that happen to us that we cannot control. The only thing we can control is how we show up, and how we show up is determined by the thoughts we think. The thoughts we think create the feelings we feel, which lead to the actions we take. This thought, feeling, action cycle gives us an internal result of how we experience our life and determines how we show up externally.

We must pay attention to the thoughts we are thinking that are creating the results we are getting in our life.

If we think we are overwhelmed, then we will see evidence in our life for overwhelm, and then feel overwhelmed. When there is a lot going on in my life, I like to think “this is all part of it” then I realize my capacity to handle whatever comes my way because I remember I am equipped by God to deal with whatever happens in life. I can decide what I want to think. I can live into the person God created me to be, believing that He makes me capable, equipped, empowered, and able to handle hard things.

We practice believing! We practice self-compassion because we are in the process of becoming. We will slip into old tendencies because we have wired our brains to think and feel a certain way. Rewiring our brains is possible but it takes intentional work. We must remember the power of the Holy Spirit in us helping us. We must remember we are strengthened by God.

We practice accepting our humanness. God expands our capacity to accept our life as it is as we trust Him. We remember we are human so we will make mistakes. We remind ourselves that God does not hold our mistakes against us, so we don’t have too either. He has removed our mistakes as far as the east is from the west. He looks at us with eyes of love. We are His cherished creation. He has compassion for us and wants us to have compassion for ourselves.

As we trust more and more in His love for us, as we practice telling ourselves God’s version of the story of our lives, we become less afraid. As we root, ground, center, ourselves in God’s Truth and trust Him, we discover freedom. Freedom from fear and worry and doubt and expectations. We practice believing that God loves us and is with us in all things. We practice believing that He is for us and all things in life are rigged in our favor. We practice believing that He is with us, always, so we are never alone in whatever we are going through.

We choose to believe, have faith, that we are God’s BELOVED child, and He will NEVER reject us!

Keep seeking Him and discovering freedom from fear!

Keep seeking and discovering God’s goodness and grace!