Let's talk about the courage to be disliked.
I think the top fears that controllers are the social ones,
the phobias, the anxieties relating to abandonment and
ostracism, being embarrassed and humiliated, even violence, a bad
reaction from other people fear reverse engineers those outcomes
like embarrassment and humiliation, and comes to the
conclusion that any form of dislike or disapproval is a
massive threat, because it could lead to those outcomes. So it
makes two assumptions. One is that those outcomes are
definitely bad and harmful. And the other is that any form of
disapproval will lead and escalate to those outcomes. And
so it starts to see being disapproved off and being
disliked is this huge threat is this dangerous situation? So
status knows that dislike and disapproval are really emotional
states, what I call the disses, disapproval, disappointment,
disgust, disagreement, dislike, all these decisions start to
become the focal point of this fear. How do we prevent these
emotional states from happening and other people? I don't know
about you. But it was incredibly painful for me to acknowledge
that most of my life decisions, including huge decisions, like
what I did for a career and who I hung out with where I lived,
were based primarily on preventing these emotions from
happening and people that I was a slave to this fear of just
avoiding dislike, that I choose huge parts of my life.
Dedicated, just preventing those emotions, what a waste. What a
waste of a life. If you can tolerate the risk of being
disliked, and tolerate the actual event of being disliked,
of people having those distance, emotions, then you're free. Your
opportunities, expand 1000 fold, there's so much more you can do
with your life. If you're free from being controlled by this
fear. And doesn't mean you have to become fearless. As I've
talked about before, Bravery is not the absence of fear, you can
still be afraid of the consequences of people disliking
you. But if you can go ahead and accept those consequences and
let them happen, then your range of options just explodes. And
your life goes from a limited prison to just an open
wilderness where anything can happen. So in my mind, there
really is no fear that's more important to overcome, for your
quality of life, than the fear of what other people will think
of you notice the link your mind makes where it thinks any form
of dislike or disapproval equals harm. When you react to a
viscerally oh my god, they're going to judge me, as if
something bad's going to happen when they do. When's the last
time you challenge this? When's the last time we say okay, well,
what will happen? Will the injuries Exactly. Now some of
you will have actual experiences. You'll have a bad
childhood, we're being disliked, got you bullied and beaten up
and everything like that. And so you'll believe that that's going
to happen again. You're an adult now, living in an adult world.
Is this still true? Is it still true that being even slightly
disapproved of, or having someone slightly disagree with
you? By having someone a bit disgusted by your opinion, will
actually hurt you physically? That's actually something you
can't endure. When's the last time you challenge that belief?
Because I'll tell you right now, I get hate every day. No
injuries, no scars, not even a bruise. So if you're so sure
that being disapproved on disliked, will lead to harm. Why
am I unharmed? Read my YouTube comment section. Why am I
unhappy? When someone feels one of those biases around you. And
even though you try to prevent it from happening, it still
happens occasionally. What actually happens most of the
time, I mean, right now even if you're a total people pleaser,
and you do your best to make people like you there's somebody
out there somebody you know and work with or hanging out with
who hates the fact that you're a people pleaser. They disapprove
that they just like you for what injuries have you incurred as a
result of that? We no matter how much of a good person you think
you are, there are people out there who don't like you. There
are people out there who disagree with you. You interact
with them on a daily basis, there are people you walk by in
the street and there's lucky and just get that I might not even
mention it to you. But that happens. You know it must happen
because you do it to other people. Does it always result in
total abandonment? Does it destroy all of your
relationships permanently? Do you die or get injured? Does
anything actually fucking happen most of the time, you know, you
just fear that something will happen. And most of the time
you're fine. But it this way, even if things have happened to
you in the past, the fact that you're watching this video means
it didn't kill you. Have you ever been disliked by someone
you actually really want to be in your life and I don't mean
for insecure reasons or you're desperate for love. But someone
whose personality you're actually really loved. How often
does that happen when they've disliked you? I'm not saying
that's hypothetical. It has happened to you. I've had people
I like dislike me, but what I found is incredibly rare. that
someone who's a good fit for me, someone I really admire and
respect, also has a lot of dis feelings towards me. Most of the
time if somebody dislikes me, and hates what I have to say and
disgusted by my opinions and stuff, when I look at that
person objectively, I think I wouldn't really want them in my
life either, frankly, when the reason they feel those feelings
because we're so fucking different in their belief
systems. I don't actually have a huge attraction towards keeping
that person in my life. Now, there was a time when I did feel
that kind of need to keep people in my life, but it wasn't
because they had a great personality. It's just because I
was pretty desperate for friends and love. The remove that
desperation, those people who dislike you, do you really care
that they're not in your life? Are you actually if you had
people who loved you for who you were the tight circle of people
who approve of everything you said, would you need to include
this person as well? Or could you live without them? If being
like is so important to you just think of this, if only point 1%
of the world liked you, and approved of you, that would be
75,000 people, I want you to take a moment to think of how
long it would take you to meet and get to know 75,000 People,
you couldn't do it. He couldn't do it in a lifetime. There's
more people who like you in the world than you could possibly
meet. Because I don't care how low your self esteem is, you've
got to meet at least point 1% of people feel something positive
towards you, right. And that's being really conservative, I
don't care how much of a freak you are the numbers actually
higher than that. But even if the number is that low, it's
still too many people for you to meet in your entire life. So
you're worried about a scarcity of total abandonment. If you're
busy meeting lots of people, you're going to find that point
1%. And you only need to find three or four people who have an
awesome social circle. So everybody else can dislike you
as long as only a few dumped. So what are you worried about?
Notice that your fear is actually more about the real in
the moment conflict. It's not so much people disliking a new
being abandoned. That's just the catastrophizing where you're
really afraid of somebody actually expressing a dis to
your face in the moment and having to handle. But that's the
thing, you're actually so terrified off. And you've had
that happen in your life, you've been around it when it's
happened, clearly didn't die from it. It clearly endured and
survived, and might have been very emotionally uncomfortable
for you. But why was it emotionally uncomfortable for
you, that something actually happened to you? Or were you
uncomfortable, because you simply did not want this to
happen to you. If someone throws lots of insults at me, but it
was in Chinese, and I don't know what they're saying. But I feel
offended and hurt and rejected. Now just feel a bit confused. I
had to actually interpret what somebody says to me, for me to
be hurt by it. Right? Especially when it's just words. So for
someone to dislike me, and that actually hurt me, it's something
in my interpretation process that actually hurts. We have to
not want them to say stuff, I have to want them to say
something else. As long as I don't have those wants, I'm
unaffected. You know, one of my black clients, I asked him, you
know, if a member of the kk k thought that you were addicted,
would that bother you? Is it No, of course not. Why? Well, what
difference does it make if one of your friends thinks you're
decayed? And if someone thinks you're a decade, what difference
does it make who it is? It's just the story. You tell
yourself in your head, I want that person to like me, I don't
care if that person does. What if you think hey, if someone
dislikes me, then that rules them out from my life, that's
actually helpful piece of information, no harm done. Of
course, all of this won't make your fear go away.
So let's get practical. Start small, whatever level of
disagreeableness that you currently sit in, just ramp it
up a little bit, just a tiny little bit that you feel that
you can tolerate. Show a little bit more of your true opinions.
disagree a little bit more, argue a little bit more than you
usually would express opinions that you wouldn't usually
express show preference for things that you would usually
hide. It can be tiny. The example I often use is like all
of your friends want to go out for Chinese food and you just
say I'd rather have pizza. Now you might end up going for
Chinese food. And just saying I'd rather have pizza just being
willing to rock the boat a little bit more than you usually
do. A lot of this is about you showing the distance you being
disagreeable, disapproving, disgusted, disliking, you'll
find that often people are afraid of rejection or actually
more afraid of rejecting they're more evasive delivering the
decision and receiving them. They tell themselves a story
that they're afraid of rejection but actually okay with not being
liked. What they hate is being seen as someone who dislike
somebody else. So if you just practice showing a little more
that distance yourself, general topic of disagreeableness and
disapproval. Then you'll find that your tolerance for these
level of emotions will slowly increase and you'll realize
they're not things to be afraid of. They're just uncomfortable.
And if you're willing to endure that discomfort, you get more
options in life, you get better quality of life, he had better
friends better job, he had to travel and try those things
you've always wanted to try. You just have to pay the price of
somebody as a reaction, that's it. That's fucking it. So your
parents are disappointed that you dropped out of university,
that's all they as disappointed, nothing happens. They just sit
there been disappointed, and you go off on a better career path.
And that just sits like that. And that's it, you survive. If
you realize that like you can't stop the disappointment from
happening. But it doesn't actually hurt you. As long as
you're okay with that happening. You're free. In start by
choosing one person who you're actually okay with disliking
you, if you can find that one person and commit to being fully
honest with them. Right, let them dislike you just to train
just like a sparring dojo of some kind. Okay, I know that
person doesn't like me. So I'm going to go and talk to them and
share my ideas on politics with them, just so I can spend some
time being in the presence of somebody disapproves of me,
right, just just training, the endurance of their emotional
state, right, it all pays off and the interviewer can endure
the extreme discomfort of being hated by everyone in the room,
then you are socially free. And that's a find the room where
everybody loves you express your preferences, but don't try to
manage their reaction. Okay, when somebody is in one of the
disses, you can say they disagree with you. They just
like you just let them write, don't fight back. Don't try to
change their mind or convince them. You don't need to keep
arguing with them. If you've hit your level of discomfort for the
day and years, that's enough, it's fine. You can even back
down from the argument. But don't try to make them feel
better about it. Don't try to change their mind, just sit in
that emotion. Think of it this way. At some point, they're
gonna go to lunch, some point they'll need to take a shit.
They've got to sleep sometime this is not gonna last forever.
Just endure it until they need to go do something else and then
it's over. Obviously, there isn't a single video podcast out
there. It's just gonna solve your fear on this. But if you
work with me for an extended period of time, you can get to a
place where this is really in the past for you. So get in
touch dan@brojo.org And we'll talk about how to become someone
who isn't afraid of what other people think of them.