Overcoming The Fear of Rejection

Fear of rejection can run your day without saying a word. I’ve felt it in rehab bunkhouses, in church pews that taught guilt over growth, and across kitchen tables where a homeowner just wanted their AC to work and their evening back. That same fear fuels the masks we wear, the discounts we offer too soon, and the way we beat ourselves up on the drive home. So I pulled the thread from the beginning: where does imposter syndrome start, how does it hijack sales, and what daily choices make that voice lose its power?

We start with the messy parts: performing to be safe, confusing approval with belonging, and how organized religion shaped and then shattered some of my early beliefs. From there, the focus turns practical. I walk through how to read body language, ask sharper questions, and slow down enough to uncover the real blocker behind a hesitant buyer. We get honest about tonality and ego—why being the expert doesn’t give you license to steamroll, and how letting someone finish can save a deal. You’ll hear why “I don’t know; I’ll get back to you” is a trust builder, not a weakness, especially when talking with engineers or highly technical clients.

Then we tackle value, pricing, and boundaries. Not everyone is your customer, and chasing chronic discounters will hollow out your calendar and your confidence. I unpack the true cost of a “free” van roll, how to teach value without apology, and why clean presentation—uniform, breath, clarity—sells before words do. Finally, we zoom in on the inner work: cutting self‑talk that spirals, making quick amends, and stacking esteemable actions that make you the same person when eyes are on you and when they’re not. Simple routines like breathing, prayer or meditation, the gym, and a few intentional calls become the spine that steadies your day.

If this hits home, press play, take what serves you, and try one habit for a week. Subscribe for new drops every Friday at 4 a.m., share this with a teammate who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What’s the one mask you’re ready to set down today?

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Fear Still Lingers
• 3:10 Rehab, Religion, And Identity Masks
• 7:50 People Pleasing And Belonging
• 11:40 Spotting Rejection Fear In Sales
• 14:30 Read The Room And Ask Better
• 17:20 Stop The Self‑Talk Spiral
• 21:06 Tone, Expertise, And Letting Others Talk
• 24:06 Handling Experts And Saying I Don’t Know
• 26:36 Not Everyone Is Your Customer
• 28:56 Price, Value, And Business Reality
• 31:46 Habits, Presentation, And Confidence

Transcript

CoreyBerrier: 1:01

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Berrier, and today I'm going to do a little follow-up on last week's discussion on fear of rejection and imposter syndrome. So I realized after I did the episode last week that I didn't give you really any way of overcoming that thing or or how I've overcome a lot of those things. And I think there's always a I think there's always a piece of those things that are always going to live in each and every one of us. At least for me, I think there is. And I think, you know, as I've reflected back over this past week after doing last week's episode, I got to thinking about there's different different levels of imposter syndrome, different levels of fear of rejection. And they show up differently. So as an example, you know, if I look back on some of the things that I've overcome in my life, and some of the things that I've been through are challenges that, and by no means am I saying this like I've, you know, arrived or anything like that, but a lot of the things that I've put myself through in my life, a lot of people don't come out of those things, drugs, alcohol, relationships, putting myself in really terrible positions, like I mentioned last week in in Las Vegas and in the other Corey's nasty house. And so I think about you know, I think about what it took to get through those things, going away to rehab for six months and being away from you know the woman I was seeing and being in a a camp of men for six months, which I couldn't leave the property, you know, and it was a Pentecostal holiness uh recovery center, if you will. There was no um, they didn't look at things, they didn't look at recovery the way I look at recovery now. There was no 12 steps, there was no framework, it was Pentecostal holiness show up and God, you know, it was God fearing. I mean, I remember Jesus. I remember the preacher would just look at you and make you feel so guilty for not going up to the altar. I mean, he would look directly at you and just say, like, you know, what what you know, what are you not repenting for or whatever? It's been a long time ago, so I can't remember specifically how he said, but it was this guilt-ridden fearful way of preaching. And quite frankly, it it kind of ruined my organized religion thoughts. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't buy into organized religion. I don't like it, it doesn't align with me. I don't go to church because it's just not my cup of tea. If it's your cup of tea, more power to you. I'm not saying anything's wrong with it. I'm just saying it doesn't work for me. And uh my brother is uh, you know, he is an ordained minister, and uh he he doesn't preach that way. And uh and he's not in it for the wrong reasons. And there's not too many people I know, not that I know a bunch of preachers, but it does seem like there's a uh there's a financial aspect to that. And my little brother didn't have that for sure. But back to the fear of rejection and and the things that imposter syndrome, you know, I think about you know, the things that I was most fearful for or most fearful of were those situations that I put myself in because I was intoxicated. The DUIs, the getting in trouble with drugs, the you know, putting myself in positions where I could ultimately been killed at minimum. And I think about you know, the times that I got through where I was terrified, I was scared to death. And one of those times was for sure in that six-month you know work camp that I was in, and I was court-ordered because I'd got in trouble with drugs, and my alternative was I could go to prison for 34, 35 to 42 months, and that just wasn't an option for me. I mean, it was an option, but it wasn't one I was gonna uh exercise, I can tell you that. And so I decided to go for the lesser of the two evils and go to this six-month camp. The problem uh, or the thing was is they knew I needed they knew I was court-ordered there, so the folks that were court-ordered got treated a little bit differently. And ultimately, because they knew I needed to be there or that I was court-ordered to be there, I didn't uh the again was treated with a very different um treated very differently. And so I had to people please, and I had to make sure I was liked by everyone. And I've talked about masks on here, and boy, in that place I had to have four 40 different masks, you know. I had a you know uh a God-fearing, you know, uh repentant mask on in church. I had to be cool in front of the guys that were cool. I had to be, you know, uh tough in front of the guys that were tough. I had to be able to communicate with the guys that were, you know, I mean, this place was like the last stop for a lot of folks, including me in that situation. But there were some hardcore dudes in there, um, people that had countless felony charges sitting on there, you know, waiting for the cop or the yeah, the cops to come and serve them their charges or warrants or whatever. And so they came to this place because it was an attempt to mitigate those charges. And so you were, I was around a bunch of wild ass dudes. I mean, you're talking about people that are coming in off the street that have been smoking methamphetamines and crack cocaine, and I mean, like the the second before they got in was when they hit the crack pipe. So you're dealing with people with untreated bipolar disorder, untreated schizophrenia, like these are not people you really want to be around. And so I had to, you know, I had the people please, and I had to, because I didn't want to get rejected out of that place. And I felt like if I ever spoke up, I would be rejected. I felt like if I or and ejected, uh, so I just kind of played good, you know, I played the part with whoever I was in front of. And that's been a lot of story a lot of my life as I just play the part of who the person I'm in front of. And whether that's you know, in a relationship, or whether that's with a you know, uh a past boss, or whether that's been with even friends or people at the bar, or you know, the list goes on and on. This is something I've struggled with a long a lot of my life, and it's because I wanted people's approval, I wanted them to like me. And the truth of the matter is, I just didn't feel like I was good enough to be a part of. And so I've been doing a lot of work over these past few months to figure out what's the root of those things, and and it's really just stories that we tell ourselves, and a lot of that stems from fear of rejection, and and the reason you know, that imposter syndrome, I believe, you know, manifests is because we've I've you know had to play the part of different people all my life because of that fear of rejection. And so let's take this in a different direction. You know, I mentioned I can tell fear of rejection in salespeople, and I mean I can see it a mile away. And the way because I've been that guy, and the way I've overcome that is I have to realize when a customer or client or uh you know my boss or whoever doesn't do the thing I want them to do, it's not the outcome that I want. The truth is they're just not doing it my way. And the other hard truth is, people are not going to do it my way. You know, while my way seems like it may be the right way, I have to be open-minded to it not being the right way. And so that fear, you know, that fear of rejection in a sales situation, uh very rarely am I affected by the fear of rejection in a sales situation because I don't know what's going on with that person unless I ask enough questions. I don't know what's going on in their personal life. And sometimes you can't ask those questions, but you can pick up and you can sense when people have something more going on than they're telling you. If you watch their body language or their facial expressions, or how they interact with you, you know, if they're open and kind, that might just mean they're using that as a people-pleasing method, so you go away. And so sometimes you have to ask the hard questions in those situations. It doesn't mean you need to be a jerk by any stretch because that's never appropriate. But what is appropriate is figuring out, you know, if you're in plumbing or HVAC and you're at a customer's house, they have a problem. They didn't wake up that day and call you because they had nothing better to do. They didn't call you because they like seeing your company van in their driveway. In fact, you're the last person they wanted to call. And so you got to figure out why you're there, what the problem is. And you can only do that through being, you know, being kind and listening to what they say, reading those facial expressions and the body language, then understanding how you can solve their problem. And it's much like that in life, you know, when when you've had a disagreement with someone, or the people are not acting the way you think they should act, there's a reason for that. Maybe your expectations are unreasonable. Or maybe they have something going on that they're not telling you, and it's your job to figure that out. And I've also found that I sometimes, lots of times, put unreasonable expectations on myself. You know, I don't know if you have ever said to yourself, hey, that was really a stupid move. You could have done this better, you could have done this different. Why did you do that? Why did you say that? And it's this constant barrage of you know, beating the shit out of yourself. You're the only one doing it. You know, most of the time we would not talk to another friend the way we talk to ourselves, and that self-talk can be damaging. It can be detrimental to that fear of rejection and that's that imposter syndrome. It can, you know, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy when you start talking shit to yourself and you beat yourself up over things that are just not in your control, and they're not your fault most of the time. I'm not saying that you don't have a part, and I'm not saying that you don't you shouldn't take accountability because you 100% should. You have a part in everything, but you're not the whole part, you're not the whole piece of the puzzle, you're just a part of it. And it doesn't do you any good to berate yourself after you've lost a cell or after you've said something stupid to your girlfriend or your wife. But it does pay off, you know, to make amends and to say, hey, I was wrong in this situation. Not I was wrong and you were wrong, but I was wrong in this situation. It could be how I handled it, it could be how I reacted, it could be how I interpreted the conversation, which could have been wrong. And so sometimes you have to ask clarifying questions. Did you mean to say it this way? Well, no, I didn't mean to say it this way. Is that how you took it? That's how I took it. Well, no, not I didn't mean that at all, right? So just a simple conversation sometimes can solve so many problems. And the problem is people don't communicate today. You know, we communicate through text message, we communicate through, you know, we see people on social media, and we think that's the facts, right? We think that uh when we see people acting crazy online, that that's the real person, and really they may have just had a really crappy day that day, and maybe they just decided to say something crazy on social media, and now you think they're crazy. On the other hand, you got to think about before you say stupid stuff because people can perceive you in that same light, and so I think all of these things contribute to how we see ourselves and how we look at us as people, and a lot of times we don't look our look at ourselves in a very positive light, and that's damaging, and it doesn't build your self-confidence, it doesn't build your character, um, or if it does, sometimes it builds a negative character, and that's not really what you want, I don't believe. It's not what I want. I don't want people to look or hear anything that I say and think that guy's a real jerk, or that guy's an egomaniac, and so I go back and I listen to this podcast, you know, after it comes out, because I like to hear how do I come across to the crowd? If I were listening to this, how would I come across? How would I sound? And sometimes I don't like what I hear. Sometimes I think to myself, dude, what are you doing? And that's you know, that kicking my own ass. Like, why did you say it that way? Why did your voice inflect in that particular manner when you were talking about this this thing? And it could just be that I'm passionate about it, it could be that I feel very strongly about it, and sometimes that may come across as being preachy or or condescending. And so as it pertains to sales and your customers, you got to think about how your tonality is, you got to think about how you're coming across. And listen, it's you know, when you know you're right because you're the professional, it's real easy to slip into I'm the professional, you're an idiot, and what you're saying makes no sense, and you need to hear me because I'm the professional. And unfortunately, that doesn't work very well. Even if someone's wrong, sometimes you just gotta let them keep talking, and sometimes they'll figure out on their own they're not making any sense, and sometimes you just have to be empathetic towards their towards their um I'm trying to think of the word here towards their lack of information, their lack of ability to know what they're talking about, because most people don't, you know, but they can go on Chat GPT or Perplexity or whatever, or Google, and they can Google what they think is wrong with their air conditioner, and then they're the expert. They think they can speak your language, and you know they can't speak your language. You're there, you're the expert. You're the you're the guy that actually knows. So that in itself, if you deal with that that um that imposter syndrome because this engineer is talking about all the mechanics of an HVAC system, and maybe you don't know the specifics of what he's talking about, you got to recognize like, okay, this guy's an engineer. He probably does know more about the inner workings of this box than I do. He probably does ask very pointed questions because he wants to seem smart. And so let him ask those questions. And if you don't know the answer, the the answer is I don't know, I'll have to get back with you. Or let me check into that. But don't ever try to, my advice would be don't ever try to, you know, out talk someone who might know more than you. And you know, I use that engineer example because this has happened countless times in our industry. You know, you you run across that one out of ten guy that's you know, he wants to know every single thing about how that machine works. And it's not, you know, as a sales guy, it's not our job to know everything about the inner workings of that system. You know, you need to know enough to have a conversation, but you're not an engineer, you're a HVAC salesperson or plumbing salesperson or whatever kind of salesperson you are, and you're there to sell the job and be able to communicate that effectively so that person can make a decision on their own to move forward with you as soon as possible. And I think uh, you know, back to the the fear of rejection, you know, at the end of the day, not everybody, not everybody is your customer. Not everybody should do business with you. And the truth of the matter is not everybody, you don't want everybody to do business with you because some people are not fun to do business with, no matter how kind and nice you are, how many no matter how many discounts you give them. In fact, those people that are requesting discount after discount after discount are going to continue being a pain in the neck. You can guarantee it, it happens all the time. And so when you have that fear of rejection crop up when it's time to ask for the money, just remember like not everybody's your customer, and it is ultimately their decision whether they move forward with you or not. You can't do anything to control that situation as long as you show up and give it 110%. And I don't mean you try to sell your butt off, I mean like you educate that customer on why it makes the most sense to go with you, even at a higher price, and you'd be shocked how many times people will pay a higher price to go with a better company. You know, I hear people complain online about how companies are price gouging and how equipment's very expensive and how they're making so much money. And the truth is you don't know how much money it costs to run a business. It's astronomical. You know, just looking at the you know, the van itself is gonna cost you um the van itself just to get in the driveway costs three to five hundred dollars. So if you go out on a you know on a zero call and walk away with a goose egg, that costs the company money. And I don't want to scare you to have that fear of rejection because sometimes you're gonna have to walk away with a zero. It shouldn't be often, but it is gonna have to happen at some point. And then you have to reflect back, what could I have done differently? Where what did I say that maybe could have changed the direction of this? And it could be how you're dressed, it could be your breath stinks, it could be that you are filthy, and sometimes you still have to show up filthy, but you should probably explain to the customer what you were doing before you got there so they don't think that you show up to work filthy. Now, if it's eight o'clock in the morning, you should never be filthy going into work. You should never look like the garbage man does that comes by your house every week. You know, um, and these things, these small things build confidence in your sales process. They build confidence in you. When you do the things that you're supposed to do, when you brush your teeth in the morning, when you put your your uniform on and it's pressed and it looks nice and it's clean and your hair's fixed, you feel better. And so therefore, you're gonna sell better. It's the same thing. If you're going on a date, you wouldn't show up on a date, surely, to God, looking disgusting, looking disheveled, looking like you just rolled out of bed because you don't want that person to think that you're a slack ass. Well, work's no different. And I mean every day at work. I don't mean your first day at work, I mean your hundred and uh your thousandth day at work. It's that stuff should never change. And if you do the same thing the right way every day for a thousand days, then that thousand and one is just gonna be a normal day. You're just gonna get up and you're gonna brush your teeth and you're gonna shower and you're gonna be clean. And that's gonna be become it's gonna become your new normal opposed to the new, opposed to your normal now being the other guy. You know, we get used to we get used to things, right? In other words, there's um you know, if your if your goal is X number of dollars per day, you're probably gonna get right to that goal and you're gonna quit. Now some people push past that goal. And then that then they push past that goal. It's a game. And so that's how you that's how I've beat having that fear of rejection and imposter syndrome when it comes to you know being in a sales role. It's gonna be hard to be successful in sales if you have that. It's gonna be hard to be successful in life if you have that. Because there's always gonna be that little voice in the back of your head that says you're not good enough, you don't belong here, and you're gonna deal with that for probably the rest of your life, but it that voice gets smaller and smaller and smaller. At least that's been my experience. Because repetition builds muscle, just like if you went to the gym. You know, repeating those positive habits creates a positive person. If you want to be esteemable, you have to do esteemable things. You can't get self-esteem by being a turd when you're not in front of people. You gotta be the same guy, whether people are looking or not. And that's one of the things that you know, I'm the same guy. Doesn't matter if you're in front of me, if the boss is in front of me, if you're not in front of me. I'm the same dude. Doesn't matter. Because it's just easier being the same guy, and it's still taking a lot of work to get there. And I can contribute a lot of that to being in recovery and having to go through some very hard and painful lessons in recovery. But those things have made me the person that I am today, and I am proud of those things. You know, uh not everybody gets it, and I don't know why that is, and I don't know why I get it, I don't know why I got it. And it doesn't mean I'll get it tomorrow, but it means today I have it. Because I've prayed, I've meditated, I've done my breathing exercises, I've gone to the gym, I've made my phone calls. It's the consistent things in your life that really bring peace to you. And if you're looking for that or you're interested in that, and you are struggling, just go back and re-listen to this because these are all my experience. I'm not telling you anything from a book, I'm not telling you anything that I haven't already done. Uh, and again, I haven't arrived. I'm not, you know, this like by no means am I a perfect example of how you should want to act. But I do try to set a good example as best I can. And I don't always do a great job, but I try to correct it if I don't. And so I think that's going to be about it for today. I appreciate you guys listening. The podcast drops every Friday at 4 a.m. And I plea, and please, if you would subscribe to the podcast. We've got about 50 some percent people that have subscribed. If you're not one of them, please do leave us a review. That'd be great. I'd appreciate that. And we'll see you next Friday.