Why the Fear of Rejection Overrides One’s Ability to Ask for What They Want or Need

In “The Terror of a No“, the ever-insightful School of Life addresses through animation by Simon Biggs, an all too common problem in which the fear of rejection so disables a person’s confidence that they cannot ask for what they want or need, leaving them lacking on so many fronts.

…not asking is not cost free. We are avoiding the pain of rejection; but we are settling for something that is more insidious and troubling: a lack of opportunity. Not asking life for something means implicitly asking it for something else, failure from the outset. And this is especially sad because life is so very short. What we should really be scared of is not a ‘no’, but of reaching our deathbeds unfulfilled. We should ask.