What's Worse Than Rejection?

You fear rejection—but what if the real problem isn’t hearing “no,” but never taking the shot at all? In this episode of Mindfully Masculine, Charles and Dan dive into Dr. Robert Glover’s Dating Essentials for Men to unpack the hidden costs of avoiding rejection, and why reframing it can change everything.

🔹 Topics Covered:

• Why rejection isn’t the worst thing—inaction is
• The Seinfeld Effect: How doing the opposite of your instincts can work
• Self-limiting beliefs: What they are and how they sabotage success
• Treating dating like a scientific experiment to get better results
• The psychology of motivation: Pain, pleasure, and real change
• Overcoming fear of judgment and social anxiety
• Confidence vs. technique—why one always wins

🚀 Actionable Takeaways:

• Rejection isn’t personal—it’s just data. Learn, adjust, move on.
• The real danger? Letting fear keep you from opportunities.
• Confidence doesn’t mean perfection—it means ownership of who you are.
• Stop guessing—test for interest and let results guide you.

This episode is packed with real-world strategies, insights from psychology, and even a little Seinfeld wisdom. If you’ve ever let fear of rejection hold you back, it’s time to rethink everything.

💡 Listen now and discover why rejection is never the problem—avoiding it is.

📌 Visit mindfullymasculine.com for full episodes, video content, and more.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:45 Why Technique Alone Won't Save You
• 5:18 The Seinfeld Method: Doing the Opposite
• 7:52 The Fear of Being Seen Alone
• 10:50 The Psychology of Motivation and Change
• 14:34 Redefining Rejection in Dating
• 18:57 Reframing Rejection as a Process
• 20:41 The Problem Isn't the Problem--Your Mindset Is

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

Who can reject you? Who does reject you, and what is it that you are telling yourself is rejection? That's not actually rejection, like A woman communicating a low level of interest in going out with you is not reject. Welcome back to the mindfully masculine podcast. This is Charles, all right. In this episode, dan and I will continue our discussion of dating essentials for men, part one by Dr Robert Glover, and Some of the topics we'll get into will be the importance of addressing self-limiting beliefs, how societal and online influences reinforce negative beliefs, the role of confidence and attraction, overcoming fear of judgment and social anxiety, personal growth after breakups and why timing matters, reframing rejection and understanding its true meaning, the psychology of motivation, treating dating as a scientific experiment, testing for interest and interpreting different levels of attraction, how self-perception shapes dating success, the importance of taking action and breaking limiting patterns, and other additional topics. Please check out our website, mindfully masculinecom to check out our audio episodes, full video episodes and anything else we want to share. Thanks and enjoy. Welcome back.

Charles: 1:12

We just finished recording our last episode and we're going to roll right into the next one, because you got to talk to your sister at 1130, right, okay? So no problem. This is a fairly quick chapter with a bit of repeat from what we've already covered. So we'll go through it pretty quickly here and we're going to spend more time on self-limiting beliefs, because, again, it is that important. He spends a lot of time on it and I think we should as well, because really letting go of these ideas confirmed daily in our minds will help us get past some limitations in our experiences. You're going to be spinning your wheels if you don't change your self-limiting beliefs.

Dan: 1:47

It's the root of everything. If you're not willing to change those, you're wasting your time.

Charles: 1:52

Try anything else. Yeah, I think as guys, we find ourselves in that trap sometimes where we're like, okay, I'm not going to change anything about who I am or what. I think I'm just going to try to apply this new technique. I learned to getting dates, meeting women and think I'm just gonna try to apply this new technique. I learned to, yeah, getting dates, meeting women. And again, why you're kicking it too exactly, and the way cory wayne talks about it is, you'll find levels of success that are attainable but not sustainable. So you'll get some. If you change up the techniques you use for how you go about meeting new people and maybe asking them out on dates, you'll have more success than you've experienced in the past. But after not too long the wheels will fall off and you won't have, you won't change your life in a positive way and you won't change the nature of your relationships in a positive way. You'll just they'll get more doors open, but eventually they'll slam shut on you because you're not changing what you're bringing to the table. Okay, some of the.

Charles: 2:45

He's got another section where he categorizes these self-limiting beliefs. Some are negative thoughts. Those would include I don't deserve a loving relationship. I'm not good at small talk. Attractive women never talk to me. I'm afraid of rejection. I might fail and look like an idiot. Those are negative thoughts. Distorted thoughts include things like if one woman rejects me, then they will all reject me. Or women don't like short men, bald men, poor men whatever is relevant for you, women only go for guys with money. Based on this experience, I have decided to define that experience in a certain way and apply it to a broad range of women I've never met or interacted with. Starting real correct.

Charles: 3:23

Society is happy to help in that distortion as much as you'll let them. The groups on Reddit or Facebook you choose to participate in will certainly be happy. You'll find plenty of guys willing to reinforce your self-limiting beliefs because it makes their self-limiting beliefs feel less like self-limiting beliefs and more like objective reality.

Dan: 3:41

And also the point you made in the last podcast, weird Online, you get fed things that align with your beliefs and gravitate towards them as well. So, yeah, for you to find something that's going to change your mind. You know you're open to it. Yeah, you're not going to, you're not going to really seek it out.

Charles: 4:00

It's very easy to say I don't want to be confronted with things that make me uncomfortable or I already know are not true. Therefore, I will build a life where I insulate myself against those things. I won't have to feel those uncomfortable feelings. Judgmental thoughts include things like I'm a fat slob, women want successful men, but I'm a loser. If I can't date a beautiful woman, I won't date. That's a big one where guys will adopt this idea. If I can't drive a Ferrari, I just won't drive a car at all. Good luck. Those are the three types he goes through.

Charles: 4:29

He starts this chapter with a fun story from an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza has this attitude Every instinct I've had has been wrong. It's only brought me trouble. So I'm going to live my life in the complete opposite way. He decides to order a completely different lunch than he usually orders at the diner that him and Jerry and Elaine hang out at, and then, I think, by ordering a different thing, like some woman, notices that he ordered the same lunch that she orders, and he approaches her and he's I'm bald, I'm unemployed, I live with my parents. He just leaves with all of his negatives and she's oh hi, I'm Denise or whatever, and why is that? Obviously that's a comedic version of something. That's true. It wasn't what he said to her that appealed to her. It was the fact that he just walked up to her and stated it so confidently. That's what was attractive to her in that episode.

Dan: 5:18

And I'm talking about stating something, negative where most people would be even more insecure and hesitant if they're speaking normally.

Charles: 5:28

Yeah, it's a funny episode. I forget what it's called, but it's a good episode. If you're a Seinfeld fan, you probably know about it. If not, you don't have to binge the series to see it. It's interesting that he decides. Everything that I've been trying up until this point has been wrong for me. I'm going to try to do the opposite of it and, yeah, we should integrate that thinking in manageable doses into our own lives. I meet a new girl, fall in love immediately and follow her like a puppy dog for a couple of years to see if she magically just falls in love with me and tells me that she wants to be with me. That's not working, so maybe I should try something else.

Dan: 6:00

Yeah, part of that requires awareness of what you're doing, so you can choose the opposite. I love this idea because it is simple. It takes thinking out of the equation. It makes you super decisive. I would normally oh nope, I know what I'm going to do. It's the opposite of my tendency, so you're not even thinking about it by applying the exact opposite of your normal intentions Shortcut Picking your mind out of it, not talking yourself out of it, yeah, or scaring yourself.

Charles: 6:27

Or overthinking. Yeah, you're just saying I'm in trouble. What would I normally do with that girl? Do nothing, just sit and wait for her to leave.

Dan: 6:34

And being decisive is a very attractive quality in people right One of the most absolutely, and it comes across as being confident and knowing where you're going confident and knowing where you're going.

Charles: 6:45

He tells a story of a guy that went to one of his workshops where, basically, this guy had the idea of he wouldn't go to restaurants or bars and just eat by himself because he would think everybody's going to look at me like a loser. That's thinking keeps people out of the gym, right, if I go to the gym to work out for the first time, everybody's going to look at me and see that I'm using machines wrong and I'm going to be the laughingstock of the whole gym. So it's better that I just don't go at all. Either people will not notice you at all or they'll notice you and be like, oh, that guy's having dinner by himself. That's going to be it.

Dan: 7:12

Yeah, I wonder what his story is. What's he like? Because that doesn't happen all the time. Is he traveling for work? Maybe we're biased because we were traveling consultants Sometimes. Yeah, that's true, we were at the hotel bar eating, by ourselves, exactly, or in the room.

Charles: 7:23

Yeah, it's easier to order. We didn't have Postmates back when we were outside, but it's easier to order room service and eat in your room than going downstairs. But now I'm in Chicago for the first time on somebody else's dime. I'm going to a nice restaurant get some good food and appreciate being in a cool place that I'm not even having to pay for. And yeah, I would rarely just retire to the unless it was a long day when I was really tired or whatever, or travel day. This is a charmed life where I'm in a cool place and I'm not even having to pay to be here. This is awesome. I'm gonna go out and enjoy it.

Charles: 7:52

One of the many things I love about nikki glazer, the comedian she is always when she's promoting her tours and her shows on her social media. She's always encouraging people to go to her shows alone. If you don't have somebody, come alone. Going out to movies alone going out to yeah, that's never bothered me, the idea of, oh, there's a movie coming out and I'm super into this director or whatever. I can take off work and see a matinee on the thursday before it's officially released, like I would do that all the time and it never bothered me. I encourage people do those things, have fun and don't worry about people like so.

Charles: 8:23

This guy was at one of his workshops and he's I'm not even comfortable going out to eat by myself. He went out to eat. He was by himself. He saw a woman who was out to eat by herself and he was like I can't like bother her. She probably doesn't want to get bothered by me. He decided what will happen if I walk up to her and ask her if I can sit with her? She was happy to have him sit with her and they had a nice time together. He was willing to let go of those self-limiting beliefs. They spent the afternoon together. I went out to dinner and he had a good time because he was willing to try destroying this myth in his head with action.

Dan: 9:01

People seek connection. Human beings, we seek connection. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes you can say a puss on the face or a resting bitch face and it's just like, okay, stay away. But if you don't see that, then, if anything, you, by, by going first, you are giving value to somebody else and you're saying, hey, I'm going to bring you some energy here, I want to connect with you and it doesn't have to be anything other than a conversation and it says a lot. It says a lot for somebody who's willing to do that.

Dan: 9:30

When I lived in North Carolina, briefly for a little while, I remember I went up to our city. Where were you in? I was in Raleigh, raleigh, okay, I was in Raleigh, raleigh, okay, I was traveling all the time. So one weekend I did make it out to a bar and I was standing there by myself and a group of a couple of guys and a couple of girls came up and said, hey, you want to hang out with us? We saw you were standing here by yourself. I was blown away. It wasn't a crazy religious sect or anything like that. Nobody was trying to convert me or anything like that. No, it was. Yeah, it was really. It left a mark. I will never forget that, because that just doesn't happen that often, or at least not to me. Yeah, same.

Charles: 10:03

I can think of experiences like that it doesn't happen often, but it does happen sometimes where people are like hey, what are you up to, what's your story? It's so funny, I don't even know how to respond.

Dan: 10:15

What do you want from me?

Charles: 10:15

Yeah, so he does to listen, confronting yourself with many beliefs and doing anything to change them. It's a lot of hard work. It takes a lot to do, so he does make the point. You have to be very motivated and willing to unpack stuff. That's going to be difficult. If things are going well for you, you might not be a good candidate for this. If things are going perfect, you're definitely not going to do it and you might not need to. But if you've learned to comfort yourself and accept the way things are and like I guess it's good enough, I don't really want to, it's really only.

Charles: 10:50

I can speak from personal experience. My periods of significant personal growth and development have happened at the end of a relationship and usually a breakup. That was pretty rough on me and I'm happy to say that now I am in a relationship and I'm also still taking my personal growth seriously. Before I was in a relationship, it's okay. Now the relationship is my project. It gets all of my energy, my attention and my career and my own self-development growth goals. They get pushed to the back burner.

Dan: 11:27

So many of us do that dude. Yeah, including our friends the back burner.

Charles: 11:31

I'm guilty of that too, where, right now, I feel like I'm not in that pattern with my current relationship, which is nice, she's got some goals she's working on and trying to develop as well relationship, which is nice, she's got some goals, she's working on and trying to develop as well and I feel being a more effective partner and more effective at everything else I have to do because I'm not just zeroing in on getting obsessed with the relationship.

Dan: 11:50

And it's safer because you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. If you lose one of those things, you still have other things in your life for support, bringing you and helping with happiness, absolutely.

Charles: 12:00

Yeah, it doesn't put undue pressure on my partner either. I've experienced that before where my focus and dedication to what I thought I needed to do for the relationship was putting too much of a burden.

Dan: 12:12

Yeah, if you put everything else on the back burner, that one person is responsible for so many of your needs because you have the opportunity to get them filled from anywhere else.

Charles: 12:22

I bring that up because I may be speaking to the guy who went through a breakup recently or not that recently but he's finally feeling like it's time to get back out there. Don't waste that energy. That idea of maybe something needs to change. Maybe I need to approach this in a new way, because the way I did it last time didn't work. Leverage that to clean out some self-limiting beliefs that when you do meet the right person, you're not sabotaging yourself with all these negative things you've been carrying around Got introduced to a concept that I find fascinating and it lines up in my mind.

Dan: 12:51

When it comes to motivation, humans are not motivated by pleasure and pain. You're only motivated by hate. Amazing, interesting and this comes from Indistractable Amazing book. What he says is even the things that give us pleasure really are a way of diverting the pain of wanting something. So, basically, we have this want for something and that is causing us, and in order to alleviate that pain, we go and get it. If you get into self-limiting beliefs, it is painful and it does hurt because you're going to feel enough pain to actually motivate yourself to do so. And if you don't get into those self-limiting beliefs, you're never going to feel like, eh, it's good enough, you're not feeling enough pain to actually do something about it. I'm not saying kill yourself. You need to feel motivated. Getting into these. It's going to be a two birds with one stone effect, because you're going to have the motivation from feeling those strong emotions as you're digging into them, as you're reliving them or taking them apart so that you can do things differently.

Charles: 14:02

You will have to get into things at a level that does make you uncomfortable, and certainly some of these you could benefit from joining a recovery group or getting into therapy. Self-limiting beliefs can be overcome by getting out there and taking action you have not been comfortable taking before. But yeah, and he gets into. And we mentioned it a little in the last episode about rejection who can reject you? Who does reject you? And what is it that you are telling yourself is rejection? That's not actually rejection.

Charles: 14:34

Like a woman communicating a low level of interest in going out with you is not rejected. A big component of that is what's going on in their internal world and it's not completely about you Between the possibilities. Yeah, so that's even somebody you've been married to for a decade or two. When they break up with you, that feels a lot like rejection because of how close they were to you, how integrated you were in each other's lives and how well they knew you in each other's lives and how well they knew you. But the girl you ask out for coffee who says no thanks, that is not anywhere in the realm of rejection at the level of a parent, spouse or long-term girlfriend.

Dan: 15:09

Rejection to the invitation, not rejection of you, because she doesn't know you it's. I don't want coffee, I don't like coffee or I can't go at that time it is possible to know.

Charles: 15:19

Based on the first impression you've presented, I'm not interested. That's okay, but that is not some deep understanding of who you are as a person and what your value is or is not.

Dan: 15:27

And all she's communicating is maybe physically you're not my type and that's it. Not about your personality, your sense of humor or anything else about you.

Charles: 15:35

She doesn't know any it could be the way you've chosen to introduce yourself to me and what you've chosen to put out there as your first impression.

Dan: 15:41

Okay, but that is such a. It's the iceberg, it is so small of what you are as a person, correct.

Charles: 15:46

But the first impression you've chosen to create may not be something I'm interested in. Right, okay, great, that's valuable info to know. I approached you this way. You're not interested? There's a million reasons to say no to somebody, two reasons to say yes. That's why redefining and reframing rejection is important. When a girl says no to you, it's not. I have evaluated everything that makes charles and decided that it's not. It's not good enough for me. That's not what's going on here. It's no based on the current offering and my situation. I'm not interested right now and that's as far as it goes.

Dan: 16:18

It's humbling because not because you didn't get the date. It's humbling because you have to realize that you don't have all the information you thought you had.

Charles: 16:28

The world doesn't revolve around you.

Dan: 16:31

Right, you need to take a step back and go look, I don't have all the information and that's okay, that's normal, nothing wrong with you. Because you don't have that information, a lot of us get insecure and we're covered up. I see this in job interviews when, briefly, when we were hiring people for exchange, I would for an IT company. I'd ask them how would you do something like this? And if they didn't, it was a very specific skill set. A lot of people knew how to do this thing. A lot of times they would make something up or lie about it. That's not what I wanted. Hey, I don't know, but I will find out. They're insecure and scared to come across like they didn't know something. That's just not realistic.

Charles: 17:09

The humbling part is, every day, as we go throughout the world, there are people making decisions that will have an impact on us, that have nothing to do with us, sure, have nothing to do with us, sure, and you have to accept that, even when it comes to asking somebody out, they could give you a no for reasons that have nothing to do with you, like there's. You went into that interaction with a 0% chance of success because of what was going on in their life or their self-limiting beliefs, and there's nothing you can do about it. All you can do is accept it and move on down the road and look, if you're a codependent person, if you're a controlling person, if you're a person that has to believe that the world revolves around you, then all you can do is internalize things that have nothing to do with you and make it your fault and your problem, and you're just spinning your wheels and wasting your time, throwing away good time after bad, and the thing that you can get to and this is what dr glover did with his own experimentation is get to a point where you realize rejection doesn't have to hurt, it doesn't have to feel bad. The story you tell yourself about somebody saying no is what hurts you. It's not their no is not what hurts you. You do yeah, and how easy it is to take control of that story is going to depend on a lot of stuff from your past and a lot of stuff about your previous experiences and how open you are to growth and doubting things you know to be absolutely true. When you go to the gym and work out your body, you're putting your body through unpleasant things because you believe it's worth it. Where, if you woke up in the middle of the night feeling the things you feel when you deadlift 400 pounds, you'd be convinced you were about to die. But at the gym it's just Tuesday. What you do, you can reframe getting told no for a date. The same way, this is a valuable part of the process.

Charles: 18:57

Another example when you're playing poker and you go all in on pocket aces, whether you win or don't win, going all in on pocket aces was probably the right choice. It's about making the right choices in the process, not the ultimate result. That day and last time I went all in on pocket aces, I lost the hand. I hope I don't get pocket aces anymore. That would be a really silly conclusion to come to and you'd be a broke poker player in no time. So it's taking the right action in the moment is the right choice. Whether it leads to the most pleasant result on that particular occasion or not does not change whether it's the right decision.

Charles: 19:34

He says treat dating as a scientific experiment. Try to get to the rejection as quickly as possible. And he goes into a great thing later on in the book about how to test for interest at different levels. Your job as the man in a little dating start with hey, do you want to have a conversation? Okay. Hey, do you want to get together for coffee? Hey, usually not in a verbal way. Do you want to kiss me? Do you want to go to your place? Do you want to be my girlfriend? Do you want to get married? Testing for interest situations At a huge level. You're saying how interested are you in continuing this?

Dan: 20:08

And it's important to remember that, if she were to say no, she's rejecting that specific thing that you're testing for.

Charles: 20:14

Not you Exactly. She might be like yeah, I'm okay with kissing you, but I'm not okay with going back to your place.

Dan: 20:19

Just because she says no right now doesn't mean things don't change down the road. So keep that in mind. It just couldn't have been the circumstance right now.

Charles: 20:28

Then he knows your business or love life could be no, not right now. I'm interested right now, but it's not never talk to me again, or I never want to see you again or I'm never going to be interested. No, right now. I know our brains will go to that issue.

Dan: 20:41

Yes, that will prevent us from moving forward, unfortunately.

Charles: 20:43

He says something here that you and I have quoted or repeated, or the idea we've certainly communicated before, which is, if you're short, bald, unemployed, live with your parents, whatever your problem is. The problem is how you feel about your problem, and I'll tell you what. With guys in height I see this all the time it's like your problem is not that you're short, your problem is that you think like a short man and any limitations that you're having with women is not because you're short. Now, look, there may be some girls that are like eh, my type is tall guys. Like I've said for years, there's no girl who's not in my league, because I don't believe in leagues.

Charles: 21:21

There are girls who may not be attracted to how I look or dress, but that's not because they're better than me, it's just because they're not into what I am. It's simple and yeah. So if you're, oh, I'm too short to get dates, no, it's the attitude of I'm too short to get dates that's stopping you from getting dates. And the because, again, once you show me a guy who is shorter than average but he has the confidence and the personality and the sense of humor what there are. I've dated plenty of girls I'm five, eight, and some girls only want to date guys who are six feet or taller. I've dated lots of girls who I've been the shortest guy they've ever gone out with Wow. I've dated plenty of girls taller than me, until my current girlfriend, most of my serious relationships so they were all five, nine and higher. It's not a problem, unless you want to make it your problem. There's somebody for everybody. Everybody has.

Dan: 22:12

So perfect example. Look at all the. If you've ever gone to a porn site, you see all the different categories. That's because humans have all kinds of tastes. There will be somebody for you. Just have faith and confidence. If you're not meeting that person right now, you eventually will, but you need to keep trying.

Charles: 22:28

Yeah, if you check out of the system and you say, oh, the pretty girls you want to date are not randomly going to show up to your house saying, hey, I'm just looking for my kind of guy, you happen to be him. Because, yeah, there's magic doesn't happen in your living room. You're not meeting new people on your couch. Thank you so much for listening to the episode in its entirety, dan, and I appreciate it. Again, please check out our website If you want to see more full episodes, video, audio, anything else we want to share, mindfullymasculinecom. Thanks, we'll talk to you next time.