Sometimes you are so afraid of rejection that you are frozen in life. You become immobile. Your fear of hurt becomes greater than any hurt, yet what is this being hurt? What is it that gets hurt? Your feelings? What are they? A protective and reactive device. They are a barrier. Do not be so deferential of your feelings.

Let your feelings be hurt and your life move on. Being hurt is better than being afraid. At least, when you are hurt, it is over. There was a development, and it went a certain way, and now you deal with the aftermath.

But, in truth, there is no aftermath except of your making. The hurt feelings are a little battle with yourself. Where do your feelings exist, and how do they get hurt? What is this area we are talking about?

Ego is always concerned with results. The ego has expectations, and one is that it will be hurt. It is always concerned with a picture of results. Sometimes you live life as though your ego feelings, up or down, are the sum total of it. Maybe it is your concentration on your feelings that has to change. Now is time for you to get past them. You are a wobbly pudding of feelings. Pay attention to more than your feelings.

You know what I am talking about. Care about what you care about, but care about something greater than how another or the world reacts to you. Hurt feelings do not come from the heart. They are an impediment to the heart. Your heart is not ego. You try to stuff your ego there and call it heart, but ego strums a sad banjo.

Surmount your ego. Step on its head. Never mind it. Go forward anyway.

You do not need a protective shell. You do not need armor. You need honesty, and you need to go ahead in life, not as a foot soldier doomed to pain, but as a heart that surges itself forward.

Be a hero to yourself. Raise yourself from the ground. Stop digging yourself in. Free yourself instead.

What imaginary battles do you fight with yourself? Ask yourself what you are afraid to do. Ask yourself what little tiny step you are afraid to take, afraid not so much about what may befall, but afraid that you are too weak to handle it. You think you are afraid of being struck down, but you are really afraid that you will sob afterwards. You are afraid that you are weak, and that your weakness will be known.

You go under a misguided premise. Remove the premise. You are not weak. You are strong. Let that be a given.

You think you have already withstood much in life, but all that you have withstood are waves that you swim through. You have swum through the past. What makes you think that you cannot continue to swim through and beyond the events of life. See yourself as a swimmer, and not as a flounderer.

You swim with strokes. You walk step by step. That is all you can do. You cannot do more. And you cannot do less.

Step on your own ego. Don't let it rule you. All fears are little. Don't make them big.

Do not let your fears of what others may think of you run your life, pro or con. What others may think of you are their thoughts, and you are to be guided by your own. When you are guided by fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of ridicule, what are you guided by? What shackles have you surrounded yourself with?

Leap in life. Take big strokes. No more tiptoeing. Stride.