The thing you want requires action, which means going out and getting it somehow. Every “yes” you’re seeking sits on the other side of a request, and the going out and getting it always includes the experience of being rejected, because asking for what you want opens you up to hearing “no.”
We have visceral reactions to rejection and tend to avoid it, but why? What is it about rejection that makes it such a painful, hard experience?
For many people, hearing a “no” can cost them weeks of unrest because their mind has created a story (and believes in that story) about what the “no” means. For example: “This gallery turned down my request to show my work in their upcoming show. That means my work isn’t good enough.” We’ve connected rejection directly to our self-worth and identity, so we’ll do almost anything to avoid facing it again. Now it feels safer to stop asking for what we want and stop putting ourselves out there.
The rejection is the external trigger.
The story is the internal experience.
The story sounds like, “I should have known better.” “I’m not enough.” or, “People don’t appreciate me.” That’s all happening internally.
The sting of being turned down is normal, and everyone feels it. It turns into a verdict on you when you’ve made someone else’s opinion the thing that decides what your work is worth. Someone who doesn’t know you, with their own taste, budget, and agenda, says no, and you treat that as a ruling on your talent and your value. That is what I mean by living in someone else’s world. You’re letting their judgment define what your work means, when you’re the one who gets to define your standards for value, worth, and success. The minute you outsource your worth to someone else’s opinion, you’ve abandoned your own, and that is a form of self-abandonment. Self-abandonment is living inauthentically.
So if you want to get better at going after what you want, you need to increase your rejection tolerance so you can move through it quicker and gather more “yeses.” Your tolerance for a “no” sets the ceiling on how much you’ll ask for. That’s how income, visibility, and opportunity compound for artists who look lucky from the outside: they kept asking while the rest of us waited to feel ready.
Start treating each “no” you receive as information rather than a verdict. Then, become very interested and focused on collecting more information. Sometimes we call this, “doing it for the plot”. When an answer to a request you make comes back, write two columns. In the first, put what happened: they said no, or they didn’t reply, or they said maybe next year. In the second, put what your brain says it means. The first column is data. The second is a story, and you get to decide whether to keep it.
It will still sting at the beginning, and that’s allowed. What changes with practice is how long it lasts and how much of your week it takes. Every time you ask, get through the “no,” and keep going, your body collects a little proof that a “no” is survivable. That proof piles up slowly, and over time the alarm gets quieter. Rejection tolerance is a skill built in small reps, it can’t be built by thinking about it from a safe distance.
Success is about being your authentic self and finding the people who align with your authentic self. Your audience just wants you. If you start to change yourself based on the rejection you receive, your audience can’t find you, and you’re delaying your long-term success. So change “this person rejected me” to “we’re not compatible.” Change “I didn’t get that opportunity” to “this opportunity is not my opportunity.” This is what business and art are: finding your match. And when you master moving through rejection, your momentum will grow.
Be in the land of rejection instead of avoiding it. Sit in it. Everyone goes through it and everyone feels it, and our job is to understand how to manage it, because it isn’t going away. It’s unrealistic to think you’ll reach a point where you don’t have feelings of rejection. You’re human. It’s not about getting rid of it, it’s about mastering how to manage it.