Do you have a creative dream?

Maybe it’s getting a book published. Or landing a solo gallery show. Or securing a job as a creative director. If you do, and that dream has yet to be realised, there’s a good chance that the thing holding you back isn’t what you suspect -a lack of talent or a reluctance to engage in hard work - it’s the fear of rejection.

We homo sapiens are a social species. And over the last 300,000 years the fear of being rejected – of being ousted from our tribe – has been hardwired into us. 

Rejection hits us in our gut; we feel it like a physical pain. And so we do what we can to avoid it. We leave the manuscript in a bottom drawer. We chicken out of speaking to the gallery director. We tell ourselves that we’re not quite ready to be a creative director … yet.

The fear of rejection stands between us and our dreams.

But maybe there’s another way?

I recently came across a trend on TikTok where people deliberately go in search of one hundred rejections. They create a list of outlandish requests – like asking for something for free in a shop – and film themselves being refused, or, on rare occasions, having their request granted.

Which got me thinking …

What if you were to apply this approach to a creative pursuit?

Let’s say you want to get your novel published. You’d probably draw up a shortlist of maybe five or ten, possibly even twenty, publishers. Each knockback would really hurt – and make you less likely to approach anyone else in the future.

But what if you reframe the challenge so that the aim is no longer to get your novel published but to collect one hundred rejection letters instead?

Now each rejection is a whole lot less painful. You’re anticipating it. Rather than being a huge loss, it feels like a small win. And with each rejection you get a little bit tougher, a little less sensitive. The more familiar you become with rejection the less it hurts and the weaker the hold it has over you.

And the crazy, beautiful thing is that by speaking to one hundred publishers rather than the ten or twenty you had before, chances are you’ll find one that will give your book a home. Or at least give you the kind of personalized feedback that will get you over the line. And if you simply get flat out rejected one hundred times, well, you can at least sleep easy knowing you gave it your best shot and it just wasn’t meant to happen.

What would your one hundred be?