The Art of Rejection

What twenty-five years in the creative industries taught me about resilience, self-worth and outgrowing things.

I used to relate to rejection like a confirmation statement of my failure. It made me feel awful.

This is a hard piece to write. On one hand, I want to share something useful. On the other, it requires more candour than I'm naturally comfortable with in front of an invisible audience. The irony isn't lost on me - I spend a large part of my life encouraging other people to embrace change, uncertainty and reinvention, while quietly reluctant to admit how many times I've had to do the same.

I entered hairdressing at fourteen, in 2000. Looking back, it sometimes feels like I've lived several careers inside one. There was the no-sleep salon era, the no-days-off cycle, the years before Me Too, BLM and LGBTQ+ rights movements made conversations about boundaries and workplace culture commonplace. There was a long stretch where saying yes to everything felt like the price of success, and turning anything down felt like sabotage.

Much of that time was genuinely exciting. I got to travel, to learn from extraordinary creative minds all over the world - building a career that fourteen-year-old me could never have imagined.

The flipside is the reality of being hired and fired, sometimes in the same day. I believe that's partly how this industry gets the best out of us - keeping us on the edge of our toes. But when your livelihood, and your pride, are on the line, a run of jobs falling through can feel brutal.

One job confirms. Two disappear. A client requests you; back-door politics override it. Someone champions your work while someone else decides you're not quite right.

On paper, none of it is personal. In reality, when your work is an extension of who you are, it feels deeply personal - and I don't think we talk about that enough.

Why rejection cuts deeper in creative work

Creative industries normalise rejection because it happens so often. We're conditioned to move onto the next thing before we've processed the last one. Sometimes that's useful. Sometimes it means we're carrying a hundred tiny disappointments around without realising it.

There have been stretches of my career where opportunities arrived effortlessly, and stretches where every no felt louder than the last yes. The challenge was never avoiding rejection - that's impossible. The real challenge is not letting rejection chip away at your identity.

You are not the job. You are not the client who didn't rebook. You are not the opportunity that went to somebody else.

Understanding your why

I remember reading Edward Enninful's memoir on a flight from London to New Zealand. He describes scenario after scenario where major opportunities came and went - and what struck me most was how undeterred he remained, staying focused on the work, too engrossed in the bigger picture to be knocked off course.

That reads to me as a clear sense of why - an unshakable sense of purpose underneath the setbacks. If you have a genuine vision for yourself, you tend to stay on track regardless of what the industry throws at you. There's a reason behind everything we do; some are obvious, others take real digging to uncover. But your why is the gateway to resilience.

Feel the feelings

Rejection hurts because we're human. The trick isn't pretending it doesn't. It's letting yourself feel disappointed without letting the disappointment spiral into what happens next. Meditation, therapy, books, close friends, writing. There are many ways to ask yourself better questions when a no lands hard.

Nurture your life outside the business

Being a creative in a competitive city is all-consuming . And for most of us, that intensity is part of what we love about it. But like any good buzz, it needs a balance. Having a life you genuinely love coming home to is probably the biggest anchor you can build.

These days I treat my personal life like a hobby: fitness, friends, food, family, music, travel, nature, art. Piece by piece, they form a life that exists independently of my career - one that holds me when work feels uncertain. If your entire sense of self lives inside your work, rejection has nowhere else to go. But if your life is rich enough beyond the industry, every no becomes a little easier to carry.

Looking back, some of the rejections that hurt the most were really invitations to stop trying to fit into circumstances I'd already outgrown.

• If this resonates and you're navigating your own reinvention, resilience or next chapter — I offer 1:1 creative coaching alongside my session work. [Get in touch →]