Get Rejected Then Fail at Something
I’ve been holding onto a New York Times opinion piece, reading it from time to time and taking comfort in the words. Emily Winter set out to get 100 rejections. She figured that if she wasn’t rejected, it was a win because she got a job. And if she was rejected, it was a win because it was part of her project. Pretty sneaky.
The point is that you can’t achieve things if you don’t put yourself out there. Every achievement comes with the possibility to failure baked in. And even if you don’t end up finding closed doors along the way, there is the possibility of closed doors along the way.
But mostly I loved this piece because of Angela Duckworth’s words about grit and what plugging away at something — even if you never succeed — is worth for the life lessons learned along the way. It, of course, made me think about infertility. Plugging away, month after month, only motivated by hope. How much grit does our community have collectively?
Does the piece have a happy ending? Not really. It has a realistic ending. And maybe that’s why I keep reading it over and over again. No prancing unicorns; just a believe in the worth of putting your heart out there again and again.
4 comments
This piece made me feel better (and somewhat sane). I amassed over 200 rejection letters in 2018. And though I learned a ton, I was also beyond exhausted. It made me realize that putting yourself out there requires a lot of activation energy and learning the terrain, all required prior to getting any of those opportunities. Which validates the authors approach, but also highlights why most people avoid this process at all cost.
And now you are reminding me that I need to keep up with networking….
A wise sage once told me to create my thing, regardless of whether it would be met with acceptance.
I took her advice and got several dozen rejections. And one yes. I’m glad she nudged me to move from within rather than from without.
I love that Emily Winter got this idea from her dog.
I think that’s a really good attitude to have. The most successful people usually have many rejections behind them before reaching their goal. Of course it’s also important to learn from the rejections whether you should go in a different direction or what to change. Realistic endings, especially in the infertility world are important to be spoken about.
I love this piece for the ending. She could have waited to write it when she was feeling more successful and then pointed to this experiment as a catalyst for the changes she made. Instead, she wrote it while still in the experiment, not really showing a ton of progress in terms of money, but progress in terms of how she’s looking at things.