#ShareYourRejection: Truth or Fallacy?

I spend a reasonable amount of time on Twitter. Until recently, I was responsible for finding the biggest Trending Stories in the world on a daily business, so where else to look? In this endeavor, I learned to love the good old hashtag. My favorites included #PooWatch, where a local police department updated the public about an arrested man that had seemingly swallowed a plastic bag of cocaine and then refused to use the bathroom for over two months or #MeToo which literally saved lives and changed the world. Sometimes we get hashtags that just become a trend and inform people like nothing else could. That's what #ShareYourRejection is right now.

This picture (and subsequent dance battle)
with a senior Amazon VP is the result of my failure.

On this hashtag, people all over the world shared what they had to go through in their lives to become who they are - through rejection. Big names chimed in to share their stories, just to show the casual users that they, too, had suffered before. The road to greatness, they say, cannot be achieved without failure. And indeed, I understand why many people need the hashtag to remind themselves of that: Because embellishing failure makes it hurt less. While I found it encouraging that Judd Apatow said his writing was rejected by everyone before he became, well, Judd Apatow, and Mia Vardalos writes about how many people told her she could not write a script as an actress, those examples do little to shed light on the truth: sometimes we fail for a reason. What they do do, though, is encourage. These people are exceptions to the rule, and we can be that exception, too.

Going through that hashtag surfaces stories of people who tried to "make it" in industries that have absolutely nothing to do with money, computers or stuff like medicine. If you're the best at making money for someone, creating new tech or save lives, nobody rejects you. Quite the contrary: If you rock there, you don't even have to do anything; success will find you. The creative business, so my business, works completely different. I have seen the best fail, and the worst make it. And now Twitter saw them, too. Talent means nothing a lot of the time. While we can agree that the Apatows and Vardaloses are now having the last laugh, it will create a false sense of justice for the majority of us.

As a creative myself, I can write many a blog about my failures. Many, many more people said "no" to me than "yes". My biggest achievement was taken away from me because the person who offered me the opportunity later admitted he became aware of me "because I was pretty". Sooo, I don't feel too hot although I've had amazing chances. I am only sitting here in England because I was rejected from my dream job, only to be called by Amazon a few weeks later, paying up big time and offering me a job I didn't even know existed. Persistence isn't the problem sometimes; there is still luck. So, of course, it worked out in the end, but I did fail my intended plan. I don't doubt that one day it all falls into place, but only the fewest become award winners and can laugh about their failure. Most of the time it just hurts for a long time and possibly never changes.

Yet, I succeed at convincing myself that it will be me who succeeds in the end as well. And that was what I saw in #ShareYourRejection: a shoutout to all people who refuse to give up. My ambitions are astronomical and I have reason to believe I can be one of the people that can share a hashtag like this one day and encourage others not to quit. At the same time, there is a lot of wrong information on this topic: Just because Einstein flunked maths at school we should not believe we can do anything. Perpetual failure can very well mean we do not have what it takes. Sometimes, Oscar winners sharing their stories will tell the 14-year-old girl in Germany that she can win the Oscar, too. That girl was me, and I still believe I can. Maybe that's not smart and I should get back to reality and accept I am not Mia Vardalos or Diabolo Cody. I'm not ready to do that though.