There was a time in my life when nothing seemed to go right.

I had just finished my master’s degree and was searching for a new career direction. On paper, I thought I looked great: an engineering degree, some work experience, and now a business master’s. Who wouldn’t want to hire me?

Apparently, almost everyone.

Month after month I sent out applications that disappeared into the black hole of online portals. I imagined my CV floating somewhere in another dimension of the space-time continuum. Maybe I got the job in a parallel universe, just not in this one.

It wasn’t a good time. Each rejection pulled at an old thread of insecurity I thought I had outgrown. Every “no” whispered that I still wasn’t good enough. Hear that often enough and you start to believe it. But what is actually true?

Because it’s universal and relentless.

An idea, a résumé, a piece of creative work.. all are small extensions of ourselves. When they are dismissed, it stings. Sending out job applications and hearing nothing back is painful. Sharing creative work and hearing silence can feel worse. Yet rejection is constant in every domain that matters.

If you’re laid off, trying to change careers, pitching a business, or publishing original ideas, you will meet rejection again and again. It deserves more reflection than we usually give it.

Screenwriter Brian Koppelman once told a story about his early career. In college, he promoted a then-unknown singer named Tracy Chapman. Her shows were electric; audiences moved to tears, singing along to songs that didn’t yet exist on record.

Koppelman invited record executives to see her perform. They were moved too. “She’s incredible,” they said, “thank you for this night.” Then came the caveat: “But we can’t sign her.”

Why not? “She’s black”, “She’s too masculine looking”, “She’s too different,” they said.

In hindsight, those executives were being rational. No one like Chapman had succeeded before. They couldn’t see a precedent, so they passed. Most rejection, whether in music, business, or life, follows this pattern. People reject what doesn’t fit their current model of success. Gatekeepers are accountable to systems that prize predictability over originality.

As the writer Seth Godin once observed, the reasons people give you are rarely the real ones. The surface excuses, too risky, not enough experience, wrong timing, hide deeper fears: my boss won’t back this, I don’t trust it, I’m afraid of change.

There’s even research to back this up. Studies have shown that although people claim to value creativity, they often reject novel ideas when feeling uncertain. Original ideas disrupt what’s familiar. They create dissonance. So rejection often has less to do with your work’s merit than with someone else’s discomfort.

Understanding that context helps. Experts and employers have pressures you can’t see. Their decisions might be political, risk-averse, or just poorly timed. Listening to feedback is useful, but the real skill is dispassionate evaluation i.e taking a step back from the emotional hit and asking, is this feedback true or just familiar?

Koppelman in that same interview said that when rejection lands, his first response is pain, then anger. But eventually he tries to look at it objectively: if the criticism is valid, fix it; if it’s not, move on. That pause between reaction and reflection is everything.

The right kind of “no” isn’t final. It’s information. It tells you either to sharpen your craft or to find a new audience. You can take the signal without absorbing the shame.

The ecologists Brian Walker and David Salt describe resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its function and structure.” Rejection tests that capacity. It reveals whether you are merely robust, able to withstand pressure, or truly adaptive.

Nassim Taleb calls this antifragility: systems that grow stronger from shocks. Muscles, immune systems, creative spirits all need resistance to evolve. Rejection, viewed through that lens, is not failure but stimulus.

Harvard professor Clayton Christensen described disruptive innovation as serving markets that the incumbents overlook. New ideas start small, unrefined, often ignored by experts. But as technology or habits shift, those same ideas can redefine entire industries.

What if you treated yourself the same way: As a disruptive idea?

Instead of chasing the approval of established gatekeepers, look for people whose needs aren’t being met. Serve them first. Build something useful, generous, and distinct. Over time, trust compounds. The uncertainty gap narrows. The so-called experts eventually notice.

That’s what happened with Tracy Chapman. The college audiences saw what the industry couldn’t yet understand. She found her people first.

And for creative work, the fulfilment comes from the making itself: the flow, the curiosity, the small acts of craft that no one else sees. The outcome should matter less. People respond to the joy that emanates from work made in that spirit.

After months and months of rejection, I stopped applying for jobs altogether. I took a part-time role to pay the bills and began attending every meetup that caught my curiosity. I discovered communities in startups, technology, and social impact. They made me feel alive again.

I started volunteering, then working for startups, then co-founded my own network. I built a career not from acceptance but from curiosity i.e from finding the people who saw what I was trying to do.

My relationship with rejection is still ongoing. I know it’s waiting around the next corner. The Stoics taught the importance of welcoming whatever life brings, a mindset later captured in the phrase amor fati i.e the love of one’s fate. To treat every setback as fuel. To see rejection not as the end of a path but as part of the path

Each rejection refines me a little further, reminding me that progress often hides inside resistance

This month on Finding Meaning in Work, Cam shares how a decade in banking gave way to a vocation he’d been circling since childhood: dog behaviour training.

Raised around a family boarding kennel, he never saw dogs as a career until corporate hierarchy and box-ticking became impossible to ignore. At forty, he sat down and wrote a list of what he genuinely liked. Dogs kept winning.

Cam signed up for a training accreditation, joined a mentor circle, learnt quickly inside a busy shelter, and launched Act of Dog with a simple website and a few Google ads. Today he specialises in fear, anxiety and aggression in dogs, starting not with commands but with safety and self-regulation.

You’ll hear the real turning points in Cam’s story: moving to London with no plan, the mentors who nudged him forward, and the partner who quietly believed in him.

What stands out isn’t the leap from banking to dog behaviour work but the way he did it, by following curiosity rather than certainty. His approach applies far beyond dogs: build trust first, then teach.

If you’ve ever thought about changing direction, or you lead people who feel stretched or stuck, this conversation is a reminder that progress doesn’t always come from pushing harder. Sometimes it starts by slowing down long enough to build trust with others.. and with yourself.

Listen now by searching for Finding Meaning in Work on your favourite podcast app, or click the button below