#0004 How Do You Embrace Rejection?!
Discover (some of) what you need from The Wizard of Oz
When you first read this newsletter’s name, you might have wondered what 100 Rejections Club meant. Something to do with job hunting? Or dating? Or bad movies? Nope. The club is all about a key aspect of writers and artists expanding beyond their limits.
Then you saw Embrace Rejection and mentally screamed, “How do you do that?!”
Creatives can be a sensitive bunch. Society teaches us that rejection is bad and must be avoided, that we must hide our rejections and bury them deep down inside. When something we put out there — a poem, a watercolor — gets rejected, we’re embarrassed. We wallow in our shame. Rejection can be heartbreaking and might even stop us from creating altogether.
Yeah, I know.
But maybe Society got it wrong. Let’s reject Society’s lessons (see what I did there?), be kinda kooky, and flip the script. A 1939 film shows us what we need.
Before streaming, before hundreds of cable channels, before The Tracey Ullman Show introduced Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie to the world, one of the three US networks (maybe CBS?) annually (around Easter?) broadcast The Wizard of Oz. (Yes, I’m old.)
With every childhood viewing, when the film transitioned from black and white to Technicolor, I was enchanted. I danced and sang with Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion as they made their way along the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City in search of the Wizard.
As a boring grown-up, I see those four main characters as archetypes that feed into creative self-expression.
Dorothy: Though she chants “There’s no place like home,” what Dorothy wants is to be part of instead of apart from. Writers and artists also want a sense of belonging, a place where we and our creativity fits, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. We seek community.
Scarecrow: Literally scattered, they feel lesser than. Scarecrow has great intuition (once the hay guts are pushed back in) but wants outward recognition of their smarts. Like Scarecrow, we seek to share our creative discoveries with others.
Tin Man: Frozen in place and literally hollow, he is missing out. Tin Man wants to feel fulfilled. Part of what drives creatives is an overwhelming need to express to others what’s in our hearts. We seek connection.
Lion: Though known as the king of the jungle, Lion is literally scared of his own tail. Because fear makes him run, freeze, or hide, the cowardly Lion wants something to counter those reactions. Writers and artists seek to overcome fear.
How? With courage.
When I read the Greater Good Science Center article “Eight Lessons From My Research on Creativity,” I recalled Lion and his (our) fear. In the first five lessons, writer Robert J. Sternberg highlighted the importance of courage.
Creativity is not so much an innate ability as it is an attitude toward life.
(You need Courage to embrace a creative attitude.)A key ingredient of creativity is courage.
(Courage!)If you want to be creative, you have to stand up not only to the crowd, but also to yourself.
(It takes Courage to second-guess yourself.)Being creative requires you to admit you were wrong or, at least, not quite right.
(When you have Courage, you can try again, revise, and grow.)The more creative your ideas are, the more resistance those ideas will encounter, and the more resilience, perseverance, humility, and sheer courage you will need to keep going in the face of opposition.
(Courage!)
(If you’re wondering about the other three lessons? They relate to the writer’s theory of transformational creativity, which doesn’t directly apply to my point about Lion. But feel free to read all about it.)
In the 1939 film, the Wizard gave Lion a Medal of Courage. And with that medal, Lion was no longer cowardly but courageous.
He had so much courage, in fact, that he embraced rejection. So much so that I’m nominating him the 100 Rejections Club mascot.
Pin on your own Medal of Courage and read next time about redefining rejection.