First, you fail. For whatever reason, your work is not of the quality required to pass whatever hurdle you set yourself, and you are denied access to the next stage.

This feels pretty bad. You are gutted. This is the first milestone of failure. It’s the most significant, and people tend to deal with it in all sorts of ways. Some let this moment define them. They take the verdict like a pedestrian takes a fridge that lands on them from a great height and splatters them onto the concrete footpath under their feet. They take the narrative of that failure and use it to define themselves. To their wounded minds, it is not a description, or an analysis of the work (which may or may not be subjective, and therefore, open to challenge), but a mark of their failings as a person. Those people often don’t go on. They let the failure define them and stop doing the thing that caused it. I’ve seen this applied in many circumstances, by all sorts of different people. In simple words, they are unsuccessful at getting what they want, and so they stop going after it.

It’s easy to understand why you would do that. When you are rejected, knocked back, denied access, it’s a natural instinct to retreat to a safe place to lick one’s wounds. And then the vampires ([Title of Show]) start running rampant in your head. Many versions of the same mantra pass through your mind:

You’re no good. Your work sucks. Stop trying to be something you’re not. Who are you to think you could do this?

Notice the theme here? The self-criticism is not of the work’s quality, and precisely how that failed to make the grade, but of how hopeless you are as a person. These are not constructive thoughts, but destructive ones. They will not help you to do better, to keep learning, but will instead turn you away from any self-improvement.

The criticism hurts, sure, but there is another kind of avoidance present in just walking away. By giving up, we are turning our back on the pain of failure, but we are also refusing to invest more work and potential pain that going back to the drawing board will inevitably involve. So the first reason people give up is to avoid the pain of failure. The second is laziness. That’s a strong word, and by using it I’m not saying there are never times when one should walk away from a project. Some projects were badly conceived in the first place, or were always going to take more out of you than you were willing or able to give. To continue down those paths is a waste of time, and can do real harm to your career and path in life. But there are plenty of projects that are good and sound and salvageable. They are worth the extra work you will have to put in. The trick is to distinguish between the good and the bad. And that’s not to say that what is a bad project for you at this time in your life might not yield incredible opportunities down the track. It’s all part of the life puzzle you are entrusted with making sense of. Some projects may languish, abandoned, for years before being given a second chance at life. Other projects truly and profoundly belong in the garbage. They were put there for a good reason, and should never be pulled out.

When licking your wounds and working out what to do next, advice from a trusted, critical friend is a good salve. As is a glass of wine or two.

And then, roll your sleeves up. Either return with renewed vigour to the failed project, or begin a new one. Either way, try to remember that what failed was not actually you despite every ounce of your being feeling that’s exactly how it is.