Rejection, reinvention & rejuvenation

“Don’t hide yourself in regret. Just love yourself and you’re set.” - Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga is a force to be reckoned with. She’s a musical superstar, Grammy award winner, actor, and is on the TIME Top 100 Fashion Icon list. She’s the powerhouse artist with a unique name, look, and energy.

All of this built on a foundation of rejection, reinvention, and rejuvenation.

In 2006, the 19-year-old Stefani Germanotta signed a dream contract with Def Jam Records. These are the folks who worked with artists like Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Justin Bieber. Her big break arrived.

And then….that big break evaporated. After just three months, she was dropped from the label. No real reason was given, other than the sound just wasn’t working for the execs.

Not all rejection is equal, but the feeling is universal. Whether it’s a job interview, a pitch, or something more personal, we all know what it’s like to be told “sorry, not you.” And this was her first real does of mainstream rejection.

In life, we don’t always get what we want, but we often get what we need. We usually fail to see it at the time, because we’re in that messy middle, but it so often leads to a new path that holds something even more special.

Dropped by the label, she went back to her roots, revisiting the underground clubs of New York to perform. Late nights, small crowds, fresh ideas and looks. She experimented with wigs, glitter and boldness and began capturing real attention. Her Gaga persona formed as she evolved into that unique popstar who hit the world with a punch.

Just over a year after being dumped by Def Jam, she signed with another label, Interscope. And another year after that, Gaga released The Fame which sold over 14 million copies and turned her into one of the biggest artists on the planet.

And then came acting. It wasn’t as a flashy pivot, but as a return to a dream she’d abandoned. Acting was Gaga’s first love, long before the music. But she only reached for it again when exhaustion forced her to ask who she was without the machine of music.

When her album, ARTPOP, underperformed, she described feeling trapped in a machine she no longer recognized. She also admitted she was so depleted that she fantasized about walking away from the industry entirely. That’s the part most of us know too well: when the work we’re doing stops feeding us, but we keep turning up out of habit, pressure, or identity.

Acting was her attempt at channeling the pain. She said she took an acting role in American Horror Story to put all of her anguish somewhere, and in the process rediscovered the grounded, creative self she’d neglected. That performance won her a Golden Globe and, more importantly, gave her a path back to meaning.

Then A Star Is Born demanded something even riskier: vulnerability. Bradley Cooper famously wiped the makeup off her face at a test screening, asking her to show up as herself, not Gaga. She stayed with it, even with the discomfort, fear, and self-doubt. And then she won an Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Grammy for a single film.

Sometimes the way forward is actually a return to our earlier self, our buried dreams, and our most unprotected truth.

Rejection hits so hard because the brain processes it in the same way as physical pain, but reframing turns down that alarm and we switch from emotional mind to more logical. When we treat rejection as data, not identity, everything opens up. Here are the three takeaways from Gaga’s story.

1. Rejection is just data. Any rejection that we face isn’t a verdict. We tend to take it as the final say, but we can shift to seeing that information as just data. WD-40 has the “40” in it’s name because 39 versions failed before it. Instead of giving up, the makers were focused more on what they could learn from each earlier version. Rejection is simply information, feedback, and direction. When we treat it like data, we stay in motion instead of shutting down.

2. Build in the dark. Some of our strongest resilience is forged away from any spotlight. It’s in the empty offices, the late-night drafts, or the quiet rehearsals where no one has an opinion. Gaga’s biggest evolution happened in tiny bars and grungy clubs, well before the world cared. Not everyone needs to know what we’re doing all the time. Focus on progress first, even if no one sees it.

3. Choose identity over approval. At some point, we have to decide whether we’ll twist ourselves into whatever others want, or whether we’ll double down on who we really are. If we stop performing for approval, we become unmistakably ourselves, and in this world of copy-and-paste ideas and virtues, originality is the only thing that stands out. Focus on whatever it is that we bring to the table, and the right people and the right rooms start finding us a whole lot faster.

Every single actor, celebrity, or musician has faced rejection in their lives. And we will too. We are going to get knocked off the path, told “no”, or face the exhaustion that comes from the constant need to show up everyday. But when life knocks us off the map, it’s our hidden superpower to choose perspective, return to what’s real, and show up as the person we’re becoming. That’s resilience.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carré @ Resilient Minds