When I found out I didn't get picked for TEDx, instead of spiralling, I felt relieved. If you're chasing a goal right now and secretly dreading the moment you might actually get it, this one's for you because learning how to use fear as motivation starts with figuring out which fears are actually yours.
TEDx has been my white whale for years. The red carpet, the dot on the stage, the "I made it" of it all. So when my speaking coach told me I hadn't made the latest round, I braced for the gut-punch. It never came. What showed up instead was relief.
Sitting in the audience at a speaking event the following weekend, watching twelve other people nail their talks, it hit me: the idea I'd pitched to TEDx wasn't the idea I actually want to spread. It wasn't researched enough. It wasn't fully formed. It came from passion, sure but it came more from wanting the validation than wanting to say the thing.
That's the trap. We chase the stage, the follower count, the million-dollar launch, because we think it'll finally prove we're good enough. Spoiler: it won't. I know people who've done the TEDx talk and nothing changed. No flood of clients. No sudden sense of arrival. Just the next goalpost, further down the field.
Here's how to use fear as motivation when you get rejected. Fear isn't there to shut you down — it's there to point at exactly what you're not ready to do yet, or what you're doing for the wrong reason. My fear around this rejection wasn't "I'm not good enough." It was "this isn't my message yet." Different fear, completely different fix.
So next time a door slams:
I built Life After I Left to give women permission to be seen and heard without waiting for anyone's sign-off. And I still caught myself doing the exact thing I coach women out of — waiting to be chosen before I'd let myself believe my voice mattered.
That's the bit nobody tells you about doing your own personal development work: you don't graduate from it. You just get faster at spotting the old patterns when they resurface. I've built a whole business around teaching women to stop waiting for permission, and I still needed a TEDx rejection to catch myself doing exactly that. Growth isn't linear, and it definitely isn't finished just because you've done the work before.
You don't need the stage to have the story
I'm not done with TEDx. It'll happen when the idea is actually ready to be shared, not when my ego needs it to be. In the meantime, I'm building the thing that is ready right now: teaching women to stop trying to kill their fear and start using it as fuel for real, uncomfortable, forward action.
If you got a no recently - a client who ghosted, a pitch that flopped, a stage you didn't get invited onto - sit with it before you decide it means you're not enough. It might be redirecting you somewhere better. It might be telling you the goal wasn't even yours to begin with.
Feel the fear. Use it as fuel. Then go be unstoppable anyway.
Ready to stop white-knuckling your fear and start using it? Let's Face Your Fear together.