By Stella Speridon-Violet
Sourced through Pinterest.
You need to be picky to get what you want.
I’ve built a career off of betting on myself. Time and time again, I’ve been told I shouldn’t get a degree in journalism. I’ve been told I’ll struggle like my peers to find a job. I’ve been told starting a new publication was unrealistic and that there are too many people trying to do exactly what I want to do, and that I should probably just find something more practical.
Maybe they were right. Maybe journalism is impractical. Maybe scaling a media company in your early twenties is a terribly stressful decision. Maybe there are, in fact, thousands of other girls who want to write about music and culture and have a Substack and an Instagram and a camera roll full of Pinterest-esque photos.
I did it anyway.
There will never be a world where you live out your dreams and don’t feel discomfort. There is no guarantee you’ll get far; well, no guarantee you’ll get anywhere.
You email a publicist for the first time asking for a press pass. Or, pitch a feature story to an artist with over 500k followers. Maybe you apply for a job that feels slightly above your skill and pay grade, and you tell someone, “Hey, I think I could do this.”
Sometimes they say yes—more often, they don’t—but I’ve started realizing that rejection isn’t actually the part that should scare you; the scarier thing is quietly deciding that you aren’t allowed to ask.
Closed mouths don’t get fed!
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It sounds like something your mom says to get you motivated, the old-fashioned way, the one that doesn’t quite get you places anymore. Kind of like that meme of Kris Jenner asking Kim Kardashian to just “call Taylor up.”
That’s not how the modern world necessarily works anymore, but the same idea is there: What will you lose if you just apply, reach out, or ask?
Being confident enough to ask for what you want doesn’t mean you’re assuming the world owes it to you. It means being willing to make your desire visible. It means saying, “I want this,” even when there is a chance someone will respond, “No.”
And I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with no. I think part of growing up is realizing how much of adulthood is just making requests and pretending you’re not terrified of the answer.
While the answer is not always yes… if you never ask, you’ve guaranteed yourself a no.
That distinction has changed the way I approach my career! When Natalie reached out to me with the idea for Gut Instinct Media, there wasn’t really a roadmap. There wasn’t a corporate ladder I could climb or a job description telling me exactly what my next promotion would look like.
It was a week before my twentieth birthday, and all we had was an idea, a shitty laptop, and a ridiculous amount of ambition and the very specific delusion that only young people carry to feel and understand that people might actually care about what we had to say.
So I started emailing artists and publicists asking for media passes and interviews. I pitched stories and reached out to people I had no business assuming would answer me. Some did, some didn’t, but eventually enough people said yes that the no’s stopped feeling like evidence that I wasn’t good enough. They just became part of the process.
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One story that I always hold close to my chest is from Addison Rae; she talked in an interview about how, at the beginning of her career, she said “yes” to every opportunity she was offered. It wasn’t until she was “big” enough in her career that she learned to pick and choose what felt right.
Not every opportunity is a good one, and this is the same for every decision you make in life, whether that be a job, a car, maybe even a brand deal. Not every person who offers you a seat at their table is actually offering you a seat; you might just be there to fill a chair.
When you’re young, especially, there is this pressure to say yes to everything because doors that were previously closed are now magically open. You want to say yes because you feel like you haven’t earned the right to have standards yet.
Take the unpaid thing. Take the “bad” job. Take the weird gig.
You can still be grateful for the opportunity and still decide it’s not right for you; you can negotiate and decide what you’re getting just isn’t worth your time or energy.
You can be hungry without eating everything put out in front of you.
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The older I get, the more I understand that betting on yourself isn’t one giant, cinematic decision, but rather it’s a series of tiny, occasionally embarrassing choices to advocate for yourself. It’s getting up each day and dedicating yourself to things that you love, even when it’s hard.
Success and curating your dream life come at the cost of a lot of struggle. You will face a lot of rejection, but it’s what you do that counts afterward.
Make sure you’re prepared to chase your dreams, not just walk towards them! Continue to be ambitious and want more in your lives.
I did it with no leg up. I didn’t have parents who would be able to support me if my dreams didn’t work out; I didn’t have a plan B to land back on. To me, it was always going to work out, mainly because it had to. And, so far, it has.
Stop convincing yourself that you can’t do it and start pushing yourself to actually just start!
