Fear, Rejection, and the Creative Process at Work

Editor’s note
This piece forms part of Cultivated’s wider body of work on creativity, learning, and how ideas become valuable inside organisations. Across essays and practical explorations, this canon looks at what helps people do meaningful work — and what quietly gets in the way.

Fear, Rejection, and the Creative Process at Work

The creative process is often accompanied by fear and the possibility of rejection.

At the start of each in-person session of my Communication Superpower workshop, I run a short exercise. It’s designed to warm the group up, but more importantly, to surface something fundamental about creativity and sharing ideas at work.

The exercise is simple. I ask people to draw the person sitting to the left of them. They have thirty seconds.

Before anyone puts pen to paper, the same reactions appear every time: laughter, nervous smiles, and a low hum of anxiety.

Then the disclaimers arrive.

“I can’t draw.”
“This will be terrible.”
“There’s not enough time.”

When the drawings are finished, I ask people to share them. And almost without fail, the apologies follow.

“I’m sorry.”
“I told you it would be bad.”
“This really isn’t my strong suit.”

The exercise is playful, but the behaviour it reveals is not. When it comes to creativity, many of us start making excuses before we’ve even begun. We doubt our ability. We anticipate rejection. And when we do create something, we often rush to minimise it, belittle it, or soften the moment with self-deprecation.

That response is deeply human. To create is to put something of yourself into the world. And by doing so, you make yourself visible — and therefore vulnerable.

Creativity, fear, and work

Seen through this lens, it’s no surprise that creativity struggles to thrive in many workplaces.

Creativity requires imagination — time to notice, think, and envision something that does not yet exist.
It requires energy — the capacity to bring that vision into form.
It requires safety — trust that what is shared will not be mocked, dismissed, or punished.
And it requires repetition — the chance to try, fail, learn, and try again.

When these conditions are absent, fear takes over. People stop offering ideas. They retreat to what feels safe. They wait for certainty, permission, or validation that rarely comes.

Creating something new is not just a technical act. It is an emotional one.

Creating more often

One way through the fear is frequency.

The more often you create, the less power fear holds. You build the creative muscle. You learn to ship imperfect work. You focus on what is in your control — the act of creating — and loosen your grip on judgement and outcomes.

David Bayles captures this well in Art & Fear:

“You make good work by making lots of work that isn’t very good, and gradually weeding out the parts that aren’t good, the parts that aren’t yours. It’s called feedback, and it’s the most direct route to learning about your own vision.”

Creativity is not a single act of brilliance. It’s a practice.

Be like a child — and notice what happens

We’re often told that children create freely, without fear. And for a time, that’s true.

But that freedom doesn’t last forever.

My son once made a wooden Father Christmas decoration at school — a genuine act of imagination and effort. Before he even showed it to us, he said, “It looks like it’s been through a fire.”

I thought it was wonderful. It took pride of place on our tree. But the apology came before the sharing.

At some point — through school, peers, feedback, comparison, or self-awareness — fear enters the creative process. It seems to arrive quietly, but it stays. The question isn’t how to eliminate fear, but how to continue creating alongside it.

Practice, feedback, and safety

Fear doesn’t disappear through reassurance alone. It softens through exposure.

Trying.
Sharing.
Learning.
Trying again.

This only works when feedback is constructive and grounded in care. Not all feedback is helpful. Not all opinions are worth absorbing. And in workplaces especially, creativity exists in a complex mix of power, pressure, politics, and personalities.

Without space for error, there is no space for creativity — whether that creativity takes the form of art, new products, better services, or improved ways of working.

“Art is human. Error is human. Art is error.”
— Art & Fear

You’ll find further reading on this theme, and many others, in the Cultivated reading list.

When not creating hurts more

At some point, the balance can tip.

For me, there came a moment when the pain of not creating became greater than the fear of rejection.

“Artists don’t get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.”

I see organisations reaching this point too. They sense that without new ideas, new approaches, and new ways of working, something essential is missing. The challenge is creating the conditions — time, energy, safety, and trust — that allow creativity to re-emerge.

This is the work that excites me most: finding the people already trying to solve real problems, supporting them, bringing them together, and creating safe passage to experiment, learn, and persist.

Your creative process

At work today, do you feel able to create?
Do you have the space and energy to imagine and build?
Do you feel safe enough to share unfinished ideas?
Have you practised enough to soften the fear?

Every meaningful product, service, system, or story begins as an idea that someone dared to bring into the world. The finished outcome often looks inevitable in hindsight. The fear, false starts, and learning rarely do.

Creating is hard. But not creating can be harder still.

If you can, nudge a little more time, space, and energy toward creativity — in your work and in your life. It may feel uncomfortable. That’s often a sign you’re doing something worth doing.