The Actor's Success - Dealing with Rejection

"I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat."
-Sylvester Stallone
Regardless of what you think about Stallone's acting abilities, he has proven himself to be a lasting entity in the business, overcoming huge obstacles, including being told repeatedly that he'd never make it.
Feelings of rejection may be the single biggest reason many actors give up on the business, and it's understandable why:
A. You're in business for yourself, and the product you sell is you. Every time someone doesn't buy you--which is often for most actors--it can hurt, if you let it.
B. The competition for what you're selling is intense and it can often feel as if the deck is stacked against you-that there is always someone "better" than you.
C. Not only are you selling the most personal of products, against many other entrepreneurs selling the same thing, but you're asked time and again in acting classes to take down your emotional armor and make yourself vulnerable.
Expose yourself only to be turned down enough times, and it's bound to take a toll on your enthusiasm and persistence.
But rejection is not an actual event - it's a state of mind.
Reframe the way you think about what happens, and you can actually make it an opportunity for progress.
Skeptical? Read on.
Here are three techniques many actors have found helpful in dealing with rejection.
1. It's not about you
You hear this often, but come on, how can it not be?
You're the one that didn't get called back or cast, right?
True, maybe you didn't, but remember that you're a small business owner, and when you don't get cast, it's simply that the casting director wasn't interested in your product at that particular time.
I believe what happens for a lot of actors is that unconsciously, they take not getting called back or cast as an affront to their self worth.
Can you imagine a gas station owner feeling personally rejected because someone didn't need gas as they drove by?
Seems silly, but it's equivalent.
You can dispense with a lot of the negative emotions about "being rejected" by separating who you are from your business. When you don't get chosen, it's simply that your business isn't doing as well as you'd like.
Understand that while you are inextricably linked to the service you offer, you are not that service, down at your core. Treat auditions and other times that you put yourself "out there" with the same separation as a gas station owner, and they'll become much easier.
Of course the trick is to keep putting yourself out there, and still get cast more often. Again, it's not a matter of judging how well you're doing, but how your business is doing.
2. Get Right with Yourself
I have a friend who was told by a prominent casting director, "no amount of plastic surgery would ever make you castable." Brutal.
Nothing I could say to her would ever take away the pain of that kind of rejection. She opened her heart and exposed herself to this man, and he threw it back in her face.
Looking from outside the situation, it's easy to see that his abuse has a lot more to do with him than it does with her (remember: it's not about you). Perhaps he just caught his wife cheating on him or slammed his finger in the door of his car. Of course nothing excuses what he said, but the point is that my friend took the remark personally, thinking it was about her, when it obviously had nothing to do with her. She happened to be in front of him at the wrong time and provided him with an easy target.
Even if you never hear anything this harsh from someone else--and I hope you don't--we humans have an amazing capacity to send those kinds of messages to ourselves. Go through "don't call us, we'll call you" enough, and your inner monologue can easily go from "I'm going to be a star," to "I'll never make it," "there's always someone better than me," or some similar self-defeating message.
So regardless of where you hear these lies, your job is to face them head on. Know who you are and who you are not.
Know what you believe about yourself, and what you don't.
It comes down to this: no one can make you feel badly about yourself unless some part of you already believes what they say to bring you down. Get right with what you believe about yourself, and no amount of rejection can ever quell your spirit. You'll not only be a lot happier, but you'll find success comes far more easily.
3. Learn to be Unattached to Results
Tom Lasswell was a brilliant acting teacher and one of the best actors I ever new - the kind that could completely lose himself in whatever character he took on.
Every time he went on an audition, he would give it everything he had, and the moment after he thanked the casting director, he would convince himself he didn't get the part. Then if he really didn't, he felt no disappointment, and if he did, he'd be pleasantly surprised.
My own technique is to put whatever it is I'm going after at the time up against the "ten-year-rule," that is, I ask myself, "will this have the same weight in ten years that it does now? Most of the time I realize that the success or failure of this particular goal won't make or break my career, which releases me from the grip of rejection.
I hear a lot of people say they believe everything happens for a reason, so if they don't get called back for a reading, it's because, God or the Universe had a reason for it.
In all three cases, what we're doing is practicing the Buddhist principle of becoming unattached. The idea is that all suffering comes from attachment. Allow yourself to become unattached, and you allow yourself freedom from the pain that comes with not getting what you want.
It's an interesting paradox: those who master this technique can want something very passionately and yet be completely at peace with any outcome.
Of course all three of these techniques for dealing with rejection take practice and persistence; they're like muscles that need to be exercised to develop; use them consistently, and over time they'll become quite natural and the kind of persistence you need to succeed in this business will become easier and easier, and the journey will become less struggle and more fun. And wasn't that the point of getting into this business in the first place?
For a free simple worksheet that will give you practical steps for dealing with rejection, go to my website at http://www.ActorsSuccess.com and sign up for my electronic newsletter.