How to Manage Rejection

Do you ever feel like you know just enough about manage rejection to be dangerous? Let's see if we can fill in some of the gaps with the latest info from manage rejection experts.

I stumble upon this interesting article by Suzanne Falter-Barns. And it goes like this.....

Every summer I indulge a particular passion of mine: appearing in a musical with our local community theater group. There is an entire pack of us women over-forty-who-must-act (we call ourselves the ‘elder-babes’,) and these shows are one of the high points of our year. This season’s production is going to be no exception: we are doing “Chicago”.

Now let me just say … I’m no dancer. Despite years of dance training in my youth, I tend to get up there and go left when everyone else is going right. No problem, I naively figured. I’d been taking jazz dance classes for an entire year, so how tough was this going to be? I blithely pulled on the fishnets and trotted off to the dance auditions.

Four hours later, I crawled home, assuming the worst. The routines had gone on for hours, every one of them mind numbingly complex. Somehow, an entire legion of great dancers materialized out of nowhere, and whipped through each combination flawlessly. Meanwhile, I hid at the back behind my friend Leslie, a former Broadway hoofer, and tried feebly to follow along.

Call backs were the following weekend, and the ensuing week was pure, unadulterated hell. I violated every last rule I’ve spent all these years preaching about: I assumed I wouldn’t be cast and whined ceaselessly to my husband about it. Then I angrily decided I would rise up and quit the audition process then and there. (After all, if I couldn’t dance, what use could I possibly be to this @*%&$(%! show?) Eventually, I calmed down a bit, but only because my thirteen years old daughter told me to get a grip.

The information about manage rejection presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about manage rejection or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

I was, in fact, wrestling in the trenches with that old, familiar beast, Rejection. And at this point, Rejection was definitely winning. Its dark little mutterings were on pretty much 24/7, and it did its best to whip me down to the emotional size I was back at about … oh, maybe age twelve. I was called back for one of the few non-dance roles in the show, and found myself fumbling through these auditions, too. I couldn’t hit the very low notes the song required; my acting seemed lifeless and forced to me. I went home with tears in my eyes, convinced that this would be the first summer I wouldn’t make it on stage.

The Rejection demons really moved in for the kill at that point. For the next two days, I dissolved into tears at the drop of the hat. I kept imagining all the great times the cast would be having without me. I buried myself deeper and deeper in self-pity. It was as if I couldn’t turn off the ceaseless drone of my damning mind, no matter what I did. Finally, in a single moment of clarity, I turned to self help.

I did the emotional freedom technique, which combines eye movements, and tapping on certain key meridian points in the body with affirming thoughts and sentences. I’d known of the technique, but had never done it before; still the time for it was obviously right. As I did the EFT process, I felt a curious calm descend over me. “This is … weird,” I told myself as I tapped below my eye, and on my chin. How could a little tapping undo an entire lifetime of vulnerability, humiliation, shame, and deep inner torment!?

When I completed the entire process twice, I became aware that I was suddenly ‘okay’ with the entire audition situation. It just plain seemed okay if I didn’t get cast. I started thinking about selling tickets each night with Bonnie, our fun ticket chair, or maybe just sitting in the audience for a change. I started imagining a summer where I had plenty of time to laze around with the kids, or go on long boat rides with my husband. I started remembering how relaxed summer could actually be.

When I woke up the next day, the mood miraculously continued. Now it occurred to me that there might actually be some small non-dance roles in the show that I could take. And that I could do this and STILL have a relaxing, nurturing summer AND even be in the show with the other elder-babes. It struck me that I didn’t have to be the star to have a valid experience with my beloved theater family. All I had to be was there, one way or another. Like all stories of inner torment, this one had its lessons, too. I got to get over myself with EFT, which is now my new favorite tool for such. And I got to remember why I really love my little theater company not because of the big moments in front of the audience (though those aren’t bad either), but because of the whole theater company experience.

By the way, I just found out I did get a part … in the dance corps! Not only must the Gods be crazy, they clearly have a sense of humor, too.

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