Dear Rejectee,
Congratulations!
At least you accomplished putting yourself out there enough to get rejected.
You nose-dived because you jumped up and reached for something.
You got out of your head, off of your ass and put yourself out there.
That alone is more than half the battle. That alone is a VICTORY.
A huge part of your job description is “Getting Constantly Rejected.”
Right now, move that towards the top of that job description, WAY above “Occasionally Getting Accepted.”
The reality of it all is that getting turned down is the NORM and being accepted is the EXCEPTION.
So, you got rejected from getting a scoring gig?
How much that personally stings is almost entirely in your control.
If you are doing this right, losing a scoring job should be commonplace. It should be something that happens on an almost daily basis.
Because, to be doing this right, you should be aiming for a massive number of opportunities a year.
As those sort of numbers increases, the individual burn of each rejection is greatly diminished.
I once submitted a feature documentary I made to over 250 film festivals. I was accept by about 80 of them.
Now that I think about it,I suppose that meant I actually received 170 rejection notices.
But I never focused on those 170 downturned thumbs.
They were so not part of my attention that I even had someone else screen the responses and instructed them to only tell me about the acceptances.
Those 170 rejects were the MEANS of getting to the 80 embraces.
When I send out an invite to a party, I only look at those who have RSVPed “YES.”
What good does it do me to put my focus on those who are not coming? What value is there in playing mind games with myself trying to guess why they are not attending.
Sure, there is a time and place for taking inventory, analyzing mistakes, and reevaluating game plans.
But, by and large the #1 thing to do in dealing with rejection is to imitate the guy behind the deli counter barking to his customers, “NEXT!”
