I’ve been doing stand-up for about 7 years now and I’ve been rejected a lot. I’ve been rejected even in instances where I thought I was a shoo-in, or that I deserved it, or that the other people I was going against weren’t as talented as me. One time within an hour, I was rejected from a club I put a lot of stakes into, got rejection letter for a short story I wrote, and then learned that I was rejected from a comedy festival that I had started. (lol)

Because it’s been a process I’ve been through multiple times, I think I’m pretty good at handling rejection these days — I know the arc of where my feelings will go. Of course, it always hurts. Rejection just doesn’t sting, it stings a lot. It’s like having a foot thrown full force at the chest, all the air leaves your lungs. But over the years, I’ve built for myself a few “safeguards” and little self-tests and reminders to help me stomach that rejection.

They don’t make the hurt go away, they just make the recovery time a little bit faster.

1. Question what a rejection says

There is a huge gap between what someone rejecting a comic is saying and what a comic who is rejected thinks is being said to them.

When you’re rejected, it can feel like you’re being told “you don’t have value,” “you’re not good enough,” “you don’t deserve a career,” “your wants are not valid” and so on.

This is usually not the case, and it’s hard to seperate yourself from that mindset. Something that helps is to put yourself in the shoes of the people doing the rejection; like, think about what the hell their job is anyways. Visualize and walk yourself through the steps these people must go through to make their decisions. If this was your job, and you had to send out a rejection letter to someone, what would you want to convey? What does your rejection letter “say” about the person you rejected?

When you’re rejected that doesn’t mean that the people who are doing the rejection thinks you’re not good.

Sometimes, these people actually love you and think you’re awesome, but you just didn’t fit into the “slot” they were looking for at the moment. Sometimes they’ll think you’re good, but they feel that you’re not quite ready yet and you need some time to mature artistically. That last point means that there’s a benefit to entering into something and being rejected, because it means that the next time you enter they’ll remember you and possibly seen how much you’ve grown.

When a club or festival rejects you, they’re not saying “no, forever”…what they are telling you is“no, not now.”

I’ve been on the other end; I was on a selection committee of a comedy festival and what the experience taught me is that the booker’s jobs are very, very hard and most of the time they aren’t making easy decisions. Sometimes our decisions were decided by a literal coin flip. Or we used the fact that a comic filled out the form wrong as an excuse to exclude them because the competition was so tight — after all, it’s not fair to all those other people who followed the rules.

Most of the time the comics we chose weren’t made based on who we thought was “the best,” but on how we thought all the candidates gel together as a whole. Like, if you already locked-in three really loud comedians for the festival, it would be redundant to add a fourth really loud comedian, no matter how talented they are. Comedy isn’t a meritocracy and anyone who tells you it is is probably lying to get you to do unpaid check spots for a decade. Being ‘the best’ or ‘talented’ or ‘good’ or ‘undeniable’ doesn’t really matter; as you navigate through your comedy career, you run into many situations where being the best at something is not enough to get an opportunity and other times, being short of the best is more than enough.

Knowing that can be very frustrating, because it forces you to confront the fact that there is a very, very large portion of your success that you have absolutely no control over. But it’s also freeing because it separates rejection from your value as artist and a person. It means you can’t interpret a rejection as saying anything other than saying “no, not now.”

And, to be realistic, there is a very real possibility that they rejected you because they didn’t like your stuff. Maybe your talent is underdeveloped at this point. Or you haven’t found the right outlet of expressing yourself yet. Whoever is telling you “no” could be making the right decision for themselves in not choosing you right now.

And, let’s just follow that line of thought, maybe you’re just not their tastes. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact that’s a pretty realistic expectation to have. Because no matter where you’re at in your career, no matter how good you are, there will still be people who don’t like your stuff. In spite what comics tell each other, there is no such thing as a comic being so amazing that they’re ‘undeniable.’ Look at The Beatles; they were supposedly the greatest band of all time and yet at the height of their fame, you had rednecks burning their albums in a giant bonfire. You can never be so talented or great that you’ll appeal to everyone. Ever. Sometimes you’re just not somebody’s tastes. Sometimes you remind them of their asshole dad or shitty ex and there’s nothing you can do about it.

But, if they rejected you because they didn’t like your stuff — what does that mean? Does it mean you suck? No, of course not; that’s not their value judgement to make. Does it mean that you shouldn’t be doing comedy? No, of course not; that’s not their value judgement to make. You’re the only one who can answer either of those questions.

Challenge and question what you think you’re being told when you find out you’re rejected. If a rejection makes you feel bad about yourself and invalidated, that’s just one assumption or many you can make. Are their other, more positive assumptions you can make? What are ways that rejection letters are a positive thing? How is it validating? What is exciting about it? If a comic always acts stuck-up and doesn’t acknowledge you when you’re in the room, does that mean they don’t like you, or could it mean something else? Is it about you, or is it about them?

I can’t answer any of those questions for you, but I absolutely know that you can answer those questions yourself.