Let's Talk About Rejection As Musicians

Rejection can hurt; here's how I work through it.

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Transcript

Welcome And Eleanor’s Story

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Hello and welcome to the Confident Musitioning Podcast. My name is Eleanor and I am a British American oboist studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Literally my dream school. And it took me a long way to get there. I applied and auditioned for 12 schools in three different countries. It was a lot of hard work. But oh my gosh, so worth it. I want you to have the confidence to work hard in achieving your goals. So come with me as we go on this journey together. So sit down, pull up a chair, take a seat, or if you're on the go, welcome to the Confident Musitioning Podcast. Um when I was applying for music school. I was also rejected by Oberlin in the States, the New England Conservatory, and the Cleveland Institute of Music. I have been rejected by competitions, by scholarship auditions, and so much more. And I failed my midterm exam during my first year of Conservatoire the first time. Luckily, I was able to retake it and pass, but yeah, I failed it. I understand what rejection feels like and how it can affect us. It can suck. Like, let's just be honest, that feeling you get when you're when someone says no or some like organization or institution or exam result says no, it can feel really bad. Like I remember when I was rejected, well not rejected, but like when I failed my my midterm exam during my first year, I was a mess, you know, like it sucks. Um rejection can really really be hard, right? And I think the first thing to note is that's okay, it's a normal feeling for that to happen. Everybody, everybody experiences rejection, and I know that sometimes rejection can can really suck, it can really, really not feel good, but sometimes it's just what we need. So let's break down how I see rejection, basically what how I manage rejection, what I do, etc. And um I hope that it can be useful and helpful for you. Alright, the first thing is like the first mindset thing that I have is everybody who has wins has losses. Everybody, like the the most successful people on the earth have who have had so many wins have also had so many losses. Why? Because when you have wins, you have to try. Ooh, you have to try. And trying also means that you're not going like sometimes you're not gonna succeed, you know. Trying does not always mean success. And so when people try and they are successful, it also means that they have had failures because they have also tried and made mistakes, got rejected. You know, having these failures is part of the success. So everybody who has wins has losses. I detailed a plethora of rejection at the beginning of this episode, but let's kind of flip that around. I got into the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal Northern College of Music, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the University of Cincinnati's Conservatory, and the Peabody Institute of Music. I have won competitions and received scholarships for my playing. I have also performed in amazing ensembles and such cool events, such as performing at Buffet Crampon's 200-year anniversary concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and also playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and so much more. Overall, I think I would say that I have a ton of wins. Like I just listed them, and I think overall I have had a lot of wins so far, and in order to have wins, you gotta try, which means you're gonna have losses. That is how life works. So every time someone has a win, they're probably they've probably had like five times where they've tried it before. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's so important to remember. So everybody you see in music who has done great things or has had wins, if you were to ask them about their rejections, they would have stories. They would have stories. I have done interviews on this podcast with some professional classical musicians, and they have told me stories because there are stories, like we all have those failures that have kind of shaped us to get to where we need to go in terms of success and things that we want to do. It's not a singular feeling, rejection. Everybody understands it, and I think the first part of working through it is normalizing that, being like, this is a normal feeling, everybody gets it. You are not the only person who has rejection. You have a whole community of everybody else on this earth who knows what that feels like. So going from there, I think it's important not to compare ourselves with other people. If you are looking at someone else and maybe they have fewer losses than you, or fewer times they've been rejected, maybe they have more wins if you count them up or stack them together. But honestly, let's be honest, you know, you can't really count wins or stack up wins because there are tons of different kinds of wins. There are also tons of different kinds of, you know, being rejected. So there is also that to note. But if you compare yourself with someone else, in actuality, you are comparing their outside with your inside. Let me tell you what this means. You are the only person who knows how you feel. You are the only person who knows what it feels like to be you, to be inside your body, to be inside your brain. You are the only person who knows that. You have absolutely no idea what anybody else feels like. You don't, right? And so when you are comparing yourself with someone else, you are comparing your experience of being on the inside of you as a person, like inside your head, inside your body, inside your experiences, you are comparing that to someone else's, like the things they've done or that they're the headlines they've had. Let me explain, like give you an example, okay? If, for instance, you really struggle with negative self-talk in the practice room, let's just say you do, right? You really struggle with that. That might be something that you are working on. If someone else does not have negative self-talk in the practice room, right, maybe just for them, they just never started doing that. And that's like we don't want to blame ourselves, right? That's another thing. Let's not blame ourselves if we are struggling with something. But let's just say the person you are comparing yourself to might not, I mean, everybody struggles a little bit with negative self-talk, but maybe their experience with it is a little different from yours. If you compare maybe their wins with you, you are not only comparing their wins with maybe the things you've done, but also how you feel about yourself. Do you know what I mean? If you have negative self-talk in the practice room, then that's gonna that's gonna also kind of go into that. And you're gonna be comparing them with the fact of, oh my gosh, I I also like struggle with negative self-talk. Do you know what I mean? Like, but they don't know that about you, maybe, and you don't know what they're going through. They might be struggling with something else that you don't know. You, whenever we are comparing ourselves, no matter how much we try to not do this, if we try, we will always be comparing our insides with someone else's outsides, and you do not know what's going on inside their brain. So it's already an unfair comparison. So why would you do it? You know, like now I feel like now that I've kind of explained it, there's no point. There is no point to compare ourselves. So when we look at rejection and we look at someone else who maybe got in to whatever ensemble we got rejected from, etc., comparing ourselves to them is not going to help anything, okay? That's so important. We are each one of us, we are on our own journey, and that might include something, it might not include something. Do you know what I mean? That is important to remember. So now that we've kind of talked about rejection in terms of like it's it's not a singular feeling, it's not a singular experience, and also it's not help helpful to compare ourselves when we get rejected. Let's talk about what I do with rejection. Because when I am rejected from whatever I'm trying to get into, maybe it's an ensemble, maybe it's a university, like whatever it is. I do some things, and it can be different for everybody, but I want to share with you what I do. The first thing I think is I feel the feeling. I feel the feeling because rejection is a feeling. It it it's it's inside of you, you know, and when I get rejected, it depends on what I'm getting rejected from. Um, but sometimes it there is a feeling, there's an emotion inside of me, and I just sit with that because I know if I push it down, it's just gonna get bigger. It's just gonna be like, okay, well then why are you pushing me down? Are you ashamed of me? Like this, we're ashamed of the feeling we have when we're rejected, that's gonna make it worse. So I just sit with it, and I'm like, this is a totally normal human experience and feeling, and I just validate it in that way. You know, I'm not beating myself up, I'm not saying, oh my gosh, why do you feel this way? What you I'm just sitting with it, saying, This is the this this sucks, okay? And I have this feeling, but that's okay, right? This is a completely normal feeling. I let that feeling sit there. Um, and honestly, when I do that, it is a better outcome than if I tried to push it down. I feel better, which is which is good, which is what we want. I breathe through it, I sit with it, and I don't push it away. I allow it to be there, and then it sometimes, you know, it can go away, you know? It can go away on its own. You know, it's kind of like think about if you um stub your toe, okay? If you stub your toe, that's pain. Ooh, ow, pain. You have an option. You could either scrunch your face up, scrunch your body up, ooh, ow, and really kind of brace yourself. I think when I do that, the pain gets worse. But if I completely relax my body, if I stub my toe and I relax my body and I just let the pain just take its course and it just goes through me and then it's gone. You know, and it just leaves compared to me scrunching up and like getting really ooh and scared, and then and then it kind of sits there more and it's worse. And I also have the feeling of me being tight and and um it feels quite intense, okay. And this is the same thing, just let it sit with it, let it be there, it will go away, okay? And understand that there is another path. If you get rejected from something, I'm like it means that there's something else waiting for you. Every no is a yes for something else, you know. If you got rejected from an orchestra that you wanted to get into, then maybe that means you have time to apply for another orchestra. You know? Or maybe if you don't get rejected or if you get rejected from from a university or music school or conservative, um, maybe then that means that you know that will make it easier for you to pick from the acceptances. Okay, because if you have so many options, that might make it harder to see which one is the one that's a good fit for you. But if you get rejected from some things, then you're able to focus your attention on other things that might be better for you, might be more meaningful for you. Rejection is just redirection, it really is, it really is, okay? And I know in the moment when you're feeling rejected and oh my gosh, like why didn't I get into this thing or whatever? That can that can be hard, but it is always redirection, and it always means it's opening something else up, right? It always is. So that's pretty cool. Alright. Before we finish this episode and we do a little recap, I want to tell you about um a tool that has been helping me in the practice session because I think it sucks when we are in a practice room and we don't know what we're doing. Okay, when you're sat in a practice room and you're like, I have an hour, and I have um attudes to practice, and I should practice my scales, and I have extracts to practice, and also wasn't there something I should have prepared for this thing, and oh, I have an audition coming up, I should work on that music. Did I just stress you out because I just stressed myself out? Um, and you're sitting in the practice room and you're like, Well, I have an hour, I don't know what to do. Planning your practice is the answer. It really is. I like all my sessions that are planned are so much better than the ones where I just sit there and wonder what I should be doing. And a really, really helpful tool that I use to plan my practice is a notable practice journal. This journal is so helpful because not only can I plan my practice so that I know exactly what I need to do, I also have a space to reflect. And that means that I can look back on the session and write down what was good, write down what was bad, and also write down what I want to work on next. So the next session, you know exactly what you want to work on. Having that kind of next step section in the practice or in the reflection, I always write my next steps, and that can be so so helpful. I mean, it is so helpful for the next session because I'm like, okay, I know what I need to do because I wrote it down the last time I was, you know, in the practice room headspace. So it's so helpful. As soon as I realized that I um was finding this journal helpful, I knew that I needed to tell you about it and give you a code. So please do use code Eleanor15 for 15% off your journal. That is E-L-E-A-N-O-R 15 for 15% off your journal. And get yourself a journal and start planning that practice because it does make a difference, like it's really helpful, and you can have more effective planned out sessions so you're not sat there in the practice room wondering, what should I do? I only recommend things that I absolutely love. This code is an affiliate code, which means I do receive a commission with no extra cost to you. And the link to the site for the journals, to Notable, and um the code will be down below in the description in the show notes, just for you. Alright, let's do a little bit of a recap. So, basically, rejection happens to everyone, and everybody who has wins has losses. We can all detail the win column and the losses column in anything, not just music, just like absolutely anything. So, um, we have all experienced rejection and have dealt with that, and that's like completely normal, and you are not alone in this. That's that's important to note. Not comparing yourself to other people because you are always comparing their outsides to your insides, and that's not a fair comparison. And lastly, what I do with rejection, I think the most important thing is I let it kind of like I feel the feeling, and I don't try and push it away too soon. I I give myself the grace to feel that feeling, and I understand that there is another path. I think a lot of people, when they feel rejection, myself included, like a few years ago, would beat themselves up mentally, which would just look like they're grumpy. But in actuality, we don't deserve to be beaten up mentally, we just don't, right? It's so so important that we sit with ourselves and just allow this to happen and it's okay. Rejection is redirection, alright? Thank you so much for listening to listening to this episode. I am so glad that you are here. If you enjoyed this episode, please do like, subscribe, follow, comment, and share this episode with someone that you think might need it. Because we all at some point need a little bit of comfort when we are feeling rejected. Alright, and I will see you in the next episode. Okay, take care. Bye.