The transition from spinning your wheels to taking control of your career involves a lot of things… Changing your understanding of your job, shifting your attitude about the industry, and replacing some old, self-sabotaging habits with new, proactive ones. After years of working with actors at various points in that transition, it's become clear to me that there's one bad habit that holds the key. If you break that habit, your odds of success are excellent; if you don't, all of the other work won't add up to much.
You have to stop complaining.
If you were to observe 100 actors for a month and make a pie chart of the various things they spent their time doing, after you eliminated sleep and non-acting related work, complaining would be one of the biggest slices of pie. WAY bigger than acting or networking or marketing or studying - especially if you count the amount of complaining we sneak in while doing those things. And complaining is a parasite. It saps your energy. It feeds all of the negative voices in your head. It makes it exponentially harder to do all of the other things you want to do. So the more you complain, the less energy you have to do anything else, which gives you more to complain about.
Does that mean you're never allowed to vent frustration, anger, or other 'negative' feelings? Of course not - as long as you understand the difference between venting and complaining:
- Venting is the process of releasing frustration and anger so you can move forward. You scream at the top of your lungs in the car, post a rant in all caps to social media, or meet up with a friend and rant together about whatever it is that's bothering you. After a good stretch of venting, you feel better. Purged. Ready to jump back in. Venting is healthy.
- Complaining is the process of convincing yourself that you're powerless. You tell yourself and/or other people that the business isn't fair, you're just unlucky, or for some reason that you're not allowed to know, everyone else gets to be successful and you don't. After a good stretch of complaining, you feel worse. Defeated. Ready to give up. Complaining is self-sabotage.
So great… How do you stop? First, learn to recognize it. Work on becoming aware of when you're complaining. In the beginning, it may take a few hours or even days to catch yourself, but keep it up and soon you'll become aware of it in the moment - or even better, the moment before.
Once you've caught yourself, figure out which kind of complaint it is. A complaint is really one of two things; an opportunity or an excuse.
- An opportunity complaint is like when you're sure there's something wrong with your headshots, but you don't know what it is, and you don't know what to do about it, so you're stuck with these headshots that you hate that you only got because someone told you to get new headshots. This kind of complaint is a flashing red neon arrow pointing to an opportunity to remove an obstacle from your path. Identify the problem, figure out what you're going to do about it (asking for help is allowed), and get it done. Complaint neutralized.
- An excuse complaint is like when you get a super-last-minute audition and you didn't have time to prepare so it didn't go well and you're pissed. It sucked, and it wasn't your fault that it sucked, so you'll be damned if you're gonna take responsibility for it sucking. This kind of complaint requires letting go. Things go wrong. Sometimes they're your fault, sometimes they're someone else's fault, sometimes they're no one's fault; but allowing them to eat away at you makes no sense. Letting go takes practice, but it's critical - to your career and your life in general. Letting go is an act of radically healthy selfishness.
That should be it, right? Recognize the problem, choose a different solution, practice practice practice, and you're done! But there's another step, because you will notice pretty quickly that other actors don't like it when you stop complaining. Complaining is a security blanket, because it lets us avoid responsibility for whatever we're unhappy about. When you give up that security blanket and start taking responsibility for your career, the people around you will sense the difference between what you're doing and what they're doing, and it will make them uncomfortable. You may notice some friends become a bit passive aggressive. They may accuse you of bragging or being arrogant. They may even start incorporating you into their complaints. How you respond is up to you, but I recommend that you explain what you're doing, why you're doing it, and that they're free to have feelings about it, but it's something you need to do for yourself.
I want to make this no-complaining thing an offer you can't refuse, so here are a few of the things you'll get in return:
- Praise. People won't know why, but they'll think you're awesome, and they'll tell you so.
- Power. Knowing how to solve your own problems feels kinda like being a superhero.
- Peace. That low, constant, anxious, 'something is wrong' feeling goes away.
And what do you think happens when someone like that walks into an audition room?
Correct.
Image via Flickr by Dani_vr