Staying Positive

Acting is a difficult business.  You wait for an audition.  Often the opportunities don't come.  When you do get an audition, more often than not it's just that, an audition, no job.  You can go long stretches without work.  As a matter of fact, I just went through five dry years.  Acting can be a depressing, gut-wrenching business.  The trick is to stay positive.

How do you do that when most actors, or at least this actor, are insecure and sure they will never work again after their current job ends?  A really good question.  As I often tell my students...most actors have a screw loose; we're a little insane.  If we weren't, we'd have jobs that had some security and a reliable paycheck.  So how do you stay positive?  I don't have a really good answer, but I'm working on it.

Part of staying positive is believing in something, anything, but especially yourself.  Believing that something larger than yourself is ordering the universe can put life in perspective and give you something positive to hold onto.  You don't have to necessarily believe in God.  I do by the way.  But believing that there is a presence, a higher power, that makes living possible does help.  It works for AA.  Acting is an addiction for me, so I have to take positivity one day at a time.  For me, if God believes in me, I have to believe in myself.

Another part of staying positive is not putting all your creative eggs in one basket--acting.  Those of us who are artists usually have other creative outlets to get us through the dry spells in our main field of endeavor.  Many actors paint, or make music.  Johnny Depp, for instance, has a band.  I myself write.  I'm working on a book.  This allows my creative juices to flow even when I can't get acting work.

I also use visioning as a way to stay positive.  I have a vision board with the goals I want to achieve and I look at it often.  I remind myself of the goals I have accomplished and focus on ways to address my current goals.  I use my vision board as a visual pep talk when I begin to feel down.

Building a community of support can also help maintain positivity.  I've been blessed with a group of Power Ranger fans who encourage and support me and friends and family that believe in me.  Knowing that there are people holding good thoughts for my success lifts my spirits and buoys me when I begin to doubt.

I'm banking on positivity to make 2013 a very good year.  I believe that all good things have arrived already for me.  Just like Christmas, all I have to do is open the packages.  There will be days, I have no doubt, when it will be harder than it is today to be positive.   But I'm working a positive program and I am succeeding.  Today and every day, life is getting better and better.