Learn How to Avoid Feeling Powerless in Your Acting Career

How to Avoid Feeling Powerless in Your Acting Career

If you feel like you are doing more waiting than working in your career– well then honey this blog here is for YOU.

Actors are constantly giving their power away in this industry while they sit and refresh their email hoping that an opportunity or an audition will appear. Well friends, that is NO way to build a career OR live your life.

We see it in the dating world all the time. Someone waiting by the phone for that person to call or text. Putting all their eggs in one basket and placing all their happiness on one person. It’s a sad and lonely existence and ya know what it doesn’t prioritize? YOUR HAPPINESS and YOUR SUCCESS.

So if you feel like you have been waiting for the right agent, the right job or the right contact to really feel like an actor— read the tips below and take your power back in this career. Time to step into the Boss Babe role you have always deserved!

When you are an actor, you are the CEO of your own company and you should be working your connections and making new ones with the confidence of a BOSS. Act like a leader. Get focused and committed to your business with the confidence and knowledge of a 7 figure CEO. The successes and failures of the company are on YOU. So train, prepare, and work like you mean it.

When in doubt– MAKE and CREATE. Haven’t had an opportunity land in your lap? Time to make-one. Connect with writers or even write for yourself. Create a team and do play readings, short films, podcasts or even commercials for local businesses. You need to constantly be putting excellent work out there to help more and more people discover who you are and what you can do with your craft. Radio silence doesn’t put you in the right place at the right time so help the universe out! Creating and marketing your own work gives you way more opportunities to sync up with people who can help you get to the next level.

Research and Reach Out. Are you an expert on the type of work being produced right now? Is your brain a full-on encyclopedia of people who are working in the entertainment business who do work that you’d love to be doing at all sorts of levels? If not, then make RESEARCH your new best friend. Troll articles, postings and announcements for new names of people working on projects you’d love to get involved in and then dive down the rabbit hole learning about these people and their careers. But don’t stop there! If there is a project happening that you KNOW you are right for, REACH OUT! Offer to help or be of service in any way. Volunteer or help connect them with something or someone they may need. Get on their radar by being helpful and not needy and then keep tending to that connection until that person is a part of your network.

Help Other People. We mentioned this a bit above, but it’s worth saying again. We all have needy people in our lives and they can be exhausting. Don’t be one when it comes to your career! Offer to help friends and colleagues on creative projects instead of only just asking them to support you. Be mindful to be a giver more than you are a taker (also be mindful to set boundaries– you’re not an eternal volunteer, you are a person of value!). Being helpful is a great way to deepen relationships so your contacts will be more excited about being supportive to your success.

Live a FULL and Happy Life Outside of Your Career. You are not and will never be just an actor. You are a beautiful and powerful human being capable of all sorts of things so spend some time cultivating what some of those “things” are. Have hobbies. Have friends OUTSIDE the business. Spend time with family. Get involved in a cause you care about. The more you grow your holistic self, the easier it becomes to feel confident and happy in who you are. Never place your worth on any one thing. You are so much more than a particular acting job or a relationship. You are multidimensional greatness!

I hope these thoughts and tips will help you get back in the driver seat of your career and your life. You are the writer of your story and you DO deserve to have all the wonderful things you crave. Go on out and build the YOU that has always been hanging out there in your heart.

Take your acting skills to the next level, and learn how to avoid feeling powerless in your acting career by signing up for one of our online acting classes today! 

[Photo Kindly by Ian Dooley]