More correctly, NOT booking does not equal NOT loved.

Let me back up.

Those of you following me on Instagram — and specifically keeping up with my STORIES — know I’m dealing with quite the upper limit problem thus far in 2018.

(Not sure what an upper limit problem is? Ooh, honey, in our 100-day program, we cover the CRAP out of this very real block that presents itself when we experience more success and dreams-coming-true than we ever thought possible. A premise by Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap, the ULP is something I’ll be diving into in a future BonBlast and probably an accompanying Facebook Live broadcast so dust off your copy of the book to be ready for this, should you be headbutting up against some next-tier problemos!)

One of the major bits of unweaving I’m doing comes down to how enmeshed *love* and *money* are in my life. Without going into intimate detail, let’s just say I have some way fucked up stuff to reparent at this stage in life.

As is (almost) always true for me, I learn things, experience things, let things change me, and then immediately think, “How can I share this with the creatives who invite me into their lives?”

No stretch here, honestly. It’s actually super direct: Most actors believe when they book a job it’s proof the casting director loves them (or, the more-healthy-but-still-messed-up version: “loves their work”).

And then when they don’t book the job, everybody hates them. Not just the casting director, but the director, producers, writer, suits, agent, manager, and even the friend who helped self-tape the audition that led to the not-booking.

This is a LOT of power to give away.

Yet we creatives do this allllllll the time. We outsource our enoughness. We look to others to give us a sense of “I belong here.” This, BTW, is a horrible habit.

Look, I get it! One of the things we do at Team Cricket Feet is keep an eye on my baby book, Self-Management for Actors, at Amazon. It’s number one? We promote that! Kindle’s reporting it in the top ten again? Woo hoo! Audiobook getting downloaded like gangbusters? Yay, us!

What we *don’t* do though is decide that on the days in which the book’s rank is *meh* that the contents of the book are less valuable, that the work was somehow less worth investing, that we are somehow less LOVED.

When I was an actor, though, oh HELL YEAH would a booking make me feel like Meryl Streep and a not-booking (no matter how close I came) would make me feel like one of these dudes. (Okay, okay, they’re all wiping their tears with 100-dollar bills, so maybe not those guys, but that’s a funny list.)

Being secure in our enoughness, knowing we’re talented, trusting we’re building relationships and teaching buyers how to cast us and getting into receiving mode for all that’s on its way to us — this is all part of our work as artists.

And it all starts with cutting off the feeding tube from good results (the booking, the stellar review, the praise) to the gut-level enoughness. Because when you lay down tracks for a train to go to enoughness directly from OUTSIDE factors, you leave those tracks open for a train to go in the wrong direction on ’em.

Here’s how to do this:

I booked! Yay! I accept that. What’s next?

Also:

I didn’t book! Boo! I accept that. What’s next?

Seriously. That’s it.

Wanna practice this with me?

Scroll down to the comments and pop in your variation on this work.

(Believe me, you don’t want to have a massive tier jump that finds a way to put you on bedrest and *then* do this mindset work years from now. Get this ish sorted while you’re at one of the earlier tiers of your life’s trajectory so you can enjoy the poop out of those pinch-myself-this-is-so-good-I-can’t-believe-it tiers to come.)

PS — We’re about to start enrollment for our first-ever LIVE round of Get in Gear summer school! 100-days of game-changing goodness with focused ongoing support? Check out all the details here. I’ll be getting deadlines and such to you next month so you don’t miss a thing!

All my love,

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!