Are you an actor who believes if you work hard enough, if you train enough, and if you want it badly enough, you DESERVE to make it? Yeah?

Well, then this week’s column is for you.

Stop thinking like that. Really. (Or don’t, of course, but I think a paradigm shift may save your sanity.)

While everyone is worthy of all the success and happiness in the world, as soon as you set up conditions on receiving benefits of any kind (bookings, money, love), you teach the universe that you prefer “conditional love” (or success) and that sometimes — because you’re human — you will not meet the conditions that earn that reward.

By making a simple change to your language — and this involves removing statements like “I’ve earned it,” “I deserve it,” and “Respect me, dammit!” — you make it known that you will have all the success and happiness in the world simply because you are. Not because of what you do, how much time you have put in, or how good you are on one particular day or another.

Yes, this business is hard. Yes, you’ll have to put in a lot of work and probably a lot of time before you start seeing payoff to the degree of effort you’ve exerted. (Do you remember Return on Investment? Re-read it, if you need to.) But if you convince yourself that you deserve success when you’ve been working hard to earn it, what happens when you are nearing the highest tiers of the business and are facing HUGE opportunities that don’t line up at all with the amount of effort you have to put in anymore? You could find yourself right up against that thinnest line and not able to make the leap to the tier of your dreams… because of how you’ve conditioned your beliefs. You’ve cut short your biggest success, because it’s no longer such hard work, so you no longer feel you deserve it.

Remove topics of fairness, concerns about respect, and the phrase “I deserve it” from your life to have a better run at it. Certainly, by virtue of the fact that you exist you are worthy of everything wonderful in this life. So invite it in and be grateful for it, whether it comes to you on a day you’re working hard or on a day you’re dicking around a bit. Matters not. Because it’s not about “deserve.”

There is so much freedom in releasing your success or failure from what you’ve “earned” by putting the work in. Sure, put the work in because it feels good to have some control in this crazy business and you’re in a stronger position to take advantage of better and better opportunities if you know this business, its players, and yourself very well. But don’t attach rewards (or punishments) to the work you put in (or don’t put in). Work because it feels good. Be talented because you are. Shape your craft because that gives you better opportunities sooner. Then succeed because you can, not because you logged a certain amount of hours (although 10,000 hours at a minimum is a good idea), not because you “got here first,” and certainly not because you’re the youngest, the prettiest, or the one with the fanciest conservatory degree.

Everyone has a shot, here. No matter how much or how little you’ve put in, you could still be the next big thing. Awesome! Embrace the delicious freedom that surrendering to that truth provides. And then go get yours. Because you can!

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

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/001363.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.