Speed Up Your Recovery Time

The single greatest gift being an actor has given me is teaching me to have absolutely zero fear of failure. I wish everyone could be in the entertainment industry for this reason alone. Unfortunately, I still see far too many people crippled by the thought of failure to even begin. 

Strange as it may sound, getting good at failure, or rather accepting failure, is like any endeavor. The more you practice the better you get at it. In time, you'll learn to appreciate that failure is an integral part of success and both need one another in order to exist. 

So how do you get better at accepting failure? Simple. Constantly put yourself out there. Whether you want to ask someone out, submit a film to a festival, or audition for a play you don't seem "right" for it takes a sustained effort.

Once you hear the word, "no" enough times something remarkable slowly takes shape. You stop taking it personally. Instead, you take failure in stride, and most importantly, move on to the next best thing. 

With enough practice the time between each setback and moving forward speeds up, you take less time to dust yourself off, return from your hibernation, and just keep moving. 

So fail fast. Fail often. And get back up quicker and quicker each time. 

Don't Assume You've Done Your Best Work

"I constantly tweak and move on, peeling back layers of the onion as new ones arrive. If something didn't work - like if I put a dress up for auction and no one was bidding on it - I didn't just assume that no one wanted it. I just tried something else. I rewrote the product description, or swapped out the thumbnail because I thought that maybe people couldn't judge the silhouette correctly from the original picture I'd posted. I never assumed that I'd just done my best job the first time around." 

- Sophia Amoruso founder of Nasty Gal

I love the spirit infused in this quote as I'm sure it resonates with many actors and artists. Too often we feel because our first approach didn't go exactly according to plan it's time to hang it up and move on to the next project. 

Maybe we shared an excerpt of a play we wrote to a lukewarm response, or the short film we toiled over and spent our own money on didn't get accepted to that festival we had our hearts set on. We might think, What's the use?

I can tell you from my own experience that sometimes people aren't ready for what it is you have to offer. It takes time for people to come around and appreciate your vision.

Perhaps the best example I can think of is Paulo Cohelo's international bestseller, The Alchemist which existed in the shadows of relative obscurity for nearly a decade. Good luck finding someone now who hasn't heard of the book.

The point is to keep throwing ideas against the wall without abandoning the ones still important to you.