Hello beautiful people!
Let’s slow down and take it all in.
Some of you are like, “Yay! Technically a rest day! Bon’s gonna talk mindset and I can catch up a bit,” and others are all, “Bon, no! Keep the deep-dives coming! I’m getting antsy about this journey and I’ve got tiers to CLIMB, woman!”
But in case you haven’t noticed, this creative career of ours takes patience, endurance, commitment to the ups and downs, and a lot of inner work to stay balanced as the things outside our control do their level best to test our staying power.
At a SuperSoul event put on in Los Angeles by Oprah Winfrey, I got to experience Eckhart Tolle waxing philosophical about patience and letting go. He instructed that it’s good to be conscious of our emotions, but the next step is observing them (vs. being thrown all over the place by them) because essentially, if you are observing something, it cannot be a part of you. The very act of switching from experiencing to witnessing shifts the power of what is happening entirely. So, observing an emotion separates us from it, therefore it no longer exists. Whoa.
It is the habit of witnessing the emotion and then digging IN on experiencing it that feels like crap. Ask yourself if you can get okay with coming from a place of knowing everything is working out beautifully no matter what. Witness more.
Creating a good habit like one involving our physical fitness, stopping a bad habit like smoking, trying to do more of anything from getting up earlier to going to bed earlier, making time for ourselves, setting limits, all of it — when we fail it’s not because we don’t know what to do.
And that’s why the Self-Management for Actors work is so much about building good habits you can take with you from tier to tier to tier. Because unless you’re committed to things like doing research, consistently updating your show bible with new information, showing up for networking opportunities with identified targets, showcasing your low-risk on-brand work to the right buyers, getting your head in the right space about your self-worth, fixing your relationship with money, and being a fucking pleasure to work with, there’s only so far you’re ever gonna go.
Period.
Whatever you do, do not let your lack of patience for results steer you off-course from work that absolutely will make a huge difference in your position in this industry (and the joy you’ll experience along the way) if you will just stick to it.
This program is 100 days not because I have 100 days worth of material to dole out (I actually have more like thousands of days of material to dole out, as you’ve rightly suspected by how much I seem to believe is humanly possible some days); it’s 100 days because there’s no way — if you’ve been showing up for yourself every single day, putting in the work (both practical and woo-woo), and getting very real with yourself about where you want to be and what it takes to get and to stay there — you can’t be transformed in 100 days.
But it may take 1000. Or 10,000. Only you dictate the terms of your growth by every action (or inaction) you take.
Somebody once told me the definition of Hell: On your last day on Earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.
— Anonymous
At the “OMG I DID IT” party at which she announced not only reaching the goal but more than doubling it, she showed off the above notecard on which she had written the words, “Are you SURE it’s impossible?” And she told the story of being pretty close to sure that it was, in fact, impossible on one of the darker days of this gargantuan task, but then asking herself whether or not she believed in miracles, essentially.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
— Gilbert Fowler White, re: a discussion with Albert Einstein
She decided to believe. And then we did too. We all began to believe more in every goal we ever set out for ourselves, no matter what. Because truly, this pursuit of ours has spectacular odds against EVER paying off, yet we’re in it.
So why not go all-in? Why on Earth do we choose this career path, boldly set off on the journey with all sorts of fire in our belly, and then find ways to doubt ourselves and our chances the LONGER we’re at it?
Think of how ridiculous that is! We somehow lose our faith the longer we stick with this. In what other parts of our lives does our faith weaken over dedicated, devoted time spent in service of it?
Please journal a bit about the difference between your current relationship with “what may be” for you and the one you hope to have. Meaning, if you’re currently impatient for this future you and secretly anxious that you may just not have what it takes to ever truly get there, write about how you’re ready to try a more patient experience with less anxiety because you have a deep knowing that you have exactly what it takes to get there, paired with the awareness that this journey takes time… and there’s so much joy to be had along the way.
What’s challenging you about this part of our work? And what are you gonna do about it?
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
