My acting teacher Raye Birk studied with famous Hollywood acting teacher Milton Katselas, who founded the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
Milton was known for not accepting what he would call “dilettante behavior.”
If you were serious about something, you made it happen. No matter what.
His view was that professionals make things happen, and dilettantes make excuses.
His students were held to strict standards. Sometimes, if a student wasn’t booking paid work, he might tell the student that they had a month to book a paid acting gig, or they weren’t allowed back in class, his view being that people often make excuses out of fear of committing to doing the work.
It sounds pretty hard ass, but I don’t think he’s wrong.
If someone threatened your life, and said they’d kill you if you didn’t find a way to work a paid job in the next week, you’d do it, right? You’d ask everyone you knew. You’d post on Facebook. You’d pound the pavement. You’d answer every damn Craigslist ad. You’d do whatever you had to, right?
You wouldn’t make excuses about forgetting to look at the audition notices. You wouldn’t sleep in. You wouldn’t prioritize hanging out with your friends every night or having that SAME conversation with your girlfriend about her best friend drama. You wouldn’t allow perfectionism to get in the way of submitting your resume, sending that cold email, or singing your heart out at your big audition for Hadestown.
You would just do it.
This week, I started a group coaching program with author Jen Sincero, famous for her “You are a Badass” books.
I kinda need this ring…
While a total badass, Jen’s not quite at Milton levels of hard-assery.
Yet she talked about something similar in her session, and she says it in her books:
If you want to get serious about making your audacious goals a reality, you need to take action that SCARES THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.
You need to put your ego on notice that you are not fucking around anymore!
Because when you decide you want to make changes to your life, your ego will try to keep you safely in your comfort zone, doing the same things you always do.
You might THINK you are working super hard (and maybe you are), but if those actions are only actions and nothing else, you might be on a self-created hamster wheel of actions that keep you busy but don’t ever really get you anywhere.
Jen talks a lot about mindset and taking inspired action over just “action.”
Someone asked today how you know when action is inspired, and Jen replied, “Practice.”
I would add: “Inspired action is a bit scary and outside your comfort zone. You get an impulse to do something, but either it’s something big and scary so you avoid it OR it’s something irrational and weird so you ignore it.”
The huge and scary ones are easier to identify and avoid with excuses that have to do with our limiting beliefs.
The irrational and weird ones can be almost anything, and might not seem to have anything to do with your actual goal. However, I personally think those are just as important to honor, even if you have no idea why you have a sudden urge to pick up Thai for dinner or take a pottery class when you’ve never been interested before. Even if you don’t believe in God, the universe, or whatever, doing the same things over and over tend to lead to the same results, and mixing it up once in a while is the only way to introduce new permutations into the equation.
So when Jen says knowing the difference takes practice, I think it’s truly the practice of not ignoring or discounting your impulses. Which is something else my acting teacher worked with us on a lot.
Inspired action is trusting our impulses…
And channeling them into action instead of dispersing them out of discomfort.
In moments of inspired action, ideas just come to you:
It’s that impulse to ask someone out to coffee.
It’s the sudden urge to take a different route home.
It’s that tiny voice that whispers to you, “Not later. NOW.”
I’ve had many of these impulses.
Like deciding to go to Italy to visit my friend Ware on spring break from his Commedia dell’Arte school.
Firenze al tramonto
Going to VO Atlanta the first time. On an absolute whim.
Okay, this was the second time…I couldn’t find my pics of the first year
Attending the Cabaret Conference at Yale, even though I’d just been laid off from my full-time job, didn’t have a source of income, and didn’t know how I’d get the money to attend.
The Cabaret Conference at Yale is less of a conference, and more of a glamorous singing boot camp at Hogwarts
Touring with the musical Songs from the Tall Grass, and having to take a leave of absence from my day job, not knowing if they would allow me to do so, but just knowing I HAD to do that show.
Touring with Songs from the Tall Grass was like theatre summer camp for me
Whether or not anything comes of it, this voice, the one that speaks to you from beyond your ego, wants you to take a risk and get past your limiting beliefs and your routine.
Honestly, every time I have, the most amazing things have happened.
I don’t know about you, but THAT is the life I want.
Not the version where I play it small and scared.
But the version where I take the chance, and I realize that the bigger world out there is a more exciting and more amazing place than I’ve allowed myself to experience up until this point.
Do you want that life?
The one where you take a chance, and don’t take no for an answer?
Where you don’t allow imaginary obstacles get in your way?
So often, we allow imagined obstacles to stop us. We hit even the tiniest of impediments, and instead of looking for a way around them, we come to a dead standstill.
Other times, the obstacles we face ARE real, but they’re only standing in the way of ONE path to our goal.
In my first solo apartment, I painted on my wall: “Look for the open window” as a reminder to myself to not bang my head against a metaphorical locked door, but to look around for the other ways available to me.
So, go on. I dare you.
What are you afraid of?
Until next time, friends…stay caffeinated!
If you enjoyed this post, here are three more things you can do:
Sign up for my email list to get a note when my next post drops.
Share it with others via email or social media.
Comment below, and share your thoughts.
Thanks!
Billie Jo