Could the Story You’re Telling Yourself Be Holding You Back?

We all have stories we tell ourselves and those stories are usually wrong.

We shape our lives according to the script in our heads and unless we can learn to change those stories, we may never find success. Stories are all around us, they are part of human culture, from the cave paintings in Lascaux to Tumblr blogs. Other people tell us stories too.

• Marketing departments tell parents that if they want to make their children happy, they will buy XXX.

• Most Western societies tell a story that says that successful people have been to college.

• The acting industry tells a story that says that if you want to be an actor, you should go to drama school.

• A director I met tells a story that good actors write character histories and bad actors don’t – because they are lazy.

  Whoever gets to tell the story, gets power over those that believe it. And that includes you over yourself. 
  
  If you want to get good at something, if you want to achieve acting success, you may need to take a look at the story you are telling yourself, and perhaps change that story. Sometimes that’s painful. 
  
  I have a story to tell you:
  
  I had a client, a theatre actor, recently cast in a television series. With little experience of working on camera, he told me he had started to tense up and become rigid when someone shouted action. He told me “I’ve performed in front of thousands of people, I don’t get stage fright, I love it, I was acting all my life, I should be able to do this, it’s ridiculous”
  
  The belief that with all his acting experience, he ‘should’ be able to do this was creating a story that was inducing shame in him. That shame was piling more pressure onto him than the job itself.
  
  Many people find acting for camera stressful. When this actor changed environment, it rattled him, but what was damaging him even more was the story he was telling himself.
  
  When we worked together to help him become more confident on camera, the first step was changing the story that he told himself.
  
  Another client was changing career into acting but had sizeable investments and had great financial security. Unfortunately the story they told themselves every time things got tough was that she didn’t need to be an actor. She believed that story liberated her from pressure. But actually, it disempowered her, it let her off the hook when she most needed to perseverance. 
  
  Working together, we established that no matter the financial security, she kept coming back to her childhood desire to act. She felt an overwhelming need to perform. Together we made a new story, the one where her financial stability gave her the opportunity to fulfil her childhood dream and not the chance to run away from it when things got tough.
  
  What story are you telling yourself about your acting career? What story are you telling the industry around you? What stories have you inherited about what good actors do? 
  
  These stories become our beliefs. My job is to ask my clients to reflect on the truth of those stories, and if they are holding them back. 
  
  If you are unnecessarily holding yourself back because of a story you are telling yourself, it’s time to write a new one.
  
  If you could use my help in writing that story, send me an email.