How Fear of Failure Damages Your Acting Career

Fear of Failure can potentially damage your acting career before it even starts. Many people are prone to fear of failure. When a situation has high expectation and could end in potential humiliation, then our potential for failure is activated, and we begin to sabotage ourselves.

In his book What’s Stopping You? Robert Kelsey, talks about experiments where people were asked to complete challenging but achievable tasks.

People with high potential for fear of failure behaved very specifically in these circumstances. If success is not certain, they will make it almost impossible for themselves to succeed. When the potential for failure was high, they behaved in ways that guarantee failure.

It is exactly this type of self-sabotaging activities that affects professional actors.

When expectation is high, when there is something at risk, or something to lose, then it activates our fear of failure and our self-sabotaging strategies.

Auditions are highly stressful situations where the potential for failure is high. Without intending to do so, actors that are prone to failure will begin to act in a way that ensures failure. This way, when they do fail, they will be able to fall back on a set of real reasons why success was impossible.

Turning up late, leaving it until the last minute to learn lines/prepare for the casting, deciding not to go to the audition, are all self sabotaging strategies that those actors that are prone to the effects of the fear of failure reach for when pressured.

You can avoid these effects by being self aware enough to notice when fear of failure is making you behave this way and ensuring a real chance of success by combatting them as they arise.

If you need help with this, get in touch.