The Only Way to Fail

Laziness, Distraction and Fear, these are three major obstacles you will face on your journey to success as an actor. Some obstacles are external, some are internal, it only matters how you face and overcome these obstacles.

Fear, particularly fear of failure or fear of not being as good as you hope you are, is a powerful de-motivator. It crushes our spirit to achieve, it leaves us feeling worthless, knowing a truth we feared, that we are just no god-damn good.

But we have completely the wrong attitude to failure. We often give ourselves an all or nothing approach.  Either you are improving your skills and becoming an actor, or you are failing.

But this isn’t true.

If you attend a class, and for 4 weeks you are still struggling with the same element of your training, that ISN’T a failure. Failure would be giving in.

If you didn’t get the job, or you didn’t smash the audition like you know you could, that ISN’T a failure. Failure would be using that as a reason to give in.

Real failure is to put your heart and soul, time, money and energy into something and then to give up when the going gets tough.

Billy Ocean once sang “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  When the going gets tough, it’s time to pull down the hatches, put your head down and work even harder than before.

The only way to fail is to give up. The successful are not always the most ‘talented’, or even those with the highest skills.

The successful are those with the ability to keep going, against adversity, against poor results, against set backs, against negative feelings, against pressure to quit.  And this is what really makes the difference, in a competition between ability and patience, the patient will always win.

The easiest way to fail is to give in, it requires no work at all.