SUCCESS: As defined by YOU!

I’ve found myself asking many of my students similar questions lately:

“What are you hoping to get out of this audition?”
“Is your goal to audition and be in it no matter what? Or do you want to be a SPECIFIC role and otherwise it’s not worth it to you?”
Or… most importantly
“What’s more important to you and your happiness - to be in A show (any show) no matter what, or to be able to have the CHOICE to spend your time other ways?”

Ultimately what these questions are coming down to is...

What is your PERSONAL version of success?

Back in the day (“B in the D” if you will…) I HAD to be in a show. I was not happy if I was not able to say proudly and loudly “I CAN’T I HAVE REHEARSAL!!!”

It was the thing that made me the happiest :) It was also where my friends and chosen family were. If it wasn’t CONSTANTLY in something or had a show to look forward to, I was immediately a failure. And when I felt like a failure, things got dark.

Honestly, looking back now, it was a pretty awful way to live. 

My success was defined, ultimately, by my ability to impress one or two people in a single room on a single occasion. And unfortunately, my happiness was defined by my success in theater.

What’s actually wrong with this, you might be asking?

At the end of the day, having my happiness be defined by my external success… and my external success depend on what someone else thinks of me as compared to only a handful of other people (and sometimes just depending on whether they’ve had enough coffee yet or not…)

Just ends up meaning my happiness is completely out of my control.

So I got smart. (After reaching some serious lows.) And started to define success FOR MYSELF.  

For me, in my life, success means:

• Plenty of time to spend with my family
  
• Feeling financially secure, or at least having a plan and clarity to get there
  
• Performing regularly but sanely (not always in a show, but really enjoying my time when I AM in a show)
  
• Time to read
  
• Time to watch shows I like
  
• Feeling confident enough in my abilities to go for work outside my regular genre (I’mma be in a podcast soon!)
  
• Ability to take time OFF regularly during the week as well as bigger vacation times
  
• Ability to travel
  
• Lots of Finn snuggle time
  

As you can see, performance is in there, but in a very measured capacity. 

Defining my time for myself puts me back in charge. And it started by REALLY looking at my schedule and seeing what things FELT good to spend my time on, what time I realistically needed to be OFF, what time I needed FREE so I could get things outside of work done, and being able to compare that to what I WANTED my schedule and life to look like.


And I want to help you do that too! Which is why I’ve created your “Ideal Performance Lifestyle” completely for free. Click that link if you want in :)

So often as performers it can feel like we can only control so many things. And because we are passionate and creative people, we WANT to be creating as much as possible.

However, imbalance leads to burn out.

Keep creating. But keep it sane :)