One of the best ways to help yourself get “unstuck” in your life + your career is to express daily gratitude.
I know the tendency is to think that when you “book a job, get an agent, book a commercial, film, series etc.,” THEN you will feel grateful, but it doesn’t work that way. You may think that all that “good stuff” will take you to a higher place, but the reality is once you take yourself there daily (and take inspired action), the “good stuff” will come.
As long as you need any of the aforementioned things to make you feel whole as an actor, you are actually repelling them.
“The single greatest thing you can do to change your life today
would be to start being grateful for what you have right now.
And the more grateful you are, the more you get.”
— Oprah
Here are 5 insights to help you get unstuck + in the flow.
1) Express Daily Gratitude
When you feel weighed down by guilt, shame or a negative outlook, it’s hard to allow yourself to experience joy. When you show gratitude, appreciation and love for what (and WHO!) is already in your life, your energy shifts, and you attract positive things, people and experiences like a magnet. These positive feelings are the highest form of energy vibration. Expressing daily gratitude will help you to begin to feel whole. When you start filling yourself up with loving thoughts, grateful thoughts and simply supporting and uplifting yourself, then it doesn’t really matter if you book the job or get the agent, and that is usually when you do. It’s all about expanding your own sense of internal self-worth. Practicing daily gratitude helps build it up.
2) Know you are a walking billboard
When you walk into an audition, a callback or on to a set, your energy is lit up like a billboard. What message is your billboard broadcasting? “I hope you like me. I need this job. I don’t feel worthy.” You can’t hide your feelings, but you can change what you focus upon. As you change HOW you focus on parts of yourself, your energy shifts and your billboard lights up in different way. People will always mirror back to you whatever your billboard is projecting. So, if you don’t like what you are getting, change what message you are sending. Expressing daily gratitude for yourself can help you shift a negative message to a positive one that says, “I love what I do. I am here to play. I am grateful for my amazing journey.”
3) Let go of “should-ing” on your self
Does the conversation in your head include a lot of “I should have done this, or I should have done that? Expressing daily gratitude helps you from “shoulding all over yourself” and making yourself wrong for the choices you have made. What if there was nothing wrong with what is (or what isn’t) showing up in your life right now? What if there was actually nothing you “should” have done instead? Your path might be different than what you expected, but you could ask yourself, “What is right about this that I have labeled as wrong?” When you no longer judge yourself as wrong, and you begin to relax and really appreciate WHAT IS, everything in your life begins to shift.
4) Feel your feelings
Placing a “happy face sticker” on your pain will only hurt more when you peel it off. First, allow yourself to feel whatever it may be. If you jump to a conclusion that discomfort is bad, and try to stop feeling it, you might be stopping the change that you created for yourself in the first place. Express gratitude for it all, no matter what shows up, as it is all here to teach you and help you expand.
5) Show appreciation when it’s least expected
At the deepest human level, we all want to be appreciated. Instead of waiting for the holidays to give a gift to your agents or managers, why not use this time of year to express heartfelt gratitude to all those who have helped you this year…even the assistants! So much of what our agents and managers do goes unseen, and they are rarely thanked for all their hard work. Make a list, get some nice stationary, and next time you have to wait an hour at a callback, instead of complaining about it, start giving thanks. You’ll feel amazing and will be blown away at how a little thank you goes a long way.
My personal gratitude…
I am deeply grateful for you! I am grateful that you are always seeking new ways to expand, learn and grow as an actor and as a person. I am grateful for the synchronicity of it all and that our paths have crossed. It has been a blessing to take my own artist’s journey each month, learn from it and help others.
I am also grateful for your amazing feedback. Thank you! Feel free to leave a comment below, as I read
In Gratitude,
~Wendy Braun