Sometimes stepping away from focusing solely on your acting career can actually help you generate more auditions or even book a job.

This spring, I’ve found the most insightful metaphors to be in my garden. Here’s how to take cues from nature and ask the right questions to guide you towards success.

Flowers have always been nature’s quiet reminder of how to be: vibrant, unique, surprising, beautiful, filled with wonder and love.  Creating a successful garden requires examination, preparation, decision-making, daily action, patience, and love – as does your career. Let’s take a closer look.

6 Questions To Ask To Create Success

1) Examination: First, you must dig up any weeds in your garden.

Whatever you are planting and giving your attention to will eventually grow. Notice what is and what isn’t working right now in your career.  Dig up the weeds and remove them.

Career Question: What would it take for me to let go of thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve me?  What relationships or habits might that no longer uplift me might I need to consider changing or altering?

2) Preparation: Then you must prepare the soil.

Your foundation and preparation is everything.

Career Question:  What am I doing to prepare myself for my best work in my auditions and on the job?  Am I studying, exercising, getting enough rest and preparing my mind to be ready to compete at the top level in my field?  How can I prepare my acting instrument – mind, body & soul – to be ready at a moment’s notice?

3) Decision-Making: Choose what you want to plant & expect it to grow.

You must decide what you want and expect it can happen for you.

Career Question:  Where am I focusing my attention in my career this spring?  What are my goals for the next 3 months?  Are they in film, tv, theatre, commercials, voice-over or another area?  What would it take for me to decide easily what I want to create and expect it?

4) Daily Action: Once planted, daily watering is required.

You must take daily action. Make a list and stick to it.

Career Question:  What can I do daily to take inspired action for my career?  How can I create new relationships, strengthen existing ones, market to people who can cast me in projects I’m right for and collect work I’ve already done to continue to showcase my talents?

5) Patience: A flower doesn’t grow overnight. It takes time for buds to appear

You must have patience. You can’t dig up a root to see how it’s going. But with patience, blossoms always emerge. It’s the same with your career.  Plant the seeds and then get out of the way. Getting busy with something else usually helps. When you can detach, you invite in unlimited possibilities.

Career Question:  What else can I do to bring joy to my life while my career is blossoming?  How can I lovingly distract myself from focusing ALL of my attention on my career?

6) Love: Where there is love, there is growth…always.

You must come from a place of love.  It is known that flowers respond to uplifting words, music and energy. So do you!

Yelling at a garden (or yourself) to succeed never works.  Loving each stage of your ever-evolving career, will definitely help you get to the next level a lot faster than shaming yourself for what you haven’t yet accomplished.

Career Question: How can I focus on loving where I am right now, while also paving the way for new opportunities?  What would it take for me to love myself this month more than ever before, regardless of where I am in my career? 

Bonus Career Question: What would it take for my career to blossom in beautiful and surprising ways this spring?
Then allow the Universe to bring you all kinds of answers.  The key is to make peace with any uncertainty you may feel, don’t try to control the outcome, and then get quiet enough to just listen.

Here’s to blossoming this spring in your career, your life (and in your garden!)