Fear is the enemy of creativity. It is the enemy of achievement. It limits you, paralyzes you, and can basically make your life a complete misery! ALL fear, BTW, comes from the thought, “I won’t be able to handle it.” This is why we fear disapproval, which is why we fear auditions, interviews or any situation in which we feel we’re being judged. We feel we won’t be able to handle the disapproval that comes with the situation, or, even worse, the rejection. Even when we tell someone we care about to be careful, what we are really saying is, “I won’t be able to handle it if you get hurt.”
So how do you handle that thought, and the accompanying fear that follows it? Do you have any techniques or self-talk you use to tell yourself it will be okay because you KNOW you can handle anything? Most people can handle a lot more than they think. (This is all covered brilliantly in the best book ever written on the subject, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”, by Susan Jeffers.) One of the the best ways I know to handle fear is to look at the alternative. If I pull a filling out of my tooth, and am terrified of going to the dentist, I have to weigh that up against the fear of being able to bear the pain of the exposed nerve. Techniques such as NLP, tapping, and cognitive behavioral therapy (Google them all) can also help. The trick is to find the ones that work for you. One good place to start if you have a severe problem with fear is to see a good counsellor to help you work through it.
The alternative is to do nothing and slowly shrivel up creatively, and, for actors, to finally give up acting completely as your pilot light burns out. You’ll end up bitter, twisted and full of regrets. (Oh, hey, I’m describing some casting agents!) ;-)
What evidence do you have that makes you think you won’t be able to handle it, whatever it is? Are you impaired in some way, or do you just need more knowledge and/or training? If you’re an actor, do you buy into that very dangerous idea that it’s “okay” to be nervous? (Notice how they often say “be”, not “feel”, as if your entire state of being had been turned over to fear, and that was understandable. It’s NOT!) If any other professional (doctor, dentist, tradesman, anyone) said to you before they started whatever job they were going to do for you (heart surgery, for instance!), “I’m nervous about doing this,” you’d get someone else, wouldn’t you?! I know I would. More than anyone else, creative people need to have the courage of their convictions, the courage to make their creative choices in the face of possible opposition. Otherwise, the creative choices will be made by a “committee”, and I’m afraid (sorry) the phrase “creative committee” is an oxymoron. Can you imagine Picasso saying, “Oh, you don’t like the cube effect I’m using in my paintings? Okay, I’ll change them.” Or Michael Jackson saying, “You’re right, ‘Thriller’ doesn’t work. I’ll change it to “Chiller” and have dancing refrigerators.” Think about it.
To help combat their fears, I taught my children that they always have the choice to play the BAD “What if” Game, or the GOOD “What if” Game. They’re both based purely on speculation. For actors a scenario might be: “What if I go to L.A. and can’t make a go of it?” (The Bad version.) The Good version is: “What if I go to L.A. and it’s everything I want from the very beginning and I even land a job in the first month?” They’re both speculation, and they both end up affecting your decision making. The difference is one of them is based in fear, and one is based on the belief that you’ll be able to handle whatever happens.
It takes courage to be creative, and courage to get outside your safe box, and courage to, well, do just about anything, anytime, anywhere. That’s what life is. A test of your courage every single day. (The most interesting thing of all is that there can be no courage without fear. If you weren’t afraid, then why would you need courage? A courageous person is one who faces their fears and pushes through them.)
So accept that you will have fear in your life – that’s unavoidable. Now the question is: how are you going to handle it when it makes its unwelcome appearances?
Get fear under control and you become an unstoppable force! Not to mention an inspiration to others.
Tags: actors, auditions, casting agents, cognitive behavior therapy, courage, creative, fear, L.A., Michael Jackson, nervous, NLP, Picasso, Susan Jeffers, tapping
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