New year, new plans and resolutions.  What are yours?  Do you make any, or do you just close your eyes and hope you’ll get everything you want by wishing for it?  I’ve been doing a lot of organizing, making my plans for some different directions I want to explore this year.  My regular subscribers will have noticed that I haven’t been putting out my eBrief for awhile – that’s because I haven’t set the changes in place yet. I’ll be sharing my plans with you soon, and maybe some of them will inspire you to make your own.

No business can succeed if the person running it doesn’t actually “run” it, but just lets it wander where it feels like going!  It’s often hard for creative people, in particular, to organize the business side of what they do.  Creativity tends to use more of the right side of the brain, while business skills tend to use more of the left side, so if your left side is a bit “weak” you may find that dealing with things like finances, goal setting and structure building drive you insane!  This then causes you to neglect them and we end up with a person who may be very talented at what they do, but have no idea how to sell and keep track of it.  If this sounds like you, don’t ignore the problem.  Get help.  I do business coaching, of course, but so do lots of people, whether in private sessions or classes, or through places like adult education or TAFEs.  It’s all out there for you – take advantage of it and get your business on a strong footing. That includes you, ACTORS!  You are selling a product – YOU – and you need to know how best to market it and make it valuable to the “buyers”, or in other words the people who are in a position to cast you.

Make 2010 YOUR year. Start strong by making some detailed, well planned and carefully thought out goals and plans, and then spend every day following through on them. There are 3 sayings I find very valuable and make sure I have within view of my desk at all times:

“If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

“To get the things I’ve never had, I have to do the things I’ve never done.”

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

Combine those with, “Make it happen” and “Just do it” and you’ve got some pretty good affirmations for 2010!

But don’t just say them, LIVE THEM!

I’ll be back in Melbourne this coming Friday morning after just over a week in Sydney, during which I enjoyed a huge Thanksgiving celebration. Love those pumpkin pies!  The film I’m working on started shooting on Monday, so I’m helping them stay on track with their dialects via phone as they are deep on location outside Melbourne.  Thank god for technology.

The newsletter for December is almost ready.  Running a bit late due to my Sydney trip.  There will be, as usual, some interesting articles to help actors further their careers, as well as news on developments for the New Year that many of you really need to know about to help yourselves get where you want to be.  If you haven’t signed up to receive the eBrief, the button to do so is on the right hand side of the website. Subscribers to the eBrief list also become eligible for special deals as they come up.

It’s such an important time of year for creative people in all areas, but especially actors as it’s their Busy Season, including connecting with the work in overseas projects (particularly the American TVCs). If you’re an actor, and not feeling this, then maybe you need a Career Boost session to help you get back on track and start booking more auditions and work.  My private session list is very limited at the moment due to my other commitments, but slots are available if you allow a couple of weeks advance notice.  Skype/phone sessions are much easier to arrange, but can’t be done for any time slots over 1 hour, so please bear that in mind. (BTW, heavy discounts available through until the New Year for eBrief subscribers.)

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR:         COMMUNICATION is the key to finding work.  They need to know you exist, and they need to hear from you in APPROPRIATE ways.  I’ll be covering this in greater detail in this month’s eBrief.  Bad communication lets a lot of actors down – excellent communication can open networking doors like you wouldn’t believe.  ”It’s not what you know, but who you know,” is not just a saying, it’s way to get work!  Communicating properly is the way you get to know the people who can help you do this.

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.

as the Actress said to the Bishop.  I am working on a whole new format for the newsletter, a whole new structure for my coaching, lots of changes to my website, and getting ready for a daily blog, not to mention my books, DVD, and sitcom project. Whew!  But a change is as good as a holiday, and it’s terribly exciting when you get yourself sorted out exactly in the direction you want to be going, isn’t it?  My main motivation for coaching is I want to share that feeling with anyone who needs it, by imparting knowledge, wisdom, advice, and maybe just a bucket load or two of motivation.  I can’t do it FOR you, but I can help you to want to do it for yourself.

The newsletter, which I am going to call an eBrief (to remind ME to keep it so, and YOU that you’ll be getting briefings on things that will help your career), is going out to those who have registered to receive it. (See button on Right Hand side of page. This is the first thing you must do for yourself – I can’t opt you in.) You subscribers will get first notice about projects I hear about (or deals on my own coaching), or anything that will reward you for subscribing! That way, as used to happen with my newsletters, I’ll get notices from Industry people who know I can reach hundreds of actors very quickly to let them know about, for instance, auditions for a new project.

Then on the website, I’ll be blogging all about the things that clog my tiny little Mad Cow Brain about the Industry, creativity, actors, coaches, projects, things I’ve heard, etc. etc.  I can answer questions for you as well if you contact me with them. (There will also be other changes to the website, which you’ll see as they happen.)

Finally, I am preparing a whole new approach to my coaching, which I’ll unveil very soon.  I think it is something we really need in Australia, and have never had before. I’m excited about it, and hope you will be, too.  One of the biggest changes is that I will NOT just be pitching my coaching at beginner or up and coming actors, as is the norm. Just like 98% of our directors are first timers, so, too, are most of our actors, so that is what we find in our training places and networking events (think about that for a minute: we are an Industry of beginners!). What do the others do? The ones who want to move from a lot of extra work to 50 worders? Or the 50 worders who want to move to guest roles? Or the ones whose careers have stalled, either at an intermediate level (guest roles, TVCs, small parts), or after they’ve had a “breakthrough” (ongoing role, guest star, film profile) and now need a Big Boost to go further, or get more consistent work. In L.A. you’d find lots of help with that.  Here, nowhere that I can think of.  Until now.  All will be revealed once I have it in place.  It’s going to be a creatively, financially, and emotionally rewarding journey we can take together.  I can’t wait to share it with you.  My goal is to start everything on November 1st, right after Halloween, which is all about magic!  The best thing about that is it’ll be smack dab in the middle of the Busy Season, so of maximum use to all actors.

Use the button to subscribe, tell others you know to do the same, and keep checking the website (sign up for the RSS feed) for further updates.  In the meantime, I am doing LIMITED private coaching in Melbourne (I’ve just returned from 3 weeks in Sydney) because of a film in pre-production that I’m coaching on. Skype or phone coaching is easier than face to face ones at the moment, but you can check for availability by contacting Jenna on jenna@mirrenlee.com

If any of you have topics you’d really like to see covered, please let me know via email.  In the meantime, stay tuned for further news …

My ezine for actors and other creative people will be coming back July 1st.  It will give you tips, news and keep you updated with my schedule, which is now split coaching between Sydney and Melbourne (with lots of tele coaching in between!).  Sign up for the ezine and it’ll drop into your mailbox every month for that burst of creative energy that will help you achieve your goals.  Actors, remember we’re coming into the busy season, so it’s a good time to be at the top of your game with a great coach in your corner.  More on what’s happening with me in the newsletter.  Sign up now, or if you’re an old subscriber, make sure I have your current email address.