Finding the Path to Financial Abundance

Finding the Path to Financial Abundance

In order to make money in this business you have to condition yourself to expect it. You can find financial security as a successful professional actor. You can condition yourself to make money in the entertainment industry. You can change your struggle from financial survival to abundance. Many people I know, with great talents, have not been able to find financial security as a performer. They may not have all the needed talents to guarantee prosperity. One such talent would be a talent for making money. I have found there are talented actors I have known who have not mastered this talent. These actors have periods where they get paying acting jobs but too often they find themselves between these jobs. They find themselves having to struggle at survival jobs in order to maintain themselves while they are waiting for the next acting job to come their way.

Never Stop Looking for Work

One thing can be said about the actor and work; the actor never stops looking for it. The minute an actor gets an acting job he should start looking for what other acting jobs are coming up. The actor needs to know what he can do, while performing his current acting job, to secure the next acting job. This way of thinking is often difficult for many actors. Once they get a job they tend to sit back and relax while they fulfill the producer’s needs. Often they find themselves, at the end of the show, with no prospect for the next acting job. The actor may think the agent is responsible for this but the only person who is responsible for success of your acting career is you. Don’t ever forget that. When I was vice president of Variety Productions, Inc. in Dallas, Texas, I was fortunate enough to work with the late Bob Hope on several college concert tours. I was functioning as director, but the truth was all I had to do was be sure everything Mr. Hope had laid out was accomplished. He knew his material, he knew his audience and he knew his business. This was a man who stayed on top of his game for over 70 years. Not a bad track record. When I asked him how he had managed to stay on top, he answered: compassion. I’ll never forget that. As a performer he always acknowledged his responsibility to try and give back more than he took. He was not only a brilliant performer but also a brilliant businessman. He managed to have the big seven areas of his life support his passion. He made a business out of his art.

Your Responsibility toward Expectation

Many actors refuse to take the responsibility of the business and, as a result, find themselves at the end of the unemployment line. This is not necessary. Your financial security depends on how you have set up your expectations. If you expect to make money in this business you will. It is a process. For expectation to work you must be prepared to take responsibility for making money as well as managing it. One actor I know is greatly talented. He is a triple threat. A triple threat is an actor who acts, sings and dances with legitimate training and or experience. He is a singer, a dancer and an actor. He is accomplished in each. He is classified as a legitimate performer. That means he was formally trained and took classes and received degrees in his craft. He seldom makes money performing these talents, although he performs them in nonprofit circumstances frequently. He makes his money as a wardrobe supervisor on Broadway. You can imagine what it must be like to dress performers who are no more talented as performers than you. It must make him think as if, for some reason, he is not good enough. I had asked him after a New York showcase (in which he directed and starred) why he was willing to work so hard for so little in financial return. He told me, in all sincerity, that he felt so honored to be allowed to perform that somehow expecting to take money for it seemed too much to ask for. My friend needs to start asking for it and, what’s more, he better start expecting it. Note: A quadruple threat for an actor in the show business industry would be actor, director, writer and producer. One can be a quadruple threat but should always have a confidant or trusted associate who will speak the truth and keep ego from running amuck.

Talent for Making Money

A talent for making money first comes with a mind set. Acting is a legitimate profession that makes many people who function as middlemen very rich. It is an outrage that the middlemen (the producer, the theater owners, network executives, advertisers, and countless staffers) make steady incomes while the actor struggles between jobs hoping for his next opportunity. Often the actor is willing to work for less money or less than perfect conditions for the sheer joy of working. Financial security is based on the mind set of being an employee or an employer. An employer is one who employees other people for a service in exchange for a fee or payment. The employer is the one who makes the investment and takes the risks with hopes of reaping the rewards. The employer circumstance is one with potential and possibility of wealth as well as security. An employee is someone who works for someone providing a service in exchange for a fee. The employee is dependent on the fairness and honesty of his employer. The employee is either supported by a strong union or at the mercy of his situation. If the employee works for a strong company he might be able to retire with a strong health and pension plan. The employer owns his business and manages to ensure himself a comfortable retirement through major investments, savings and company stocks even at the expense of his employees. It is clear that financially successful professional actors think more like employers than employees. Actors, who make little money under their union contracts, often not even making the minimum for insurance coverage, think of themselves as employees. For this reason the actor should think of himself as an employer. If he does not, he allows his career to be in the hands of someone else. I have discussed the damage done by this kind of thinking. It may seem easier but it could be the fear of taking control of your business that gets in the way of your financial success. Often actors with college degrees will work minimum wage jobs just to keep themselves available for the right part if it should come along. This can be very dangerous. It makes for low self-esteem which has already been recognized as one reason many people pursue this career in the first place. Taking survival jobs that create these conscious or subconscious feelings of inadequacy would be a mistake. The talent for making money should originate in your profession. It needs to be supported by your understanding of how money works and why people pay other people for services. A talent for making money comes from knowing what you have to sell and how much it is worth in the marketplace. You need to know your marketplace. You also need to know how the marketplace works. One thing is always true about business: someone is selling something to someone and the value is decided by the seller’s understanding of the buyer’s needs. It is from those needs that the amount of money to be paid will be realized. For the actor his financial value to the producer is the amount of box office the actor can guarantee. The more audience members like your work and come to see you create yet another character, the more value you have to the producer. This does not guarantee a hit or investment bonanza but it does mean that the production will be given certain probability of success if there is a large following for the performers involved.

The Actor’s Talents


For the aspiring actor who has no audience draw from previous work, the need to get any paying work is necessary. Many actors believe that their acting talent is all they should need in order to get the job. In a way that’s true, if you are using a narrow definition of talent. If acting talent only means your ability to create a character and take the audience to make believe you may have limited your talent base. This brings up two points I have discussed before. Your understanding of talent as a process and your understanding of make believe as a place you transcend. If you are of the opinion that art is compromised by looking at the actor’s art as a science, then you may not be interested in understanding your product responsibility or your business responsibility. You have a responsibility to your producer in relation to your being able to take a character to make believe. The process is dictated by the storytelling medium. You also have business responsibilities in direct relation to your knowledge of your buyer and in direct relationship to your product’s value to his efforts. There is a reason one actor is hired over another. There is a reason a director or casting director or producer decide on one actor over another. You want to know what that special something the actor who gets frequent jobs radiates that may be lacking in your efforts. Ironically, that special something probably had been lacking in their efforts before they acquired it. That special something is called confidence. As you know, confidence comes from focus through awareness and accountability.

What Working Actors Do

To make yourself competitive and prosperous in this business of story telling you may be required to do things that you would rather not do. You may need to change your way of thinking about the business and your place in it. You may need to look at the business as a participant, not as an outsider and addressing what things you think working actors deal with. You may need to know what kind of thoughts you think they have and how they go through their day. You may need to use your imagination in projecting your expected lifestyle as an actor. You may need to project your daily circumstance five years from now and set expectations as to the rewards of success. You may need to know how actors who have already found certain levels of professional success function. You may need to know about steady working actors who support themselves and their families in a decent lifestyle while still waiting for the big break to come along. You may need to know about the actors who pay taxes based on money they have made in this profession. You may need to know how these actors handle their daily life patterns and focus. You may need to know what goes on in these actor’s minds. You may need to know what these actors hold as expectations. You may already know some of these people. You may have friends who have made a living wage over the last several years as an actor. Talk to them. Explore how they do it. Explore how they maintain it. If not, you may not be putting yourself into the flow of circumstance to coincidence. You might want to be working in a place where the circumstance of working actors lets the universe help you. Ask yourself the question, “How do I use the reality of my daily life to take full advantage of the universal flow of energy?" Begin to understand how the invisible of your desires become visible to your reality. Know how to converse with the universal desire to give you what you truely believe you deserve.

Life’s Promise

You want to know what is considered the right circumstances and the right information. This requires effort and discipline to discover. Without that effort and discipline you will not give yourself the access code to life’s promise. You want to be clear about life’s promise. Life’s promise is that it will support you with direction and reward if you supply the determination and discipline and understand and use the law of attraction: ask, believe and receive. This promise must be supported by action, focus, clarity and accountability. It alos must be supported with the understanding of how you communicate and connect to the power of all that is. Many actors approach this business from a beholding position. They find themselves beholding to anyone who is willing to offer them a job or even a situation of a job possibility. Many actors will let their ability to act lay dormant waiting for an audition to happen. After the audition they are curious as to why they didn’t feel good about their audition or why they didn’t get a callback. You can only have the power of the audition when you keep your instrument in optimum shape with constant knowledge seeking and physical repetition of effort. You must set aside time every day to practice your skills as an actor. Practice the ability to learn lines quickly, practice your ability to go to make believe, practice your understanding of medium requirements in relation to your particular skills.

Waiting for Luck

Achieving financial security in this business requires much more than luck. Even though it may appear that luck has often been a part of the success of someone else. Remember, luck is opportunity meeting preparation. Luck is a term that can be widely interpreted. The important thing to know about luck is, you create your own. Luck only appears to be luck if you are prepared to take advantage of it. Don’t forget, luck comes in two forms. Good luck and bad luck. Luck can be good or bad based on degree of preparation in relation to degree of opportunity. I can promise you have experienced both. If you had to define the two types of luck in relation to your life how would you do it? Would you know that what you might consider your bad luck is a guide to lead you to good luck. Think on it. What do you learn from bad luck experiences that could be altered to change the outcome? Does being a victim ring a bell?

Conscious/Sub-conscious Agreement

Being conscious is the act of perceiving, apprehending or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation about the things around you in the now. Being conscious is marked by thought, will, design and perception. It is the act of being aware and therefore accountable for your choices. The sub-conscious deal with thoughts that are existing in the mind but not immediately available to your awareness. The world of the sub-conscious deal with mental activities just below the consciousness. Think of it as a place. It is a place that holds the truth of your belief system. It accepts and incorporates all the assets and liabilities of your self-worth. The sub-conscious is also the place in your mind that has accessibility to the universal flow of energy and the universal guidance of faith set to your individual reality. That place is where the communication of all substance enables you to make visible the invisible of your imigination and desires. The understanding of the conscious and sub-conscious mind should also be tempered with the desire for a powerful conscience. Conscience is your understanding of right and wrong. It is your scruples, ethics and morality. Your conscious is the accepted value of your belief system. It either works on focus and positive perception or on automatic pilot and confusion. Be sure that you do not give up more than you are willing to give in relation to your quest for a successful acting caree. Make sure that your conscious mind and your subconscious mind are on the same page. You may discover that they are not. You must talk to your subconscious. You must use your imiganation and expectation to be your way of communicating with your subconscious. The now has great power over the past. You can change anything if you allow yourself the power of the now. The subconscious may be operating on the information it has recieved from past experiences and feeling. Do not let this happen. Be conscious of the power of your now. Make it control your expectations and your desires. Be very clear about the things you ask for, the realities you want to become visible in your life, and make sure they are supported with the communication power of clarity of the invisible (imagination and expectations)you wish to manifest. I paraphrase Albert Einstein who said: Knowledge is the recreating things of the past where Imagination is creating things of the future. All of these things I have discussed are necessary in order to insure that the expectations that you set for yourself are reality based. Reality based means your subconscious mind is in total agreement with your conscious mind’s desires. If you have not validated your talent for yourself and your own acceptance of worth, you may never have the support of your subconscious. This communication demands that you a clear of your individual talents. You must know how to define your ability to go to Talent and the talents you have to get you there. You must know your exchange rate in the marketplace. That means you must know the marketplace and your responsibility as a performer. If you have not allowed yourself to be given conscious approval or validation as to your market potential, it may mean that you sub-consciously may not want to accept the amount of work that may be needed to be competitive. Your subconscious mind will use that lack of conscious approval to keep your physical body in control of your life energy and make it impossible to access the universal flow of energy. The substance that manifests the invisible to visible. As I have discussed many times before, if the physical body controls your life energy for survival then your spiritual self will have little hope in growing and defining itself as a conduit of all that is: the communication to the source. Therefore, how you perceive yourself and your life circumstance will dictate how you find financial abundance.

The Right to Financial Abundance

You are well aware that financial abundance without emotional abundance is pointless. Perhaps the reason for your not having financial abundance comes from your fear of what financial abundance might do to you. This is a subconscious thought placement from the past and can only be removed by accepting that you are entitled to the abundance. It may be necessary for you to accept that you are not seeking financial abundance as a reward for your gifts, rather you are accepting financial abundance as your birth right from the universe. Know what you are really seeking to show as you strive to be a professonal actor. You are seeking to show you can become a character and create their world of reality through make believe. You are seeking to show that you can work through the collaborative process. You are seeking to show a buyer that you have the point of reference physically and the skills technically to make an audience believe you are who you say you are. You are seeking to show you can place yourself into the world where people who do this sort of thing live. You are seeking to prove your talents to be believed and validated are supported by both your conscious and subconscious mind. If this appears to be general in tone let me assure you it is not. Your ability to have financial security and abundance are patterns of belief that allow the connection between you and the flow of abundance to be realized and maintained. You can erase a lifetime of low self esteem and instantly replace it with confidence. You can remove yourself from a way of thinking that allows for failure to be an acceptable result of career pursuit. You can and must do this by accepting you have to power and only need access it. In order to do this you must be prepared to welcome what you discover. You must set yourself up to accept certain realities that may not appear to be overly favorable to your self esteem. Be prepared to accept the controlling elements of your life. Then be willing to create the discipline needed to regain control of your ability to achieve your dreams and expectations. You want to be prepared to accept that your expectations and dreams may be counterproductive to the efforts of your conscious and sub-conscious mind if they are not in harmony. The only way to control your sub-conscious ability is to tap into the universal flow of energy and make sure your conscious mind has no doubts about its goals or its abilities. Many people with lesser talents than others have found great financial abundance by not allowing their conscious mind to doubt or be distracted. No matter how technical talents may vary, the bottom line is the ability to do the job. In the case of an actor: being able to take both your character and your audience to make believe.

Pre-destined Lack

Financial abundance is not given to a select few. You may have a predisposition for financial lack from your circumstance of development. This predisposition need not be predestined if you are willing to acknowledge the existence of the predisposition. You want the willingness to remove those thought processes that make the predisposition part of your reality. At that point your reality can be changed. Acknowledge your personal concept of money and how money manifests itself. Look at your personal belief about wealth and the wealthy. Define the concept of money that you use at the present time. You may find that your sub-conscious is supporting its belief that you have great resentment for the wealthy and therefor it will work to avoid your having to be what you hate.

Personal Respect

Make sure that you have respect for your own career choice. It will go a long way in your effort to achieve financial abundance. The actor I discussed in an earlier lesson who disassociated himself with me because I supported his parents questioning his excitement for extra work is an example of a way of thinking that is deeply connected to sub-conscious power. If the sub-conscious is not behind a person’s efforts his chances of success may be limited. Remember, the sub-conscious is your birth right to connect to the substance and the source of all that is. You want to know the importance of the sub-conscious support. It is guided by your honest and solid commitment to your talent and professional awareness. No amount of practice or knowledge gathering is too much. There is, however, a strong possibility of too little. That possibility can be easily evaluated by the consistency and patterns of your career efforts. If your efforts are not consistent, focused and disciplined your sub-conscious mind knows. Your sub-conscious mind knows the depth of your respect for yourself. Your sub-conscious mind knows how much you believe in your personal success. That knowledge should allow you to understand what your sub-conscious is doing and why it may not be working for your success. There are many reasons that can be given for why someone does not achieve financial abundance. Certainly that can be understood in areas of employment where minimum wage is the given or where, even if you reach the top job with the company, you may realize an acceptable financial life but certainly not an abundant one. Abundance is an expectation of careers that are called professional. The professional makes a living within his profession. There are professions such as doctors, lawyers, business executives, investors, producers, actors, or any profession where success is judged by financial achievements. There are other professions that are service oriented. Professions like teachers, ministers, nurses, social workers, where financial rewards are not the deciding factor in the degree of acknowledgment of success. It might be suggested that you have told yourself that financial success does not constitute your value. However, your real belief may be connected to the established expectation of others about a financially rewarding career field. Don’t spend your personal life locked into financial need. Don’t be one of those people who hold a true belief that value is somehow connected to financial achievement.

Financial Abundance

The answer to financial abundance lives in a clear understanding of what abundance means to you. If your idea of abundance lies in the area of a Bill Gates or a Barbra Streisand then your idea of abundance may be a bit overzealous. Abundance needs to be clear enough to be visualized. Abundance may be seeing you with no mortgage and a lovely home in a safe and upscale neighborhood. It may be seeing two cars that are trouble-free, paid for and fun to drive. Abundance may be college funds for your children to cover wherever they want to go or money in the bank. Abundance may be savings for special things or travel funds for getaways. Abundance may be stocks and bonds without fear of the market’s ups and downs or investment money to play with and always money to tithe to insure the universal flow of energy. Take stock of your assets and liabilities as a product and as an employer. Look at this business as a valid and profitable enterprise and yourself as a valid and accepted participant. Deal with those actors in the 2 percent success rate. Learn from their experience and level of ability. Set your business up in such a way that there are no areas of chance. Know how you create a character and what kind of characters you create. Strengthen your knowledge of business and your knowledge of show business in particular and know where you stand competitively today. Know what you must do to be competitive in higher paying and more recognizable areas tomorrow. Begin thinking as a working actor with expectations of financial abundance. Acknowledge your communication and agreement between your conscious and sub-conscious mind. Learn to train your sub-conscious mind to work for you. Your sub-conscious is your lifetime employee not your lifetime controller. Set your goals and actively pursue and practice your craft and your business. Allow yourself the joy of being an actor and the thrill of knowing what you do. In order for the odds game to work for you must participate. For every 10 “no’s” there will be one “yes." Each “no” is a positive sign that you are moving toward your next yes. All good actors are stars. They go beyond the level of expectations and are brilliant. They stand out above the others. There are many who do this by happenstance. There are others that know how they do what they do.

Truth of Abundance

The truth of abundance lies in life’s promise. Remember, life’s promise is that it will support you with direction and reward if you supply the determination and discipline and understand and use the law of attraction: ask, believe and receive. This promise must be supported by action, focus, clarity and accountability. Your financial abundance starts with your willingness to achieve it. It will come from your fulfilling your responsibilities to your craft and your learning the rules and strategies of the game. If you’re willing to run the race you can achieve financial abundance. Paying lip service to your efforts will not change your circumstance. Allowing self-pity and procrastination to be used as excuses for bad luck will not be accepted. Accept certain truths that have always been important to unlocking the doors of financial abundance. You are the one ultimately responsible for your success. You must know your assets so you can use them. You must know your limitations so you can change them. You must cultivate the ability to have compassion and forgiveness for yourself and others. You must have the knowledge of what you want and create a plan of action to achieve it. You must also have the knowledge of when to change your actions if they are not giving you the result you want. Finally, you must never give up and you must be grateful for the opportunity of living. Acknowledge your right to be anything you are willing to work to become. Accept the obstacles in your path as points of needed awareness. Accept that there is no one with more power or energy than you and develop the ability to access it. Know the energy of your life is supported by the energy of the Universe and it can be accessed by action, compassion and truth. Accept today your right to be financially abundant. Know that the only thing standing in your way is fear of what financial abundance might require from you. Know that this fear can be removed with knowledge and repetition of your hearts beliefs. Fear is the reverse of talent. Knowing this will give you leverage in your quest for financial abundance. You must creat a talent for abundance so that talent can live in Talent. Talent is a place. Talent is a state of being. Talent is realized when knowledge and repetition of that knowledge converts to muscle memory so you can control your life energy for the purpose of comfort and healing. You must be a storyteller in your heart. The need to be an actor must be supported by a reason great than yourself. It must be a burning desire. Take that desire, take that need, and manifest it into action. Make sure you continue to achieve the talents needed to be a successful professional actor. Let your talent, supported by your sub-conscious, be a conduit for the energy of the universe. Become part of the oldest profession known to man. The profession of being a talent based storyteller. Remember, the story tellers are the pathfinders to that magical place called make believe. The storyteller is the calmer of the savage beast. The storyteller is the comforter of the soul. The storyteller is the activator of the healing energy that is within each of us. This healing energy can only be activated when an individual’s life energy is at peace. Taking the audience to that peace should be what the storyteller wants the power and ability to do. With that ability will come the financial abundance you so richly deserve.

And, always be grateful. Being grateful is acknowledging your appreciation for the gifts of health, happiness and security/wealth that life brings to you. It is the appreciation of life without a sense of being beholden.

Have a wonderful week and know,
I wish you well.
Russ

Disengaging Your Automatic Pilot of Normalcy

Automatic pilot means the controls are being handled mechanically without input from mindful/aware thinking. In life automatic pilot reveals itself in the way you live your life from day to day. Automatic pilot of normalcy is the use of life patterns without accountability. Even though things may seem fine, you may not be getting what you want out of your life because there may be a normalcy to your lack of success.

Life is about surprise. It is about the unexpected and your response to those circumstances. If you experience each event of your life that has an apparent negative impact as if it only happened to you, then you may find little growth happening in your life. Life growth comes from learning to expect the unexpected. Life growth comes when you free yourself from limiting thoughts. Life growth comes when you stop expecting others to follow your rules and your approach to life. The unexpected twists and turns in your path make the journey unique to you and filled with excitement.

Patterns of Response

Patterns of response are behavioral patterns of consistent choices you make to reoccurring situations. These behavioral patterns may include: frustration, annoyance, combativeness or any number of patterns of behaving badly. These patterns are directly connected to frequency levels of negative energy use. The patterns of response therefore become a beacon to receive the negative energy flow you do not want. It also results in cutting off the flow of universal, all giving, energy. Therefore, you want to recognize those positive behavioral patterns that you have used in the past to create action and achieve success. If you do not know how you do something each time you are called on to do it becomes a challenge. Without knowing how you do something there is no guarantee of success.

There are countless books on the market today focusing on people being stuck in behavioral patterns of negative control. You may tend to behave in the same negative patterns to the unexpected circumstances of your life. As stated those behavioral patterns may include: frustration, annoyance, combativeness or any number of patterns of behaving badly. By using the same patterns you are not letting each event have its own uniqueness. The way you react to a given circumstance becomes the issue of the experience rather than the experience itself. If you allow yourself always to respond negatively you lose the challenge of the specific event. You’re living in a state of the past rather than using the present to alter your future. If you react as if you are the victim your internal dialogue will block the true message of the experience. Therefore, you cannot experience personal growth and empowerment.

The greatest powers you have as a human being are your power of forgiveness and your power of love. These terms are used so indiscriminately that they often lose their meaning. Forgiveness allows you to see the cause of your pain. Love gives you the direct line of communication between the physical plane and the all knowing of all that is.

Follow Thru

A problem many people have is follow thru. You may have decided to stop putting off those things that you know will change your life. However, after several times of creating an action you fall back to your old patterns of behavior. No matter how strong your intentions are to change, negative responses come up and the actions stop. Remember, you cannot make a change until you alter the conditions that have stopped your ability to follow thru. Change your automatic control patterns. That is what your best you does. Your Best You overrides your belief system of being a victim.

It is important to know how to take your best you position and use it as a constant in your life. You may be placing emotional values on the people and experiences around you. You may judge most things using your beliefs and value systems on automatic pilot. You may be unconsciously putting people and experiences in lists of pluses or minuses. One list makes you feel good. One list makes you feel bad. There have been times when, for some reason, you left the lists and judgments behind. You may have then achieved results you had expected. It is the “for some reason” you want to discover. It is in that reason turned to action that the results were positive. Know what was different about the times you were able to follow thru to a positive result. Know what was different about the time you stuck to your plan of action. Know what was different those times you set goals and completed them.

It is the “what was different” that you must discover. Otherwise, some of your most powerful result processes are left to chance. It is as if you never knew what process you used. But, that is not true. You did know, but the knowledge may have been on a subconscious level that could only be accessed under certain variables. I believe that the variables that need to be in place are those that come from your being in the best you position. Your actions were being supported by focus overriding your automatic pilot. By accepting accountability for your actions you are in your best you position.

Getting the Results You Want

Knowing past circumstances where your best you was present is important to understanding the power of your getting the results you want. If you have a problem making the list of the best you elements, you might begin to realize that your best you usually operates under circumstances of distress or tragedy. Do you take charge during an emergency? Do you keep your head and have the wherewithal to give instructions and comfort to others in peril? Are you able to suppress your personal pain in order to take control of a situation? Would you know what is proper to wear for different occasions? Do you know why it matters?

Businessmen and women spend a great deal of time, money and effort to maintain the appearance of their best you position. There’s a reason for this. You want to know the reason. You know the importance of creating the best you image. And, you know how powerful that best you image can be. Not only to those with whom you come into contact in this business but also for yourself. Pursue your best you on a consistent basis. Your best you respects you and knows how to make others feel respected.

Peak Emotional State Association

On automatic pilot anything that you come into contact with during a highly emotional state will become associated to that state. Anything can cause an emotional state to reoccur if that thing has been associated enough times with the state. Have you had an audition and either during or after you have negative feelings and thoughts? Have you gotten angry at yourself or the circumstance of your audition? If so you run a tremendous risk of causing that feeling to surface at the mere thought of an audition.

This could be one of the reasons that you do not pursue auditions with the enthusiasm and excitement that the prospect of the job should indicate. Anything that happens consistently during a peak emotional state can eventually create the emotional state all by itself. However, if you are aware of your best you this can’t happen. You may have physical movements that you use every time something annoys you. The same is true with anger. Those physical movements may then hold within them the power to take you to that state without being aware of it. This is automatic pilot. This is not being accountable for your responses.

The response may well outweigh the “crime”. You must know those physical movements have the power to create that state simply by being put into motion. You must know what would activate a negative emotion in you. You must know that any recurring physical or sense-activated circumstance that happens during a highly emotional state will eventually be able to create the state all by itself.

Let’s say you have a habit of coming home from an audition or interview in a highly agitated state. When you get home your significant other kisses you on the cheek to give you comfort. But, you still hold onto the state. Let’s say you do this on a regular basis. Then one day you come home and you’re feeling great. Your significant other kisses you and suddenly you feel those highly agitated feelings that you had before. Who do you think you are going to hold responsible for those feelings? You guessed it. Because you have allowed yourself to behave badly without feeling it necessary to alter and change the state, you allow the state to become transferred to a loving part of your life. You do this without even realizing that it is what you’re doing. This is being on automatic pilot.

The Best You

The best you is the you that is in control of your life. That is why it must be clear why you want to make the best you a behavioral pattern you cannot afford to ignore. The best you has the power to protect you on so many levels. The best you has the power to open doors of opportunity that can only be opened by the divine flow of energy. The best you has the power to take action. You need first to know what conditions and/or variables are necessary for your behaving badly behavioral pattern to happen so the best you position can recognize and disempower them. There are many activators to your negative emotions of which you may have no knowledge. But, you certainly know what personal buttons someone can push to activate your negative emotion.

Buttons are emotional states that can be activated by an outside circumstance. The buttons are based on beliefs you hold that allow unaccountable responses. These buttons can be pushed by outside sources resulting in you losing control of your emotional state, social contract and life energy control. These buttons are a breech in your security system. The buttons are access points to your behaving badly by outside sources.

Buttons Support Automatic Pilot

If you have a problem coming up with the list of buttons that activate you to negative emotions ask your significant other or a close friend if they could perhaps help you with this list. I believe you will be surprisingly enlightened. How many of your buttons demand a negative response even though you know the button is being pushed? Is it a little sad to know what buttons someone can push to get you to behave badly and still behave badly in spite of that knowledge? Being aware that the buttons exist should give you the personal power to disempower the button.

You may have experienced someone you know well pushing one of your buttons. You may have discovered that your response was much more negative because you believe this person was well aware that they were pushing your buttons. It is amazing how many excuses we have for behaving badly. These buttons that can be activated to create negative emotions can be set up without your conscious knowledge. Music playing during a repeated emotional state can give the music the power to create that state in you months later. It is not the button, but the state itself that needs to be addressed. It is important to change the physical and emotional position of the state before it locks itself on to something else and transfers the power of creating that state to it. This happens through the senses.

The Senses

Your senses are the brain’s tools to source feelings of discomfort or pain. The senses can misread stimuli if a particular stimulus has been given the power of emotional state change. Understanding the sense of sound, sense of touch, sense of sight, sense of taste and smell are our communication to the pleasures and dangers of the world. These senses should be mastered and not taken for granted. Letting them become part of your awareness excites the mind and stimulates imagination: the greatest gift man shares above all other creatures. It is the soul.

The Senses Work on Automatic Pilot

It could happen from a look. It could happen from a smell. It could happen from a sound. It could happen from a touch. It could happen from a taste. Your senses are the brain’s tools to source feelings of discomfort or pain. The senses can misread stimuli if a particular stimulus has been given the power of emotional state change. In order to understand your negative buttons you may want to explore the positive buttons. What are some of the buttons that can alter your state of being to the positive? In your workbook you will list as many buttons that, once activated, create a state of peace, joy, happiness, comfort, etc. You will use your senses.

There are things you see that can cause a positive emotional state. It could be a special aunt. It could be a beloved grandmother. It could be a special friend. A positive emotional change could be caused by a smell. Apple pie may bring visions of Christmas and its accompanying joy.

It could be sound. It could be a special song. All of these positive buttons can be used to disempower a negative button. But this must be done on a conscious level or you run the risk of transferring a negative button to former positive buttons. You can use positive buttons only if you are conscious that you are using them. Any time you, or anyone around you, is in a highly emotional state there is a susceptibility of an outside stimuli becoming a button to that emotion. A lot of relationships die because they are unintentionally made buttons to negative emotional states. This is why you may want to reinforce the positive buttons and disempower the negative buttons with awareness.

Confidence comes when the Automatic Pilot is Disengaged

Confidence is a feeling or consciousness of one’s power or of reliance on one’s circumstances. It is freedom of uncertainty. Confidence is also the physical feeling that comes when the automatic pilot is disengaged. It is an awareness that manifests itself in your presence, your footsteps and you flow of life energy. Understanding the reasons you do not have the motivation to do those things that need to be done in order to move your career forward is crucial. It is crucial because the reason you give yourself for not doing it do little to inspire self-worth and confidence.

When have you felt confident? Being confident is characterized by assurance. To be confident is to be full of conviction. You want to know what being confident means to you. You want to know what being confident physically feels to you. Confidence is a state of being. Confidence is also a state of mind. It is the “best you” state.

Confidence begins with awareness and accountability. Look back over the many events of your life and reflect on how many of them were accompanied with confidence. You can recognize a pattern of successful conclusions to certain events where confidence was present. If I said for you to show me confidence, you know what you would do. You would throw your shoulders back, hold your head up, and put a stride in your walk. Your body language would be open and honest. Your expressions would be warm and friendly. Your focus would be sharp and centered. Confidence creates an “air” about you.

I’m sure you are familiar with the expression, “he has an air of confidence”. If not, you need to become aware of the expression. Confidence is an acceptance. It accepts that you are where you are right now and there can be no guilt for it and where you are is all anyone can ask of you.

Confidence radiates from you as a sense of comfort and giving. Confidence is the state that is the result of your being your best you. It is a byproduct of that behavioral state. Like Talent it is a place where energy is controlled by your spiritual self, not by your physical self. For that reason it must be activated on a consistent and regular basis. Practice your ability to go to confidence. Seek out a talent for confidence. Feel confidence as a state of being you can control. Often you do not allow yourself the awareness of your own power. You may not have allowed yourself to work at positive states of being. And yet, you know that your most effective times of success have been accompanied with confidence.

A Riddle

Confidence can come from talent but Talent cannot come from confidence. Confidence without a talent base is the accepting of being a conscious incompetent. You know what needs to be done and are willing to do it to become a conscious competent. Your lack of a specific talent will not negate a confidence in its ability to be achieved. Confidence is a presentation of willingness to do what needs to be done to achieve the respect and trust of others.

You can be taken to a place of confidence by someone else. There are those people who have a talent for making you feel confident. This is a great thing to experience but it can be a pretty dangerous way to run your business of acting or your life. It is not enough to rely on someone else’s ability to take you to a confidence level. You must be able to do it for yourself. There are those highly placed casting directors who will test the truth of your ability by confidence manipulation. They will call you in for an audition and give you an enormous sense of comfort and support. This first audition will decide if your type is right for the character they are looking for. This will lead to a second audition.

This audition is often misread as a call back but, in reality, is the first real audition where your type has been accepted as competitive for the role. The casting directors are now looking for your position of play within type. At this audition the more powerful casting director will be less gracious and more demanding. If the actor is not working on his own confidence level he can run into serious trouble. He may find himself having internal dialogue of why is the casting director being so cold. Or, what am I doing wrong. This will affect the audition and could result in no future call backs for this part.

The actor needs to be sure his confidence level is not dependent on the courtesy level of the buyer or his representatives. It may be part of the knowledge gathering or just a bad mood. It should be noted that you do not want to be an unconscious incompetent nor do you wish to be an unconscious competent. You will fall into one of the competent categories for all of the abilities that you have or need to have to be successful in this business or this life. You may want to be aware of the level you are on in the different areas of your life.

They are, as noted conscious competent, a conscious incompetent, an unconscious competent and an unconscious incompetent. A conscious competent is someone who does something well and knows exactly what they are doing to achieve that competence. They are the most ready to accept the secret of life success; the law of attraction. They have worked for the right to ask, believe and receive the bounty of the universe. A conscious incompetent is someone who knows they do something well but do not know exactly what they are doing to achieve the competence. The conscious incompetent is instinct driven and runs the risk of losing their instinctive guides due to circumstance and fear. An unconscious competent is someone who does not accept that they do something well even though they know what they are doing. They doubt themselves and question their right to what they achieve. In the secret of life success of asking, believing and receiving they fall short in the believing step of the gift. An unconscious incompetent is someone who does not know they have neither the skills nor the talents nor the knowledge to do what they are doing. They blindly go forward with confusion as to what is happening with their life and how they never have any luck. They are unaware that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. When opportunity comes they are without preparation. This often happens in a subjective arena. In only one of these positions you are in control of your power or destiny. Do you know which one it is?

Character Position

You want to know how confidence, which comes from your best you, relates to a character in make believe who is behaving badly? This is important in understanding acting as a technical craft. Because even though behaving badly is not a confidence level, in make believe all levels are confidence levels. The art of acting, like any other art, will happen when the knowledge of how to act becomes integrated into the physical reality of your being. It becomes art when it has the power to grab the pained life energy of the audience and give it peace by connecting it, through your talent, to the divine flow of universal energy.

Once you learn to go to make believe you will also learn that the feeling, that physical state of being in make believe, is totally different from the feeling, that physical state of being in reality. Confidence is the best you state of being in the world of reality. Acting is the ability to take a character to a behaving badly state in the world of make believe. This is done without causing your body to use your life energy to protect the vessel. You do not want to activate your own defense system to do this. Therefore, you must use the confidence of your talent to let the character live in his world of make believe. This is what separates reality from make believe and makes it a place of peace, not fear.

Emotional State of Make Believe

You know that when you realize that the emotional states of your life are designed by you to fulfill some perceived need of defense then you can alter these states to enhance your career goals and directions. You know that your ability to understand how your body works when you’re in a highly emotional state and the disempowering affect it can have when you are controlled by automatic pilot. When you are in Talent you are also in a highly emotional state. The difference is the emotion is joyous by design and the need to have your life energy mobilized by your body in a fight and run position is unnecessary. Therefore, your internal dialogue has been removed and your brain is free to explore the power and achievements of positive energy within the character’s world of misery, fear and pain. You want to have the power to activate your best you position with focus and accountability at any moment. You want to make yourself aware when you’re behaving badly. You want to know how to get the behaving badly circumstance to become a button for the “best you”. The importance of understanding your awareness of your best you position instantly is fundamental to your ability to empower yourself.

Internal Alarm

Your automatic pilot is making choices by impulse. Therefore, the control of your destiny is in your willingness to accept the power of your life energy and the battle between your physical self and spiritual self for the use of that energy. The negative thoughts that come to your mind could be looked at as alarms indicating that your energy is being used by the body for the defense, not by your best you. Your “best you”energy would be working to stay in the flow of the all knowing universal energy. Have the power to control your career and your life. Have the knowledge base that will allow you to have control over your mental states and your motivation.

You believe in some form of positive energy flow. You have experienced that feeling of things falling into place in the “I can do no wrong” thoughts that empower your consciousness. Yet, many times you find yourself in such despair and confusion the fact that you know all things come to pass does not seem to apply to you. I know that the period of non action and career stagnation can go on for long stretches of time. The negative thoughts will come. The physical feelings of uselessness will be experienced. The “what’s the use” conversations with you will occur. That’s life.

The power to recognize the manipulation of yourself by yourself with these feelings and thoughts is what I want you to be aware of and to control. This control can come from your awareness of being able to go to the best you physical position. The more you practice going to this position the stronger the odds are that you will be able to make the behaving badly positions actually become the button for your best you position.

Feeling and Thinking

Often you express yourself by saying I feel unmotivated or I feel out of control. Until you have intellectualized the feeling with thoughts you have no idea what the feeling might mean. But you do activate a feeling by first using your senses to isolate the supposed cause of the feeling and then source the most recent experience that makes this cause the source of your pain. One of the problems with this is the feeling you experience is just that, a feeling. It is a physical sensation of awareness as yet unidentified from cause. All the senses are activated instantly and each makes an evaluation as to source. One or more of the senses will then report to the brain and the brain will access all recorded data pertaining to the suspected source of the feeling and, in turn, will label the feeling. The label could be anger, frustration, outrage, etc. It will become clear because of the emotional dialogue that comes with it. This internal dialogue is now the source of the emotion attributed to the feeling. The degree of that feeling now manifested as emotion, by default, will decide the level of passion this event or circumstance has in your life.

To say you feel a certain emotion is misleading. It is the thoughts that make the feelings identifiable. Therefore, you think you are unmotivated or you think you’re out of control. When the truth is you are just selecting yourself as the variable for defeat. Therefore, it matters if you say I think instead of I feel. If you are crediting a feeling for your lack of motivation then there is a suggestion to yourself that this feeling is beyond your control. If you establish that nothing is beyond your control because of how you choose to perceive something then you also establish that you hold the power to your own destiny. It is difficult to source a feeling. Just as it is impossible to remember how physical pain feels. When it’s there, it’s there and when it’s gone it cannot be remembered to feeling. What you can remember are your occurring thoughts, not the feelings that go with the thoughts. It is those thoughts on automatic pilot that allow you to behave the way you behave and justify behavior with your belief system.

What can be said without hesitation is that regardless of the circumstances you may find yourself behaving badly. This is not a justifiable response because you are now adding more confusion to the already confused circumstance. You may then cut yourself off from the flow of universal energy and knowledge. This universal energy, I so cavalierly state, is the source of your personal growth and advancement. If your goal, as a human being, is to become a better person to enhance the collective power of evolution you cannot allow yourself the luxury of being vindictive, demanding and unforgiving. You must be focused and accountable.

Choice of Perception

You know the answer lies in the perception you choose to use in the interpretation you placed on your emotions. In so many stories the Everyman character must fight his instinctive need to maintain his independence and personal freedom. The character finds it extremely difficult to accept being dominated or controlled by outside forces. By the same token, your behaving badly may be a result of your feeling wronged and wanting to retaliate.

Even if the means of your retaliation are unjust and become a punishment that may far outweighs the crime. If you’re looking to discover a way to take control of your future, and activate that part of you that will draw success and guidance to you, then you may want to accept that the best you position must be activated, analyzed, and strengthened. You want to make a concerted effort to be aware of your thoughts at all times to make sure they are the kind of thoughts that support your goals. You want to recognize how feelings are used to manipulate you into thoughts of depression, worthlessness and inaction when you are on automatic pilot. You want to know you are led down a path of negative thoughts and non supportive actions. Awareness and accountability are keys to the your “best you” position.

Many people believe that their automatic pilot responses are the norm of their existence. Unfortunately the belief is true - the reality is not. Automatic impulses will never lead you to the destiny that you desire. Nothing is more exciting than to realize you are not at the mercy of other people or fate. You are the master of your destiny and if you must allow yourself to man the controls rather than stay on automatic pilot. On automatic pilot every negative thought you have becomes an instruction to your brain. You may run the risk of creating a destiny filled with suffering and personal failure.

Obstacles come to Pass or Stay

You can design and construct a plan for the destiny that you desire. If you want to be an actor of note then plan for it. But, be aware of the obstacles you face and welcome them with the knowledge they are part of life. The speed with which the obstacles come to pass is completely up to you and your control over your life through perception. Do not think that perception is an illusion, a trick you’re trying to play on your reality. It is not.

Perception is a way of acknowledging life for the adventure that it is. It allows you to pursue goals and professions, like storytelling, that are noble for their impact and selfish in their need for personal gratification. It is learning to accept the truth of this dichotomy that allows the process of healing, through the energy created by talent, to take place. Many doctors become doctors for the money. Many lawyers become lawyers for the money. There are many professions where the lure of the financial reward is greater than the desire for the compassion of the profession. As long as that compassion is realized, and the calling is heard, the making of the money can be forgiven. The calling is that unexplained need to be part of a profession. Without a calling success in that profession is difficult. For the actor the calling is the internal knowledge that what the actor does as he takes an audience to make believe is profound and divine. It is the conduit of creature comfort that allows self healing to be achieved in this miraculous experience; life.

Do not let seemingly selfish beliefs overshadow a professional responsibility allowing you to undermine your own possibility of success. That might well translate to you that your personal values of integrity are stronger than your conscious values of being adored. As a result you may sabotage yourself without even being aware of doing it. That awareness must be a part of your reality. Allow yourself to be keenly aware of your behavior and your behavioral patterns. Take inventory of your internal dialogue and your negative, as well as positive, internal instructions. Allow yourself to believe that your gifts as a successful professional actor far outweigh any ego oriented reasons you may have for pursuing this career. Know your best you and how to enhance it. Know when you are behaving badly and reverse that circumstance as quickly as possible. Access the divine flow of universal energy and knowledge.