13202: Don’t Let Your Theories Become “Facts”

Raw transcript:

so sometimes I sit down to do these uh
episodes with a very carefully planned
out uh uh sequence of events and in this
case I got one thing on my mind and then
I’m just going to Riff on it be very
very very careful of the
stories that you tell
yourself I’ll explain what I’m talking
about coming up next in this episode of
the vo Heroes podcast
you’ve heard me talk about how whack
this business is whatever business end
of the business you’re in whether you’re
an actor or a voice Talent a writer uh
it doesn’t matter we have so little
control over most of the things that
happen other than our own abilities and
the way we interpret and deal with what
happen happens in our performance
career and because we have so little
control over most of the things that
happen decisions that are made by other
people about what we’re able to take
part in what we are able to audition for
what we’re able to submit for what we’re
able to participate in when we really
want something and it doesn’t
happen we tend to to try to as our
ancestors all the way back to caveman
tried to do is to make some sort of
sense of it to have some sort of
reasoning that if our best friend comes
up and says hey how’d that thing go that
you were doing you know well here’s what
happened and here’s
why my advice to you is be careful about
ascribing certain
reasons for things happening in our
business you can you can easily just
stop at here’s what happened as opposed
to continuing on to and here’s
why I’m GNA go out on a limb and say 99
times out of a 100 you have no idea why
why didn’t they call you back why didn’t
they offer you an audition why didn’t
they offer you the role why didn’t they
take your manuscript why didn’t they do
something with it you know why didn’t
you get a pin or an on hold or a call
back or or can’t they see I am the
character can’t they read in my writing
what I’m capable of doing
so number one you can save yourself a
lot of Heartache number
two when we do tell ourselves these
stories when we make up in our minds
well that has to be the truth because
that’s the only thing that makes sense
to me when we do that over time those
conjectures and they are nothing but
conjectures unless a casting director or
a publisher or somebody who’s gatekeeper
in our
career talks to us face to face and says
here’s why you didn’t get the
job and gives you concrete reasons you
don’t know you have no
idea and the number of
possibilities are
Myriad way too many for me to you know
enumerate here the problem
is we start to tell ourselves these
stories and because we tell these
stories more than once maybe dozens of
times yeah I didn’t get that role on you
know Game of Thrones because whatever we
tell these stories over and over again
they take on the air of fact as opposed
to reminding ourselves it’s just
conjecture we don’t
know and
so when that happens those facts can
become destructive they can become
debilitating they can they can really
hurt our ability to deal with
the awful nature one of the awful
Natures of our business which is there’s
so much that’s unknown and so much
that’s beyond our
control so I have a replacement for you
just a suggestion just a
suggestion if you really are you can’t
let go of something
tell yourself this I’m so
happy for the guy the woman the the
writer the actor The Voice talent that
got the gig somebody got
work I find myself repeating that over
and over and over again to just remove
the onus of failure or lack of success
or that the the casting office or the
production people or whoever was the
gatekeeper of that project just found
somebody else more appealing just found
someone else to be the right fit you
know I just I just want to feel good
about the fact that somebody got work
which is awesome and sometimes that’s
somebody who gets work is me and I do
hope that other actors voice Talent
teachers uh coaches have that feeling I
know some of them don’t but I hope that
some of them
do it removes all of that that crap from
trying to figure out why you didn’t get
the part why you didn’t get the
gig because you’re going to be wrong all
the time and it doesn’t
matter you know you get another at bat
sooner or
later work on your
hitting I know I try to avoid Sports
analogies whenever I possibly can but in
this case you know
try your try your three-point play more
often go to the gym whatever it is about
your
Pursuit that you can
do to enjoy the process do more of that
and less
of the whole notion of trying to explain
away what didn’t happen you’ll be so
much happier and you’ll be so much
easier on
yourself and in a world where being
easier on yourself sometimes is hard to
come by let’s let’s grab every
opportunity for that that we can does
that make sense please let me know in
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this with another performer another
creative type who should hear this
message I’m David H Lawrence the 17th I
thank you so much for watching and for
listening and I will see you in the next
episode

(from YouTube)