Confidence in Action - the key to achieving success in the performing arts

Do you want a career in the performing arts yet struggle with self belief or the confidence to take the ACTION required to have your dreams a reality...

CONFIDENCE in ACTION - The key to success

For most of my life true confidence eluded me. Outwardly I was confident. I successfully completed two degrees, was a musical performer, a teacher, I had a great home, family and friends. Inwardly, I was struggling – never believing what I did was enough. When I left my teaching job – an area that I was very confident in, to stay home and be ‘mum’ to my two girls – I found that everything was new, scary, and at times totally overwhelming. This only contributed even more to the feelings I had inside that I wasn’t good enough. My comfort zone was shrinking, not expanding and with it were more confidence and my self esteem.

With this came a great gift – An opportunity to reach out and discover what is really important to me, to reconnect with my authentic self and take the steps to have the life that allowed me to feel, joy, excitement and an opportunity to contribute to others a long the way.

I would love to share with you – what some would say were light - bulb moments for me. For some of you these will be new, for others something you realised many years ago!

1. Fear is normal – it what you do with it that matters. “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway”. Even the most successful person you can think of gets scared – moving forward anyway is what allows us to grow. This leads us to …

2. ACTION - If you don’t act – nothing changes. You have to take the steps to make what you want to happen, to actually happen! For so many years, I had great ideas or knew I needed to do something new, yet never took action. Taking ACTION was what allowed me to move forward.

3. There are no mistakes, there is no failure – everything is just feedback. If you break down the word mistake, it is MISS TAKE, and you know what they do in the movies – they do another take. Ask yourself, what do I need to do differently to get the result I want? Have another go. Persistence is the key. Colonial Sanders knocked on over 100 doors to sell his ‘chicken with secret herbs and spices’ at the age of 60 before he got a taker and look where KFC is now!

4. Your thoughts create your emotions – They don’t just turn up! For many years I thought that my emotions just turned up and I had no control of them. It was a huge revelation for me to know that if I didn’t like the way I was feeling I could change it by changing my physiology, thinking of a time I felt the way I wanted to feel and taking action. It is available to us in an instance…. This leads us to …

5. Confidence is a choice! Choose to be confident in spite of fear, take the steps required for things to change in your life, learn from your MISS TAKES, create the physiology and the thoughts to feel confident and as NIKE says, just DO IT! You will be amazed at how your confidence and self esteem will grow.

For the next 7 days do something that gets your heart racing…. Make that phone call, talk to someone new, sign up for a new course, ring that agent or contact...

Shiona Long at When You Believe Coaching to learn more about how one on one coaching can assist you to move forward in your life.. or to sign up for our regular newsletter at shiona@whenyoubelieve.com.au