Ceiling Thoughts and Daily Affirmations

What do you think is the #1 factor to your success as an actor? Connections? Training? Package? I'll give you a hint: I've mentioned it before.... yes, that's right.... ATTITUDE!! A lot of people refer to that as your "mindset" and it's so impor- wait what? You've heard this all before? Really?

Then why do you still have stinkin' thinkin'?

Don't deny it, I AM YOU, remember? I know what it's like to let my mind get the best of me when I'm intimidated at an audition or an agent meeting. I know what it feels like to think that you're too fat or too thin or too pretty or too ugly for XYZ Role. Not enough credits, too many of a certain kind of credits, etc. I call these "ceiling thoughts" because they put a ceiling on our potential as actors and as human beings. We give ourselves reasons why we CAN'T do things! And as time goes on, these ceiling thoughts get stronger and stronger as we give them more and more weight in our lives. Finally, they become an impenetrable fortress of negativity that surrounds us and imprisons us and the worst part is, WE'RE OK WITH THAT! Out of fear of trying and failing, or out of fear of believing and having our faith turn sour, we just don't try and don't believe and get comfortable with our choice.

So how do we build the muscles that we need to bust through our Ceiling Thoughts? Well, we train all the other aspects of our business and craft, and so why not train our mind? The simplest way: Daily Affirmations.

I'm going to go into more depth about Daily Affirmations in this month's Lyndon Technique Newsletter (check out www.TheLyndonTechnique.com), but for now, let me give the shortest definition I can give: affirmations are convincing yourself of how cool you are. Standing in front of a mirror, you strategically work out your self-love muscle (ok, after re-reading that, I considered deleting, but let's all try to be mature, shall we? :-) ) by giving yourself a pep-talk and pointing out the positive things in your life and about yourself.

Like I said, check out this month's newsletter where I will really go into details about this, but for now, here's a video that might help: