Throughout your life and your career, you’re going to have to give yourself the green light.
Again and again.
No one else is ever going to give it to you.
It doesn’t matter what level of success you achieve. How many people know you or your work. How many previous projects you’ve done or if you’re about to embark on your first endeavor. The call into acting – into any art form – is always about giving yourself the permission to do what you want to do. Over and over again.
You will be faced with a flurry of “No’s.” You’ll meet lots of resistance and rejection. You’ll be denied and thwarted. You’ll be typecast and put into limiting boxes.
And again, you must come back to the reason you wanted to create in the first place.
Ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” “For whom?”
If it’s truly for yourself then you won’t have a hard time giving yourself the go-ahead. If it’s really for the joy of self-expression and wanting to share your creative self with others, you’ll stop waiting for people to “allow” you to create. No one has that kind of power over you. The will to create and then acting on that desire is really what it takes.
Giving yourself the green light simply means you have to start having a healthy sense of selfishness in order to create.
Selfish in this regard means to honor the Self. It’s not of ego. It’s the higher, intuitive Self that wants to show up and express and be expressed. Create. Have fun. Play. Go for things. It’s not concerned with what other people think. Whether or not they like you or your art.
Selfishness means not having to apologize for who you are – even if you make mistakes or have no credits or are new to this profession. Even if you aren’t perfect and fall apart and fail.
It’s the part of you that wants to show up on a level-playing field and say, “Here I am.”
It takes balls to do that.
And of course a green light. Self-given. Because if you don’t give it to yourself, you’ll never get one.