These last few weeks I’ve recorded videos instead of typing out a newsletter and I asked for your feedback as to whether you preferred one over the other.

The response was overwhelming – videos were preferred (is it because of all my typos every week!). In spite of that I’m writing this week’s newsletter but moving forward I’ll be creating more videos to send your way.

I’ve had an interesting week going after my dreams.

I have an idea for a new project and the more I dug into it the more it began to overwhelm me. Now, I understand this dynamic. I have been addressing it for thirty years and that is this – to be an entrepreneur, to be in commission sales (we actors are sales people), to make a living in this incredibly competitive profession, one must be extremely proactive in creating work and to create something from nothing one must overcome fear, resistance, and procrastination.

We must. If we don’t we will be dreamers with a dream that is eating away at us. (I’ve been there, too by the way but in the end I found it it is worse than facing my fears).

Anyway, as I began to advance this idea and creating something from nothing, all those low-grade emotions/feelings began to seep in and I began to get overwhelmed.

So I did what I have learned to do – I took a step back and away from it and instead put my focus on getting mentally and emotionally stronger so I could go fight the fight and scale this new mountain.

Soon I balanced myself out and came back to this idea with renewed excitement and faith.

Part of my balancing out was reading from Steven Pressfield’s, The War Of Art (a book i HIGHLY recommend over and over). He wrote something that was perfect advice for me in this moment of being on “tilt”:

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. When we sit down and work we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete (I had to look that up). But to get these ideas to come one must be an artistic warrior. One must also have an artistic code which is an attitude of egolessness and service. The Knights of the Round Table were chaste and self-effacing. Yet they dueled dragons. We artists are dueling dragons, too. Fire-breathing griffins of the soul, whom we must outfight and outwit to reach the treasure of our self-potential and to release the maiden which is our destiny for ourselves and the answer to why we were put on this planet.”

Wow.
Yes.
Thank you.

So that’s what I did. I dusted myself off, get my legs underneath me, and began again.

That is our artistic journey.

I’d like to leave you with a question that came up for me this week that really helped me: “What habit in my life is taking away from where I want to go? What one thing could I either stop doing or start doing and it would make me stronger/better/healthier?”

For me, it was to stop listing to sports talk radio and replace it with these podcasts I’ve been promising myself I’m going to get to. My commute is two hours every day and that is A LOT of time to either get empowered or get saturated with content that in the end, does NOTHING to advance my dreams and better my life. I did it every day this week and the difference was DRAMATIC.

How about you? What is the one habit you can eliminate and replace with something better for you?

Hit reply and tell me. I real want to know. I’ll respond I promise.

OK, I hope you have an incredible week being you and as always, thank you for your time and my very best to you,

Jim