ALL ABOARD THE STRUGGLE BUS by RSO

I want to make a formal PSA.

Are you feeling sad as fuck? 

Are you feeling like "What am I doing in this business?"

Are you just BEATEN down, OVERWORKED, OVERWHELMED, and like your efforts are stalling? 

According to your texts and emails, and also 8 years of Actor Therapy, scavenging through this time period, MOST OF YOU are feeling this way. Why?

Because, March.

March Sadness. It's easy to get discouraged. January started and you had a plan, you were better than ever. This would be YOUR YEAR. But February rolled around, auditions came and went, now it's March and people are posting about their happy vacations, and you are just like ... how did the winter pass and now we're in spring and I thought the year just started? 

Let me fix offer some thoughts for adjusting our way of thinking. 

1. Write down (notes app? journal? paper?) what NEW behaviors you started in January. How did they make you feel? Focus not on their results, but focus on how they made your body, heart and mind feel in the moment. 

Chance are, you have a few things on there, and chances are better that they made you feel better and good about yourself. 

Chances are greater still that at some point since then you've stopped doing those things and feel shitty. 

But look at that logically: you were doing X and it made you feel happy, so now you're not doing X and maybe doing Y (a bad behavior) and now you're sad. 

Doesn't that make you think you should double up, re-attack those good habits and get back to feeling good again? 

2. Results. Tiny results yield small wins, and small wins collect into huge improvement. 

Reflect on your tiny results and small wins since January 1. Put aside those dark thoughts — "Nothing!! Nothing!! I've won ... nothing...." and work harder for yourself. You took Actor Therapy and you learned some stuff, you won something tiny. 

Make a list of all the tiny wins NO MATTER HOW TINY THEY ARE. Did you change jobs? Stand up to a friend? Get new outfits that make you feel sexy? Were you brave? Did you get up earlier? Did you do a sober month? 

Reflect on what you've accomplished. An OBJECT IN MOTION STAYS IN MOTION. 

3. This is the time of year people start saying that they "need a break." Look: if you are HURTING, then maybe a break is what is up. If you are just TIRED, OVERWHELMED and OVERWORKED, then everything is going according to plan. 

Our industry WANTS to wear you down, so that the strongest and fittest of all the industry SURVIVE to the top. It's called SCARCITY ... weed out the easily exhausted, the self-conscious, those whose spirits don't have what it takes. 

Is that you? Maybe you don't need a BREAK, but what you really need is a REGROUP. It's better to RESTART every few months than burn out. 

The feeling of "I couldn't work harder..." is BY DESIGN in a business of scarcity. It is at this moment 80% of the competition FALLS AWAY, and the cream of the crop arrive to fight. 

Will you fall away and crumble in mid-March like most everybody does, and say you need a break, and then it's summer, and it's time to relax, and wait to renew your commitment to yourself to SEPTEMBER? 

Or will you REGROUP?

RSO

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