“Her legs are too long…And that hair—that really isn’t what we’re looking for…Turn around. Well, maybe with some airbrushing…We can fix that in post, right?”

Sound familiar?

You leave the house feeling like a normal person, you come home feeling like an over-handled and useless piece of produce…

Such is life in the entertainment industry. Over the years, you may have developed a thick skin or a very cerebral logic about how everyone is just trying to create an image and you’re either what they’re looking for or you’re not. But then there are those days when you find yourself, for whatever reason, arriving home, looking in the mirror and thinking to yourself, “ARE my eyes too close together? I never thought about that before…”

And that little chink in your self-esteem lets loose a spiral of inadequacy in you that makes you feel talentless, clumsy, and ugly. All guaranteed to, eventually, affect your confidence in your work.

Sure, there are some temporary solutions to this poke, prod, and put-down the produce: you can internally chant, “I’m not listening, I’m not listening, I’m not listening” while trying your darndest not to listen to what they’re saying, knowing the make-up artist can give them what they want. Or you can run through your grocery list or your lines and pretend their voices are just the sound of the wind. You could even give up this whole Hollywood machine and go and live like a normal person ANYWHERE else, where it doesn’t MATTER how close together your eyes are or how long your legs are.

But those solutions really don’t sustainably get you what you want, do they?

You want bullet-proof self esteem, amazing confidence, and such deep grounding that you either can’t get shaken (or at least won’t stay shaken for long!).

The three most effective ways to do this are as follows:

1. Keep an Acknowledgement Journal: This is the easiest and most effective way to build up your self-esteem and keep it there. Every day write down 5-10 risks you took and acknowledge yourself for doing them.
2. Write Gratitudes: Want to counteract all that debilitating stuff you’re hearing? Start looking for the good in EVERYTHING. A grateful heart softens the world around you and helps you see light in places where you thought there was none.
3. Surround Yourself With People You Love and Trust: Feeling insecure? Ask these nourishing friends to remind you, daily, how wonderful you are.

Establish gratitudes, acknowledgements, and wonderful friends into your life on a daily basis, and you will never feel disposable again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under Ego, Entertainment Industry, Hollywood, Insecurity, Self-Esteem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.