I met with a client a few weeks ago for his quarterly coaching session to review his progress and set some new goals and intentions for this year.

My client has always had a passion for acting and tons of ability and potential. After qualifying from Drama College he has appeared in numerous stage plays, TV shows, adverts and films over the years Acting is a tough profession, involves lots of auditions and requires the capacity to cope with rejection and disappointment. Actors and actresses have to develop a lot of resilience and learn to bounce back from setbacks. This is perfectly illustrated in the brilliant film La La Land.

Being an actor/actress can mean that your income is unpredictable. You can experience feast and famine as far as work is concerned. What I find inspiring and commendable is that my client never wanted to be actor that had no money. He therefore ran an unrelated business which has been successful and ensured he had consistent income.

This has been a bit of a curate’s egg because the success and growth of his business has taken up more and more of his time. It has also been a bit of an obstacle, as it has prevented him from developing his acting career and fulfilling his enormous potential.

We started working together several years ago because his business interests were taking up more of his time and stopping him from pursuing his true passion and fulfilling his dreams. At the time, he was at a bit of a crossroads and sought my help to decide if he should give up his acting ambitions and concentrate full time on his business. I’m pleased that he chose to listen to his heart and persevere with his acting. We developed a plan to get him more acting work.

Given the background I was delighted to hear my client say in the review that 2016 was his most successful year in terms of the amount of acting work he gained.

He has had regular work in a series shot abroad. I asked him what made the biggest difference. He replied that greater self-discipline and focus are the biggest reasons that he has enjoyed greater acting success. He has taken small action steps consistently and these have generated the results he’s now enjoying and thoroughly deserves. He has followed through on the plans we have devised.

The way we ensured that he developed greater self-discipline and focus was to draw up a list of daily habits and rituals that enabled him to be at his best physically and mentally. These include getting up earlier, eating healthily including juicing, exercising daily, meditation, planning the day the night before, doing at least one acting related activity each day including promotion work and recording 3 things to be grateful for daily.

My client used an app on his phone to record completion of a particular ritual each day. As an accountability mechanism, he mailed me a screen shot of his completed actions for each ritual every Monday morning.

When we are more disciplined it gives us a greater sense of calm and accomplishment. It helps develop our self-confidence and esteem. It also enables our inner chat to be more positive and productive. This is because we’re focused on what we have done and completed. We think about the personal commitments we’ve met rather than the action plans we haven’t followed through on. This helps silence the inner critic and voice of doubt. It means that we direct our time and energy on more productive activities.

This week, why not pause and reflect and consider how you are with self-discipline. Do you need to develop greater discipline and what benefits would this bring you? What daily habits and rituals do you follow or can you adopt to enable you to the best that you can be personally and professionally?

This week’s quotation:

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” Dwayne Johnson.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk