Lisa Temple Actress Your Senator, Doctor, Teacher, Mom

Here’s an old headshot. I’m still out here pursuing my dream!

Funny how each week can be completely different, isn’t it? Last week I had three auditions on the same day. This week – nada. Well, to be fair, I had a Podcast Voiceover (VO) audition on Monday, but that’s a completely different type of project. Doing a VO self-tape only requires an MP3 audio file, not an iMovie video file. Much less complicated.

It’s the third time I’ve auditioned for this podcast, and the tricky thing is I’m required to sound like a real person in the news. It’s been an interesting experience, since I’m not a VO Artist per se. I’ve never trained for VO work, but fortunately I’m considered for indie projects. The Commercial VO World is extremely difficult to break into, but smaller projects are sometimes open to new people. I’ve long wanted to put together a VO Demo Reel, but as you may know, it takes a very specific skill set. And even then, there’s only a small, very established group of people who book work regularly. Or at least that’s the common thinking. Perhaps I should do a blog on that: how our belief systems hold us back. Hmmm.

Anyway, what do I mean by The Long Haul? When I have “down time”, I work on other parts of my career maintenance; what is fondly called administrivia. You know, advertising, marketing, social media. Of course, it’s depressing and frustrating to not get any auditions in a week, but I can’t allow that to bother me. I have to remain grateful and focused on what’s still possible for me to do.

Here’s an insightful quote by Brian Tracy, which really says it all no matter what your career is: The key to success is to focus our Conscious Mind on things we Desire, not things we Fear.

If we focus on our fears, we will spend most of our time trying to avoid our fears, battling through our fears, and being manipulated by our fears. It took me a long time to figure this one out, but now that I have, I’m eternally grateful for this knowledge. What a gift to become aware of this aspect of human nature. If we can shift our relationship to our fears, our self-awareness opens up. We can see what we’re doing and how we’re spending our time. Then we can more easily change other aspects that need shifting, like time management or self-care. And all of this shifting takes time = the long haul.

For me, fear consists of self-doubt, insecurity, self-consciousness, judging myself – your basic over-analysis. If I let it, my vicious circle goes round and round. Stopping this ‘merry-go-round of fear’ and choosing a self-empowering focus, has dramatically transformed my life. So much so, that if I never fulfill my dream of working as a Series Regular on a TV Show, I’m still so grateful to be the person I am now. This Long Haul has made me a far better person, and I’m proud of my accomplishments.

Now when I have a slow week in my career, I find other ways to stay creative and to develop my career. I listen to online acting courses, of which I have several on my desktop. And I write this blog and my web series, which is an amazing feeling. It still kinda blows my mind that my time has changed this much, but in the next breath I smile. How wonderful to choose acknowledgment and celebration instead of frustration and apathy.

In the last lines of a powerful quote about struggle, President Calvin Coolidge said, Persistence and Determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the Human Race.

I can only respond with Onward!