The Great Acting Blog: “Never Let Frightened People Add To Your Burden”

The Great Acting Blog: “Never Let Frightened People Add To Your Burden”

Sometimes, in your work you’ll encounter frightened people. But they won’t seem frightened, in fact, they’ll present themselves as confident and knowing. They probably don’t acknowledge their fear even to themselves. No, what they do is, instead of admitting their fear and dealing with it, they spend their time actively searching for ways to criticise others (preferably petty criticism about something meaningless).

You may have come across such people, and their criticism of you has brought forth your own fears and your own doubts (petty criticism does that). What they’ve done is spread their fear, and that was always their intention. They wanted to bring you down with it.

Building a career, building a body of work, being disciplined, fighting the good fight day-by-day, year-by-year, remaining committed, continually improving, these all require courage and are out of reach for the fearful.

Everybody has fears and everybody has doubts. There is nobody who doesn’t. And you’ll have to overcome them in order to progress. You don’t need other people adding to the burden. So the next time someone criticises you and it brings out your fear, just remember that they are simply spreading their own fear, and it’s your job to prevent yourself from becoming infected by it.

See a frightened person for what they are. Then forget about them and return to your work.