Season 3 – epiBLOG 26:
Today marks the end of “Season 3” of the UnCloseted Professor Blog. However, “Season 4” is starting next week, and is chalked full of all of the good stuff that you’ve come to love, and sprinkled with some new ingredients that are sure to have you craving more each week!
Change is an inevitable part of life. Just like I have new changes every six months to my blog with each new season, additionally, we all experience changes within our careers as artists.
Change is a good thing, unless you don’t know how to integrate it effectively within your career. If that’s the case, it becomes a point of resistance for you, which can lead to annoyance and frustration.
Today’s topic is to accept what you cannot change and to take action on those things that you can within your career as an artist.
This is a lot easier said than done.
It can be a challenge to accept what is if you don’t want what you’re experiencing. I know all about that. I’ve spent the past 20 years of my screenwriting career resisting negative results.
Resistance can be a challenge. For example, receiving a rejection email or letter on your manuscript that you’ve just spent the last 18 months of your life writing isn’t something that sounds too appealing. You may not want to accept that you’re not getting published by that particular publisher right now.
Resistance.
Perhaps you’re looking to get hired at an upscale restaurant as a Sous Chef, or perhaps even as an Executive Chef, and you keep getting turned down. This forces you to have to keep your position at a tiny restaurant a few blocks from your home. You may feel like you earned the right to have a bigger position, which causes you to resist the upscale restaurant owner’s decision not to hire you.
You’re now annoyed and frustrated.
Consider any recently received rejection that you’ve experienced in your own field.
What if you accepted the outcome of that decision? What if you took the time to process your disappointed feelings and accepted those feelings as well? In other words, be okay with whatever you’re experiencing at the moment without trying to fight it by making it to be something it’s not.
Don’t try to be positive when you are in a grumpy mood. Allow yourself to be grumpy. Process that and then move on when you’re ready.
When you receive a rejection or something that you don’t want in your career, accept whatever it is that you cannot change about the situation. Process your feelings about it.
Please don’t confuse acceptance with complacency or mediocrity.
Accepting something for what it is helps you to not waste energy into changing something that can’t change. In other words, getting angry, frustrated, or annoyed because you’re attempting to change something, and it’s not changing with all of the effort that you’re putting forth, is energy that could be used into helping you to move forward.
For instance, imagine if I had a potato that I really wanted to be a strawberry. Getting frustrated, angry, and annoyed because my potato won’t magically transform into the strawberry that I desire it to be is a waste of energy. I have to accept the potato for what it is, and figure out a more effective way to get the strawberry that I really want.
Accepting doesn’t mean you sit and wait for something to come your way. Evaluate, strategize, and execute how you will reach the goals that you’re wanting to achieve. However, when obstacles arise, figure out whether you need a solution to the obstacle in order to move forward or to accept the roadblock, and to simply create a new possibility in order to reach your goals.
Today’s LESSON is that your career, just like your life, is your choice. Choose wisely.
FUN ASSIGNMENT: The very next time you are faced with an obstacle in your career: (1) evaluate the results and your feelings about those results and accept both, (2) figure out what can be changed and what cannot be, (3) process your feelings for those things that cannot be, (4) create solutions and execute a plan of action to move forward in the open direction.
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