Keeping your commitments. Is it easy? No, it’s not.
It can be especially hard as an actor to keep your word to yourself and others since we can be stretched so thin with resources at times, and are always being pulled in so many different directions all at once. However, your ability to honor your commitments to yourself, and others, is a direct reflection of who you are as a person. It will have a significant impact on whether someone wants you on their next project or not, and that can ultimately define your acting career.
Trust is the seed for growing relationships, and healthy relationships is the core of our business. When you are known as someone who will honor his/her word and who can be trusted, you begin to gain that reputation, and you start to see that reputation grow and you understand its value. You begin to honor your word to yourself even more so. Your confidence will also grow and others will want to be associated with you.
As you grow with others because you can be trusted, they begin to bring you on their opportunities as they become bigger and better. Success really comes from keeping your promises to yourself and others. Goals, projects, and relationships that succeed are a direct result because of trust and kept promises.
The strength of your commitment is completely dependent on your having a conscious discipline to honor yourself. Honoring your commitment to yourself is everything, and once you begin to break your word to others, you will break your word to yourself.
The extent to which you honor your commitments to yourself and others is the extent to which you create your success. It’s simple: You either keep your commitments to yourself and others or you don’t. When you break your word, you have sabotaged your success.
It’s easy to break your word, but after the first time you do it, it becomes easier and easier to do it. And slowly an erosion of your self-confidence happens. Undetected like a virus, it grows and grows with each broken promise until eventually it turns into fear. Your ability to honor your word impacts your credibility, trust, worthiness, and most importantly, your peace of mind.
A lack of commitment is the pin that pops the balloon of integrity and trust.
A Few Suggestions:
- Honor every commitment you make to yourself. If you told yourself you were going to make that phone call to an agent, do it. Make the call. Your confidence will grow on the next call and so will your self esteem.
- Don’t judge if your succeeding in keeping the promise you made to yourself or others, simply act and do something towards it. Always develop the habit of the follow-through.
- Honor every promise you make to others, no matter how painful it can be at times. As others see you as someone who will keep his/her word, they will gravitate to you and your reputation will grow as someone with integrity.
- Guard your reputation with you life! It is a small town. You only have one and once you tarnish it, it is extremely hard to recover it. Remember, perception is reality.
“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” —Abraham Lincoln
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