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VOICE OVER CAREER How To KILL Your Fear Of Rejection And Failure: 8 PROVEN Methods By Paul Schmidt Voice Actor & Coach "Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear." That's a quote from George Addair. And it's so true for voice actors. I talked to almost 70 voice actors face-to-face. And by far the biggest fear we have is the fear of failure. That one root fear permeates everything we do.
And the list goes on and on and on. So today, we're going to give you eight proven methods to kill your fear of failure and rejection. Number 1: DESENSITIZE One of the best ways to kill your fear of failure is to desensitize yourself to it. In other words, seek it out.
There's a fantastic book I recommend called Go for No. At its core, it's a sales book, but it's really a book about desensitizing yourself to failure and rejection. Here's an excerpt from Go For No:
That's almost a 10X increase. Look, if you're taking an hour to audition, somebody else is knocking out 6 to 12 auditions in that same hour and, many times over, increasing their chance of booking a gig. Get your audition process down to a science where you can do an audition in minutes, not an hour. The more auditions you do, the more people you reach out to, the more conversations you start in the better chance you have to book work. You're not going for batting average. You're going for hits. And the more plate appearances you can create for yourself, the more hits you will get. Again, everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear. Number 2: REFRAME REJECTION My dear friend and phenomenal voice actor from Toronto, Canada, Emma O'Neill, has a great way of reframing rejection. She says that when you don't put a gig, it's not that you're being rejected. It's simply lack of selection. Just because you didn't book a specific job doesn't mean you didn't submit a great audition, maybe even the best audition. It just means they chose somebody else. Your job is not to book the gig. Let me say that again. Your job is not to book the gig. Why? Because you have zero control over that. Your job is to turn in a fantastic audition. That's what you have control over. Your job is to make the casting director or producer go, "You know what? They weren't the best person for this particular job, but they clearly know what they're doing. They're very good and I want to work with them in the future." My current coach is a prominent casting director and in one recent coaching session, we went over an audition that I did for her agency. Turns out she loved it and I got shortlisted. Did I book the gig? No. Can I control that? Also, no. Did she take notice? Yes. I could control that by doing a great audition. And I did. There were A-list Hollywood celebrities on that casting call, and they didn't book it either. Were they rejected? No. They just like me, simply weren't selected. Number 3: TRUST YOUR TRAINING If you lack confidence in your audition, it's often because you're not prepared and you know it. Preparation breeds confidence - and a lack of confidence in your training breeds a lack of confidence in your reads, which in turn makes your book even less. And it's a downward spiral from there. Conversely, when you're confident in your training and confident in your process and your reads, that breeds more booking. This is also true, by the way, on the marketing side. If you've been trained to market your VO business and you have confidence in your process, that leads through to your messaging, how you deal with clients, how you set expectations with them and set rates, and that breeds more direct opportunities. If you're well-trained, trust your training. And if you're not well-trained, get good training. Number 4: GET ANGRY - FEAR AS FUEL Ever audition for that perfect gig? That big one, the one you really want, and maybe you even get shortlisted and maybe even you get put on hold... and then you don't book it. Yeah, that stinks. It's like going to the championship game and losing. It hurts even more than not even getting to the championship game, which is stupid and silly and I don't know why, but that's the way it is. The truth is, every failure, every rejection is another opportunity to collect people that you can later tell, "I told you so." The great Michael Jordan was famous for this. He was also famous for getting cut from his high school basketball team. And he went on to become the greatest NBA player of all time. Jordan took every slight, every snub, every tiny little sign of disrespect and used it as fuel. Collect haters, stick them in your pocket, then show them what you're made of. Number 5: DON'T LET FAILURE DEFINE YOU Look, we all have failures and rejection, some bigger than others. The great quarterback Russell Wilson once threw an interception that lost the Super Bowl, but he resolved right then and there on the field to not let that failure define him. And he didn't. Part of not letting failure define you is understanding and recognizing that you're human and you're never going to stop making mistakes. You're never going to stop failing. Somebody will always reject or not select your work. Your mindset determines what defines you. Will it be your effort? Will it be your relentlessness? Will it be your consistency? Or will you let failure define you? Number 6: GET IN THE GYM Now, wait, just hold on a minute here, Paulie. We're talking about voice acting. Why are you telling me to get in the gym? Alright, stick with me on this. Giving yourself a physical challenge is, in reality, giving yourself a mental and emotional challenge. Your brain experiences mental and emotional pain much the same way it experiences physical pain. So giving yourself a physical challenge and being able to train yourself to push through physical discomfort also trains your brain to push through mental and emotional discomfort.
That also trained your mind to adapt to stressful situations. It builds resiliency and grit and it makes you mentally tougher. Some of the best lessons I've learned in business and in voiceover have come from the gym. Lessons like Trust your training. Don't let failure define you. Fear as fuel, and so on. All of those came from training in the gym, and they're all applicable to voiceover, to business, and to the rest of your life. Number 7: BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY The fact is, we all have failure and lack of selection. It's part of voice acting, part of business, part of life. Hell, it's even part of love. Building your community of fellow voice actors around you will help you understand that you are not alone. Join the Facebook groups, join an accountability group or get an accountability partner. Find a local workout group. Go to the conferences. Develop friendships with other voice actors. Support them. Build them up. And I promise you they will do the same for you many, many times over. We're all stuck in our tiny, little padded rooms talking to ourselves, and it's the easiest thing in the world to get squirrely and up in your head, especially if you're having a slump. Having a community of voice actors to talk to during those times will remind you that all slumps come to an end as long as you keep putting in the work. Number 8: STOP COMPARING This is a big one. Stop comparing yourself to others. There's always going to be somebody better with better equipment who has better training and a more on-trend sound. Somebody with better access. Somebody with a better agent. Somebody with better followers, and so on and so on and so on. Stop comparing yourself to other people. The only person you need to compare yourself to is yourself. Your job is to get 1% better every day. You know, if you do that mathematically at the end of one year, you'll be 37 times better than you were when you started out. The only thing you can control is your mindset and your actions. You can't control how good other people are, how much competition there is in the marketplace. How many people answer a casting call? You can't control how hard and smart anybody else works except yourself. You can't control anybody else's training and dedication but your own. Control what and who you can control, and fuck the rest. -------------------- ABOUT PAUL  Paul Schmidt is a successful voice actor, community builder, and voiceover business coach. He's also the creator of the VO Freedom Master Plan (see link below), a voiceover marketing program designed to take voice actors from part-time income, relying on the pay-to-plays, booking inconsistently, to having a plan and system to grow relationships at-scale that lead to consistent business, booking, and income. Paul has been a voice actor for over 20 years and full-time for the last several. He lives in beautiful Richmond, VA with his son, Robbie. Email: paul@paulschmidtpro.com VO Freedom Master Plan: https://paulschmidtpro.com/vo-freedom-master-plan |
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Thanks for sharing this with your readers. I'm super grateful.
If anyone would like to learn more, go to https://paulschmidtpro.com.
Many thanks,
Paul