Good habits can be hard to break!

Well I am back and local to my friends and family and it’s a wonderful feeling. Sometimes being so far away can mean feeling a little lost, a little disconnected, and a little away from what’s happening back where you came from. You know the place where your family and friends, who helped shape you into the person you are today, reside.

Happy New Year from Sydney

And with holidays comes reflection. Questions for me include what has this year been about?; what did I get done? Mastin Kipp (in The Daily Love blog) mentioned goals and how many people fail to achieve these after they set them in a new year. I know I have discussed the same previously and I wonder if you’ve set them before, and how many times you may have forgotten to go back and get reaquainted with those original goals.

The funny thing is, it’s easy to set them, to dream big, to foresee our starry futures, and to scribble down all the things our heart aches to achieve. But the big bit, the wow bit, the actual goal doing bit, only happens with persistence, patience and passion all conspiring with you to create the big P – performance.

And there’s another piece to the goal train. Remember when you were learning to drive a car for the first time? If you didn’t really concentrate you’d forget to change gears, or you’d run a red light, or you’d stall the car. Then one day you suddenly got from A to Z and parked and realised you’d hardly thought about the actual driving at all. You had successfully shifted into an unconscious competence in your ability to drive.

I like to think that some actions that contribute to your goals can be like this. Every day you need to consciously think “what am I doing on this goal“. There are disciplines within your goals that, once learned, can happen almost unconsciously and therefore allow you to get on with the other BIG hitter stuff.

It’s worth the 66 days of discipline that it takes to make something habit forming*. Once you’ve created a good new habit, you’ll be setting yourself up to be one step closer to achieving your next goal.  A few examples include:

• Commit to looking up new audition opportunities at least 3 times a week. After a while you’ll do it automatically when you get up in the morning and before you start surfing FB and twitter. And remember, while forming this habit you want to look for work that suits you, rather than sporadically applying for anything you see. 
• Consistently practise your accents. If you are learning something new then you’ll need to dedicate more time to that new accent, more often. Eventually, with practice, you’ll be able to move easily into the accent for your upcoming auditions. And your accents will be that much better.
• Find new contacts every single week. Tap into your industry contacts and utilise IMDB Pro to find other sites to find people who are creating projects that you would be highly suitable for. 

* Taken from a UCL study from 2009