How do I overcome anxiety & nervousness when auditioning?

I recently got a question about anxiety & nervous when auditioning from a Hack Hollywood email subscriber. Read below for my answer. If you struggle at all with nerves in the audition room, this will help.

Question:

Hi David,

I was wondering if you have any tips for over coming anxiety & nervousness when auditioning?  Is there a way I can turn that into positive energy, to use it FOR me, instead of AGAINST me.  I am my own worst enemy when it comes to this process.  The last audition I went to had me cold reading from a script which was absolutely shocking. It was embarrassing and I kept apologizing when I made a mistake (which was frequent).  If you have any advice, please point me in the right direction. Please, as my confidence is a bit shattered at the moment.”

Answer:

Thank you so much for getting in touch and sharing your acting concerns with me. I am very familiar with being nervous for auditions. It was a big problem starting out and while I have overcome most of it, nerves still do play a factor in my life.

I think you understand that nerves are just a result of you not thinking you’re entitled to be doing what you’re doing and focusing on results, instead of focusing on what you’re actually doing. If you just focus on being in the scene and in the moment, then you won’t be nervous. You are nervous because you think you are going to fail or you are worried about failing…

There is no such thing as failure if you just do your best. Worrying about results is what is actually causing failure. So there are many techniques you can use to get rid of nerves. The main thing though is to understand what it is you are there to do. You are not there to book a job. You are not there to get congratulated or get any type of result. You are simply there to interpret some writing as an artist. If you think you are good enough to do that which you hopefully believe if you are in the room in the first place, then you just need to do that 2 your fullest abilities.
While it’s fairly simple to explain, it does take time and practice to convince yourself. Mainly it takes practice. Just like anything in life requires practice, changing your mindset requires practice so I suggest the first thing you do is to say to yourself right now that you are going to focus on what you are doing in everything in your life, and stop thinking about results.

I believe I was nervous because my parents always gave me a lot of trouble when I did poorly, and I took that to heart. Some people take it to heart more than others. I took it to heart so much that I was always worried about making a mistake because I would be punished for my mistakes whether it was being chastised or losing privileges or whatever. So as a somewhat fragile personality, that carried through to whatever I do now. Even though I reject it already, I still fear it.
I don’t know the actual cause of your nerves but it is essentially you fearing not getting the results that you are there to receive.

I don’t believe you need to trace the roots of your nerves but you simply need to acknowledge what it is you are doing that is causing you to be nervous. Now that you basically understand that nerves are a function of being focused on results and that you need to stop focusing on results and focusing on being in the moment, you need to practice living in the moment. You need to practice turning off your left brain and you need to learn to live more on the right side of your brain instead of the left side. The right side is where you lose track of time and you are in the zone. The left side is your analytical side. The left side is very important in day-to-day life for driving a car and shopping and avoiding conflict. The left side sees the big picture. The right side sees all the little details and when you focus on the details, you can become completely engrossed in what you are doing. In acting, that just means focusing on all of the things that are happening in the imaginary world you have created, not the real world because the real world is just watching what you are doing but if you are watching what you are doing then you are dead in the water. You need to really work on your imagination and staying in your imagination while you are performing because if you are thinking about results, you are not performing. So you really just need to do what it is you are there to do and stop doing something else which is focusing on results and what people think of you and getting in trouble and all of that self defeating behavior.

All of that being said, I also think almost all actors approaches to acting are flawed. Almost all actors are completely focused on results. They are not focused on the journey and the process. If you learn to love the journey and the process, you will get so deep into that journey and that process that you will become such a phenomenal actor you will start booking jobs without trying. That’s the whole point of all this. You have to stop trying to book job and start trying to be a really good actor and the only way to be a really good actor is to take an extremely long term approach and to understand where you are in that journey and not think you are somewhere else. Take stock in where you actually are compared to a true professional actor, and if you say okay I’m 20 percent along my journey towards being a professional actor, then you will do the things that are appropriate to someone who is at that stage of their journey.

Now you’re probably thinking how do I know where I am in the journey. That’s a great question and that’s exactly why I created Hack Hollywood in the first place.

My journey was completely random and full of poor results and nerves and failures just like yours was for about 5 years. Then I started doing things a little differently and things completely turned around. In the space of a few months I had booked 5 network television roles and 2 of them became recurring almost instantly and the very first year I became a professional actor I booked 13 television appearances.

Then I realized that other actors could use the information that I have to achieve what I achieved so I decided to create a course that teaches people all the right things to do and eliminates all of the wrong things to do. It took me about 18 months to come up with the content for this course and now it’s available online at Hack Hollywood dot com.
On top of the course we also have a community where the members talk to one another and are accountable to themselves and one another by stating their goals, and then every week coming back and writing down the progress they are making and the activities they are doing so that way they can always look back and see where they started and see all the amazing progress they are making which is very encouraging and they can also look at what other people are doing.  So if you are having a bad day, it’s almost guaranteed someone else is kicking some serious butt. So you are motivating others and others are motivating you and you are being accountable to yourself and you focused on what you are doing and not on the results. Then guess what happens? What happens is results start coming. In fact you can’t even stop them. If you do the right things then the right things happen.

Without really trying to get results, they will fall upon you. It’s really simple stuff. Its the same stuff that other professionals apply in their lives. Its the same stuff that doctors do that race car drivers do that accountants do that lawyers do that any professional does who has to follow a long-term process to get to where they want to go.
Just think about what it takes to become a doctor. Would any doctor think they can just decide to be a doctor and then show up at a hospital and start performing surgeries or diagnosing patients? Of course not! They understand they have to do very well in school, then go to medical school, then intern for years, before they ever get to see a real patient alone.

So why do actors think they can walk off of the street with minimal training and even less practice and start booking acting jobs? Would you want someone like that on the set of your television show or movie? What are the chances that this rookie actor is going to know what they are doing, and be able to do it. Chances are they are going to hold up your production because they have no idea what they are doing, don’t have any confidence, and don’t have any experience and even worse they don’t really have the long-term approach that a professional actor should have so that they can get hired over and over and over again because of their dedication and professionalism.

My suggestion beyond what I’ve told you is to join HackHollywood.com. At a very minimal cost, you will learn every single thing you need to do to become a professional actor with no tricks, and no expensive headshots for reels or casting director workshops to take. The entire thing is completely up to you. That may sound like a lot of responsibility but guess what? Its the best news you’ve ever heard. It means that it’s completely up to you how successful you become. No one else is standing in your way. No one else even knows you exist. You determine your own path. Once you know that and you understand it, then you can come down and do the work required to get to where you want to go. All you have to know is where you want to go. There are no limits so I suggest setting your expectations high and see what you can accomplish. There’s no telling what you can accomplish. You will never know until you really give it a good shot.

So stop focusing on short-term auditions and start focusing on a long-term approach to your acting career and I can almost guarantee that you will have one. I certainly can guarantee that you will get out of it what you put into it. And what you will get out of it has to start with extremely positive and practical inputs. Being nervous in the audition room is just a very small problem that is easily overcome and one of the easiest way to overcome it is to completely change your approach. Once you have changed your approach, you won’t have a reason to be nervous because you know you are doing the right things and you are focused on doing what you are doing instead of what somebody else is doing meaning deciding if you are right for the part or not. There’s no telling what reasons exist for getting a part and what reasons exist for not getting a part. These are things you don’t need to worry about.

All you need to worry about it being the best darned actor you can be and following a path based on a plan based on goals. If you listen to what we have to say at HACK Hollywood, your brain is going to change completely. And not only will this benefit your acting but it will benefit everything in your life because you will realize that we create our lives. It is not created for us and no one else is in charge of it. Even if you find yourself in a situation you don’t want to be in, how you deal with that situation is completely up to you and how you feel about it is completely up to you. It’s all about perception and positive action.

Ok, I hope this answer has soothed your nerves a little, pardon the pun but I know in my heart, and you can also look at the testimonials on our site, that we are the only people in the world taking actors from ‘start to stardom’. That’s a bit of a flippant phrase but really what it means is we can take you from wherever you are now to wherever you want to go. Becoming a star is simply result of becoming an excellent actor and being recognized for it. You don’t get to decide on the recognition part. You only decide on becoming an excellent actor and becoming known by the people who make the decisions about who gets to work as an actor.

Ok, I expect to see you joining immediately. We even offer a 60 day money back guarantee not because I think you should learn something and then leave but just to make you feel confident that you’re not throwing your money at yet another acting scam.

That’s pretty much all I have to say on the subject for now. If you have any other questions, let me know. Otherwise, get your butt on to our site and change your life right now. Why waste another second hesitating and thinking and analyzing. Turn yourself over to the process that every single professional actor in the world follows: whether they know it or not. I didn’t make this stuff up out of thin air. What we teach is what everybody who succeeds in acting does.
All the best to you and I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Hopefully you can tell that I am serious about this stuff and that I’m not just selling you a dream. You have the dream and you have the abilities. All I do is give you the tools to execute on that dream that you have. Dreams are nothing unless you put them into action with well thought out and planned activities and if you plan and execute your activities to the best of your ability with a positive attitude, the results will come. Its physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction so if you put in good stuff you will get good stuff out.

– David Patrick Green
(photo by zoetnet)