What Advice Can You Offer If I'm Too Scared To Pursue My Life Purpose?

[heisenburger]

The more I consider a life purpose of acting the more I am scared. My greatest passion as acting but after reading biographies of actors it seems like hell, I read one of Bryan Cranston who spent around a decade working minimum wage jobs with extreme physical labour under constant uncertainty of whether he would achieve his dream. Imagine doing that for ten years and than having it be wasted? What can I do to make this easier?

Edited May 5, 2017 by heisenburger

[Leo Gura]

Where is it written that aspiring actors must work minimum wage jobs, for ten years?

What nonsense!

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a millionaire before he got his first acting job.

So yeah... find better role-models. Stop thinking inside the box. Be much more creative.

[sheenp24]

@heisenburger I'm an aspiring actor as well and I have definitely been in your shoes before and still somewhat is. What you have to understand is, there are many paths that can be taken a destination. Remember that there is always a solution, you just have to find it. It is true that some actors lived in there cars and worked server jobs to get where they are now. There are also actors that practically got famous over night. My advice to you is, work on your craft and continue to improve your art. Network! find people that have the same passion as you do and work together. Social media can be a big part of networking and marketing yourself. Create your own YouTube channel; even if you don't have much experience, do monologues and post them requesting feed back. Make some business cards and start out with some background work and/or make a Facebook page dedicated only for industry professional or fellow actors and learn from them. Like @Leo Gura said, you have to be creative! Good luck!

[Evilwave Heddy]

Just what I needed.

[aurum]

If you spent 10 years doing what you loved, was it a waste?

[jdeugarte]

You are scared for a reason. You should find out the reason and see if it is worth being scared or not

[AndreiC]

Here's an exercise for thinking outside the box.

Acting is skill and it can be used in a number of ways, if you just go the typical road and hope to act in big cinema or theater from the get go maybe it's not the best solution.

Think about other interests you may have, and try to apply a little acting to them.

 

For example:

I'm an actor

There's all sorts of emerging streaming things, like that IRL twitch section someone mentioned some time ago

I also have an interest in... whatever

 

Use the combination of the 3 to your advantage, you may get some practice and some money out of that.

 

Maybe you can work on your humor to the point you can do some stand-up.

 

Maybe you're a gamer you can even use that to your advantage with a skill in acting. 

 

Think it through with a little freedom, and start laying down some steps to get started. Also don't think you can't move to acting after studying something else.

Rowan Atkinson - electrical engineer

Dolph Lundgren - chemical engineer

Also many others. 

 

[Michael569]

Are you in it for the money? Does acting mean fame, success and millions of dollars for you? If so, you're gonna be miserable for the rest of your life. Living your passion leads to a content and fulfilled life even when income is not good enough. Join night or weekend acting classes, any country has those nowadays. Once you get surrounded by likeminded people, you start to see the opportunities , their thinking becomes your thinking, opportunities will come your way, you attract what you think. Think negative and guess what will that bring you? 

If you don't have any marketable skills, maybe work on that first like learning MS Office, and some office skills just so that you can get a stable income and move forward, The Maslow Pyramid needs to be build from bottom up, missing brick will cause a collapse. 

Brian is not the only actor in the world. Look at Dwayne Johnson. He was earning millions in WWE before even considering acting career, Arnold as Leo suggested, a poor boy from Austrian farm village became 7 time Mr Olympia before considering acting job just listening to his heart and doing what he loved.  Don't become someone else, listen to the voice within. Only you can hear it and it is specific for you only. Listen to it closely and it will guide you. And work on finding your top values, they are your compass, that which is not aligned with them needs to go. 

And if it took 15 years to make a breakthrough, is that a lot in scale of things? Let's say it would take you 15 years of practice to get your first acting job, would that be worth it?