The Acting Business Boot Camp Podcast

Weekly Accountability Group

Creating effective change as an actor. 

I'm going to be talking about real coaching principles.

Change can be scary and many people see a benefit in it. In not making change because the payoff is that they don't have to take action and they don't need to face the unknown.

And that is a concept that I'm really going to be drilling into in this podcast, which is what is the payoff? 

What I want you to do is I want you to write down 

What am I not doing in my acting career right now? 

So what should you be doing that you're not doing? 

Now usually I don't want you to should, but for this exercise I want you to because I want you to then write it out for me. 

And then ask yourself, what is the payoff? 

What's the payoff for you not doing it? 

And a lot of the time, the payoff is then I don't have to do anything.

Meaning you don't have to take responsibility. 

And also, you don't have to face the unknown. You don't...

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Last week I talked about accountability and discipline.

Today, I want to talk about hard days.

I did not have a good night last night.

I didn't sleep well. I'm going through some physical discomfort. Nothing serious, but just physical discomfort. And I just got down. And one of the things I've learned is hungry, angry, lonely, tired, halt. 

If you get too hungry or you get too angry or you get too lonely or you get too tired , and I also will add hormonal in there, I find that is when my negativity, my catabolic energy comes up.

And the thing is I woke up and I was like, “okay, I didn't have a great night's sleep. I'm not feeling that great about me at the moment. And I'm just having one of those days. I'm having a hard day.” 

So every morning I make a cup of tea. And I go out to our garden, and I sit, and I talk with the Universe, and this morning, I was resenting the Universe.

I was like, “I'm not...

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I'm going to talk about something that has truly changed my life. There are two things. One is discipline and the second one is accountability.

So the first one is accountability. When I started this work nearly 30 years ago, I can't even believe it's been that long.

I really cannot believe it. It sometimes feels like it's so much longer than that, and sometimes it feels like it's, I don't know, like yesterday. 

But when I started this work out, I had to be accountable. And I was accountable to my coach and I was accountable to a group. 

And this group I was accountable to them every week. So I worked with my coach privately, and I worked with my coach in a group setting. 

And it taught me a lot. And basically what it taught me was, is the number one person who I needed to be accountable to was me.

That if I said that I wanted to be a working actor, that I had to put my money where my mouth was, where I had to put my energy where my mouth...

Planning Out Your Day the Night Before

Today I'm going to be talking about boundaries.

The Language of Letting Go

One of the things that comes up for actors quite often is setting boundaries with the representation, with a director of a play or a student film or a feature film, or even, what happened to me on a commercial set, where I was almost physically abused.

So boundaries are something that is very valuable for us to know in our work as an actor, but also, of course, in our personal life. 

“Sometimes life and people seem to push and push.Because we sometimes may have been so used to pain, we may tell ourselves that it doesn't hurt. Because we are so used to people controlling and manipulating us, we may tell ourselves that there is something wrong with us.”

So the first part of that is something that I used to do is go “it's just me, so it doesn't matter.”

The second part is, we may tell ourselves that there is something wrong with us. 

Now,...

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Today, I'm going to be talking about letting go of the fantasy and moving into reality. 

And this was something that I worked on with a client. 

It's not going to be a long podcast, but we were going over this reading and it just, it just hit me on a different level. And I really wanted to share it with you again.

This comes out of The Language of Letting Go

And this reading is about taking care of ourselves, but I think you're going to see how I'm talking about it in terms of letting go of the fantasy and really taking the reins of reality.

“We do not have to wait for others to come to our aid. We are not victims. We are not helpless.” 

And one of the things I talk about in my coaching is these two energy levels. There's catabolic energy, which is negative, destructive energy. And then there's anabolic energy, which is healing, growing, constructive energy, with a very strong energy of success. 

Your chances and your potential for...

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So today I'm gonna talk about that green emotion called jealousy. Oh, we've all had it, we've all experienced it, and we've all been the subject of it. But with actors, it can get so tricky. 

I wanted to do a podcast, really putting this emotion into perspective.

“A flower never thinks of competing with the flower next to it, it just blooms.” 

Buddha said, “Do not envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.”

“Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.”

I think my own personal journey with jealousy.

If I am having jealousy over someone else, it's because I am not keeping the focus on myself.

Keep the focus on yourself. Keep the focus on yourself. 

Whatever I put before taking care of myself, I am going to lose. 

Also, whatever you put before taking care of yourself, you are going to lose. 

Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. 

And I...

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I'm going to be talking about a real coaching tool called getting a buy in. 

And that buy in is about really getting a buy in from yourself, something that you need in order to commit to yourself and motivate yourself. 

So I'm going to be giving you some strategies to achieve buy-in from yourself and then tell you why I'm teaching this very valuable lesson.

The first thing when you're trying to get a buy-in from yourself, you're trying to get yourself motivated, you're trying to get yourself committed to this thing of becoming an actor, is you want to clarify your visions and your goal. 

What that means is that you want to define clear objectives.

Meaning, and if you've ever done any method acting, you want to find out, what do you want? 

What does that character want, but what do you want? 

You want to ensure that you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, and this is the biggie, and why it...

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About Terry Knickerbocker:

Terry is a graduate of The Experimental Theatre Wing in the Drama Dept. at New York University. After graduating from NYU, Terry trained as an actor and a teacher with William Esper. 

He taught at The William Esper Studio for 25 years, and continues as part of the core faculty at the Experimental Theatre Wing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has also taught directing at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and Yale University. 

Other essential teacher/mentors include Maggie Flanigan, Rina Yerushalmi, Steve Wangh, Terry Hayden, Nikos Psacharopoulos, Jackie Brookes, Mary Overlie, Ryszard Cieslak, Jerzy Grotowski, Pierre Lefèvre, Moshe Feldenkrais, Dr. Louis Ormont, and Dr. Harry Fogarty.

He has coached actors on over 300 films, television and theater projects, both on and...

This week what I wanted to do was a breathing exercise for actors because I think in this incredible turbulent world that we live in, and yes, it's always turbulent, but it seems particularly turbulent right now.

It is so important that for us as artists, that before we are about to perform, that we get to the center of us. 

As a little girl, I called it, go back to the source. 

And I believe that is connecting to that part of us that is connected to the Universe. 

So what I'm going to do I'm not going to breathe with you, but what I am going to do is guide you through breathing exercises.

So what I ask of you is to breathe in through your nose

and let out a big sigh, ah, and again, breathe in through your nose, and let out a big sigh,and that can be as loud as you want it to be. 

Pause. Stay still. Breathe in through your nose.

And again, sigh out. You can even scream if you want. And pause.

And just allow your breath to be where it wants to be. Whether that's...

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Today, I'm going to do something to follow up from what I talked about last week, which was prayer and meditation for the actor. 

I got a lot of emails about how many people enjoyed that podcast. So what I wanted to do today was focusing on centering, and centering for the actor. So this is going to be a little different.

I don't recommend that you do this while you are driving a car or maybe even walking down the street. 

This would be a podcast episode that you want to be at home and in a comfortable place because I'm going to be going through different areas of your body and talk about centering them. 

So if you will, I have taken off my shoes. I am standing here in front of my mic and you can do this, I guess actually if you wanted to do this on a subway, you could or just somewhere you don't have to pay attention for a bit. 

Put yourself in a comfortable spot. That could be lying on the ground with your legs in the semi supine...