I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what it means to achieve success as a Voiceover Artist, or in fact in any performance career. The impetus for this was how mixed I felt when I won an award for Audiobook Narration recently, combined with the reading I've been doing for a forthcoming NLP Practitioner course I'm completing soon. NLP means 'Neuro -Linguistic Programming' and the practice of it allows people to make fundamental changes to how they catalogue their responses and thoughts about the world in their unconscious mind. The idea is that if you can find what triggers feelings of limitation such as disappointment, you can set about changing your language to counteract or even eradicate those feelings of not quite matching up to your ideals.On discovering I was an Award Winner, I was delighted. I could see that my hard work and dedication to my career had paid-off in this badge of recognition. However, quickly I was consumed by doubt - had they really listened to me? Had they got the right person? What if others listened and thought I was terrible? These insecurities and doubts triggered off feelings of 'Well I might have won this, but I'm nowhere near as good as.....(insert other Voice Actor)...., and I haven't won a (...insert other Award)...yet, I'm not even nominated.' I pretty much imploded with self-talk, and my head was not a positive place to be!
What it caused me to do was stop and think, reassess where I am, and what I now want my life to be about, not just in my career, but my personal life also. It is no bad thing, to hold a mirror up and take stock. It forced me to look at the journey I have had to get where I am today. It forced me to recognise that my model of 'success' had changed so many times since I first became aware, almost 15 years ago, that I could make money with my voice. Back then, my dream was to create a good demo, to get an agent just to listen, and to land one single, little job. It is good to remember what it was like before I got started. The 'Anna' of 2000 would be astonished to see how far I have come, and yet (until now) the Anna of 2015 had always looked for more and thought it wasn't enough!
As a freelancer, ofcourse it is important to strive for more business, new clients, other networks to join and contacts to make. However, I 've had a wake up call that tells me it's ok to slow down once in a while, and view the journey, and decide 'Where next?'. It's also made me see that the giant leaps I have made in my career have been when I have had regular contact with an inspiring coach or mentor. And it makes me see that what I want as part of the future I am building, is to use my own successes to inspire others starting out in the Voice world to build their own model of success. It is why I have set up my coaching website www.VoiceoverCoachUK.com, and why I am excited about helping each of my clients achieve their own goals and dreams in this industry.If you are interested in learning more about my Voiceover Coaching, please visit www.VoiceoverCoachUK.com.
