Acting schools want to keep you in a position where they can still protect you, but in this industry no one's going to protect you except yourself. You've got to take care of yourself and you've got to get a great team around you.
You need to have a lot of close family around you, a lot of friends to keep you honest. Take your time, take a year and just slow everything down a little bit. Get away from the success part, stay with yourself. Go off on a beach somewhere or do something to keep yourself aligned right.
Believe in yourself, take on your challenges, dig deep within yourself to conquer fears. Never let anyone bring you down. You got to keep going.
If you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way.
And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.
Sometimes comparing can be a good thing: it can inspire us to work harder and reach farther. But for the most part, excessive measuring yourself up against others - especially when it becomes a way to put yourself down - is a colossal waste of time. It's a dead end. It won't make you do anything except feel horrible.
Don't listen to what anybody says except the people who encourage you. If it's what you want to do and it's within yourself, then keep going and try to do it for the rest of your life.
You will never have the answers, but you have to keep pushing yourself and keep reading and keep working on yourself.
No one can keep you down but yourself
Do not let yourself get in your own way. Don't judge yourself and knock yourself down. There is enough of that out there already. Remember: you are an artist, and you bring something special to this craft. Take in notes and criticism, but don't let them define you. Don't try to become a watered down version of yourself.
Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.
I want to inspire people and show people no matter what happens, no matter how much you get knocked down, you can pick yourself up. Just keep pushing forward, keep being positive.
So for those of you falling in love,
Keep it kind, keep it good, keep it right.
Throw yourself in the midst of danger,
But keep one eye open at night.
Except to heaven, she is nought; Except for angels, lone; Except to some wide-wandering bee, A flower superfluous blown; Except for winds, provincial; Except by butterflies, Unnoticed as a single dew That on the acre lies
Keep your sunny side up, keep yourself beautiful, and indulge yourself!
Throughout life, people will try to shake your faith in yourself. When this happens, remind yourself that the only way they can succeed is if you allow it. When you walk down the street of life, always hold your head high and keep walking. Don't ever let anyone shake your faith in yourself, because that's really all that you have.