“No Wrong Choices”
If you've ever taken an acting class, then you've probably heard the phrase: “there are no wrong choices, only stronger ones.”
For those of you who didn't experience drama school, you might be asking, “what does making choices mean in terms of acting?” Well, making a strong choice really means having an opinion. Not being bland.
Making strong choices in acting means committing fully to specific, intentional decisions about your character that give your performance clarity, depth, and authenticity.
Making a vague generic choice (or not making a choice at all) leads to vague generic acting.
Everyone involved in a production, whether it's for stage or film, needs to make choices that are supported by the text or that add to it. This doesn't just go for actors. Examples of this could be casting, costuming, set, sound design, music, etcetera. The combination of choices is what makes something amazing (like Severance, with its highly specific artistic choices) versus something completely unmemorable like…um…I don’t remember. Sorry.
Strong choices alone don't always lead to great art. (The Room, anyone?) But at least strong choices will keep you from being forgettable.
Strong choices keep you (and your life) from being forgettable.
In the same way, making strong choices is very important to creating a memorable career and life. Similarly, there aren't necessarily wrong choices. Just ones that will move your career forward faster or slower.
In my personal opinion, it's better to make choices quickly (in other words: FAIL FAST) and be in motion and learn from choices that aren't as good rather than deliberating for months or years over every single move.
When I started my VO journey, I was told in many Facebook forums that I was doing things "wrong."
I got my demo without having had any formal voiceover classes or coaching. And yet, nine years later, I’m still working in the industry.
What if everyone telling you 'You're doing it wrong' is actually wrong?
Imagine if I'd listened to those people who kept yelling “STOP! You’re doing it wrong!”
I wouldn't have booked my first audition. 10xed my demo investment. Or leveraged that job to get my first agent.
At that point, I'd already put off getting started for more than a decade. If I had listened to those folks, I might have wasted more time waiting for classes to be offered locally, waiting to be able to afford coaching with the right people. While the $400 I spent on my demo wasn't nothing, it was a calculated risk—a strong choice driven by knowing myself and a sound engineer who said, "You're ready. Stop waiting."
Looking back, I think a stronger choice would have been to do exactly what I did AND to immediately start doing a lot more research. Find out who’s who in the industry. Listen to some podcasts. Figure out who to coach with. And THEN get coaching.
While the naysayers were right about getting coaching, I believe wholeheartedly that they were wrong about it being an “either/or” situation. My path may not work for everyone, but it worked for me.
There’s value in failing fast.
Practice taking more frequent calculated risks that don’t cost you a lot of money or time.
Every action risks failure, but failure teaches more than hypothetical thinking ever could. Staying in thinking mode is comfortable, which is precisely why it doesn't drive progress.
When we take action and face discomfort, we're motivated to keep moving until we find stability again. This productive discomfort accelerates growth in ways that safe planning never could. Develop a bias toward action that puts you in challenging situations, and your development will be dramatically faster as a result.
The path to mastery isn't paved with comfortable decisions—it's built on moments of vulnerability where you choose action over certainty.
Even if my choice to jump in and get a demo hadn't paid off like it did, it would have been worth it. Because it would have given me useful information.
"I have a demo. Now what?" Or "I have a demo and I've shopped it around and no one's biting. Maybe I need to keep trying. Or maybe I'm just not good enough yet, and I need coaching."
I've always been a fan of the big leap. Jumping in with juuuuust enough info and seeing what happens. Living as though the universe were saying, "I dare you."
Is your career moving at a snail's pace?
Does your life feel bland and boring?
It's time to get outside your comfort zone and make some stronger choices.
I dare you.
Because I can tell you from experience that playing it safe and wasting months, years, or decades of your life is for suckers.
What strong choice will you make this week?
