Have I improved? Am I doing things better?
Am I treating myself with the same kindness I try to offer others?
Those are three questions I asked myself in a post 11 months ago...
To rewind, it was after the One Voice Awards, which are the voiceover industries equivalent to the Baftas, or the Oscars, or summat like that...
On awards night, I'd come home empty handed despite my 10th and 11th nominations in the last four years.
Last week, nominations were announced for this year's awards.
I managed to get my twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth:
🏆 Best Video Game Performance
🏆 Best Documentary Performance
🏆 Best Male Voiceover of the Year
Now there's a lot about that which is gratifying.
Those first two nominations were in genres I'm hugely passionate about and had specifically targeted to work on in the last twelve months. Disciplined monologue practice has aided my gaming work a lot, and working with a great coach (Thom Pinto) and demo producer (J. Michael Collins) had led to my first documentary gigs.
But despite all of this, I almost didn't submit my work for consideration.
Why?
Because of imposter syndrome.
And also because I knew that the drive that had helped me achieve all this was also going to put me in a no-win situation.
If I don't enter the awards, I'll have FOMO.
If I do enter and don't get nominated, I'll feel I've slid back.
Now that i am nominated, what happens if I lose for the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth time?
And even if I do win, I know part of me will be asking 'But can you do it AGAIN Chris?'
Now let's not even begin to dig into the privilege behind such a mindset. I'm making a great living after all.
But from conversations with a few other people who have gone through similar, i wanted to take this opportunity to be transparent.
My feed is currently dominated by voice actors (rightly) celebrating their achievements. But I also feel the ones who get anxious about the next step, or those that weren't nominated and who are now beating themselves up.
It's all bound up in that entrepreneurial mindset.
That striving to keep pushing, keep improving, to hold yourself responsible.
It's the biggest reason for my own success, but that doesn't mean it can't be a right b*tch at times.
So I return to those three questions I posed last year.
While I feel I've answered the first two, that third - about treating myself with kindness - still poses the toughest challenge.
How do you find ways to give yourself a break?
#entrepreneurlife #voiceover #onevoiceawards #mentalhealth