Dress the Part

This week you’ll begin to develop the habits you will need when you’re a successful working artist (or the ones you should maintain if you already are). You’ll act, dress, speak, and imagine yourself already having your dream career. In short, this week, you’ll “fake it ’til you make it.” What if you don’t have any red carpets to attend? What if you don’t have anything to do other than just take a dance class? How about dressing for that dance class as if you were going to an audition? First, if you’re not in your pajamas, you’ll be Instagram-photo-worthy (see chapter 15), and second, you’ll figure out if that outfit/look even works for an audition. (Anybody ever worn a shirt that looks cool but you can’t raise your arms?) If you’re a singer, you can spend this week treating yourself as if you’re singing a grueling eight-show week. Get good rest, hydrate, warm up your voice, go to the gym. The idea is that if you imagine you’re working in your ideal career, and you create habits that will support your longevity while you’re in that career, those habits will be easier to keep when you’ve finally made it to the top.

Perception is everything, both from the outside in and from the inside out. While humans may have active imaginations, they rarely use their imaginations in relation to other humans’ abilities. This is why television shows like The Voice are so popular. It’s a big surprise reveal moment for everyone to see the geeky-looking guy sing like Pavarotti, because we all judge books by their covers no matter how often we say we don’t. This judgment is not always bad, though, because our assumptions often save us time and make our lives easier. According to peak performance coach Max Weigand, “Our brains are designed to conserve energy, and the best way to do that is to run the same mental loops over and over again so you don’t have to spend precious energy on active thinking.”¹ That makes sense from a brain-efficiency standpoint, but it doesn’t help you out from the imagine-me-playing-Curly-in-Oklahoma!-even-though-I’m-wearing-a-tank-top-and-refuse-to-take-out-my-nose-ring standpoint.

Your brain is all about increasing its efficiency. If you’ve ever passed a restaurant that looked dirty from the outside, you’ve probably made the wise assumption that eating there might give you food poisoning. You move along to another, cleaner establishment. This is usually a quick decision but one that you perceive will keep you safe and upchuck-free. But what if that restaurant was run by a Michelin-star chef and simply needed a fresh paint job? Your seemingly wise choice has just turned into a missed opportunity. You get where I’m going here, right? You are the restaurant that might need a new coat of paint, and one of the easiest things you can do to boost your career is model your now self to be your future self. Dressing and acting the part are a quick and easy way to take a large leap forward in your career.

We all may judge the restaurant by its exterior, but what’s also interesting is that the proverbial restaurant has also been proven to judge itself by its exterior. You can pretend your way into believing something. Embarrassingly, our brains are quite easy to fool, even if we are completely aware that we’re trying to fool ourselves. Dress a little girl in a party dress, and she immediately begins spinning and curtsying as if she were a part of the royal household. Whether it’s true or not, if you tell yourself enough times that you are smart/dumb/entitled/worthy/unworthy/ugly/beautiful/tired/competent, you will begin to believe it. So why not tell yourself that you already are your future self even if you don’t currently have the job or recognition that you hope and plan to eventually have? You have nothing to lose.

The one caveat here is that you cannot sacrifice your humility in pursuit of your persona. Nobody likes a cocky or aloof artist and, if you remember from week 10, relationships are one of the most important aspects of creating a career with any longevity. If you act like a diva on one project, you’ll likely not be hired on the next. So while you are faking until you make it and modeling your actions and outward appearance after a successful artist, you should also be gracious about it. Incidentally, the most successful artists are those humans that are present, giving, kind, and collaborative. If you ever need an example of how to be confident, successful, and gracious, just look at Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and family.

DAY 1

Before you model your ideal self in your future career, let’s revisit who that future person is. Spend some time thinking about how you present yourself and how you interact with others in your artistic endeavors. Start by reminding yourself of your me words or phrases and list them below:

1. _____________________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________________

Next, you’ll spend some time brainstorming how your me will relate to your work in your field in the future. For example, if one of your me words is “sophisticated,” that should translate to how you choose your clothes for your recording session/audition/rehearsal/agent meeting. If one of your phrases is “knows what she wants,” then you’d better put on your confidence coat before you head out in the morning. Remember, there is no wrong answer in this brainstorm.

The ways you choose to relate your actions and appearance to your me words is your prerogative and part of what makes you a unique and worthy human. Set a timer for ten to fifteen minutes and get going on creating your future self.

Me word or phrase #1:

_____________________________________________________

How this will manifest itself in my actions and appearance:

_____________________________________________________

Me word or phrase #2:

_____________________________________________________

How this will manifest itself in my actions and appearance:

_____________________________________________________

Me word or phrase #3:

_____________________________________________________

How this will manifest itself in my actions and appearance:

_____________________________________________________

DAY 2

Now, it’s time to dress the part. Spend some time in your closet choosing outfits that say, “I am a successful actor/dancer/singer/performer.” If you don’t have a lot of clothing options, this does not give you permission to go directly to Saks or Bloomingdale’s for a shopping spree (unless you’ve got a lot of dough lying around). Start by choosing options out of what you have and then check apps like thredUP and Poshmark to supplement remaining items on the cheap. Or, if you have a lot of stylish friends, you might consider having a clothing swap (this is generally more a lady thing than a gentleman thing, but it’s very effective). Remember, while you’re choosing your successful artist “look,” that you will be going to different types of events. Rehearsals, meetings, and screenings all require different looks, and you should plan to represent yourself appropriately and fabulously at all of them.

You might think that this is a silly exercise and that you would rather be dancing/singing/acting/producing/creating than scouring your closet to dress for the career that you may not have yet. In truth, it is a little bit superficial . . . on the surface. However, the goal is to set yourself up to feel different and to become even more confident in your inevitably successful future. One of the most useful tools to help you feel more successful is to dress for it. People judge you and size you up in your first five to seven seconds of interaction. (It’s sad but true.) It’s also been proven that if you are dressed well, you’re more likely to be confident and detail-oriented.² Does this mean that you need to wear a three-piece suit to the grocery store? No. However, a sensible Lululemon athleisure outfit along with clean I’m-going-to-the-gym-after-this-grocery-trip grooming can go a long way.

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t know (or care) about clothing, that’s okay, too. Find a friend who does care and ask that friend to help you assemble your looks. Chances are, he or she will leap at the chance to play a version of Barbie doll dress-up party with a live human being. (Don’t forget to make sure that friend is on your networking sheet, and consider how you might add value to his or her projects in the future as a thank-you for styling you.)

For today’s task, take the time to choose five to seven looks for different occasions that make you feel stylish, successful, and confident, and then take photos of them so that you can easily and quickly re-create the fabulousness. If you need some inspiration, search for the “Cher’s Closet” clip from Clueless on YouTube. Save your photos to a folder in your phone and then add and subtract from them as you come up with new ideas for looks or retire your least favorites.

DAY 3

Now that you have an arsenal of outfits (bet you never thought that would be a task in this book), you’re going to add the drama (or lack thereof) to your day. Today you’ll be acting the part of your future self. First things first, write down your plans for today, including scheduled items, such as “3 p.m.—Voice Lesson,” and more casual, everyday things, like “Go to the grocery store.”

_____________________________________________________

Then, next to your plans, write how you plan to feel and act while doing each of your daily tasks. At your 3 p.m. voice lesson, you can choose to be confident in making mistakes because in your mind, you are already the vocal diva that you deserve to be. You can decide to be the selective, health-conscious actor during your trip to the grocery store and choose only organic and healthy food so as to stay svelte for your feature film shoot. You get the idea. Write your “part” below next to your daily tasks:

Daily task	How I will feel/act while doing it
__________________________	__________________________
__________________________	__________________________
__________________________	__________________________
__________________________	__________________________
__________________________	__________________________
__________________________	__________________________
__________________________	__________________________

Now, it’s time to get acting. If you want, you can set alarms in your phone for five or ten minutes before your scheduled tasks for the day, reminding you to act your new part. And don’t forget to don one of your success-worthy outfits from yesterday’s exercise to help you look the part that you plan to embody.

DAY 4

Whether you want it to be or not, your body is part of your instrument, and whatever body you’re currently in is the one you’re stuck with for the foreseeable future. You’ve probably heard this before, but since you currently only have one of these body things, you should probably take care of it. This is particularly true because, if you’re a dancer, actor, or singer, or performance artist, you have to use your body to make your art. Most of us don’t really grasp the difference between a body that is operating in an efficient manner and a body that is just plain operating to stay alive. The truth is, the choices you make with regard to nutrition, exercise, hydration, and sleep can make a career-changing impact on your life.

List three things you are going to do today for your health that will set yourself up for success. (And don’t forget to dress for success while you do it!)

1. _____________________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________________

DAY 5

The key to this chapter (and hopefully the rest of your life) is to set up good habits that will prepare you for a prosperous future. How do you make a habit be a habit? If you google “how to create a habit,” you can find a plethora of articles on how to change your current routines and trajectory. Charles Duhigg also has a popular book about it. The long and the short of it, though, is that you can’t start a new habit unless you decide what to do and when to do it. That seems like a given, but we all know somebody who has been “writing a book” for years but has never put pen to paper. Why? Probably because that person didn’t schedule any writing sessions. Today you’ll make plans for next week to dress and act your future part. Write two ways that you will dress the part and two ways that you will act the part and when you will do them.

Dressing the Part

1. _____________________________________________________

When I will do this: ________________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________________

When I will do this: ________________________________________________

Acting the Part

1. _____________________________________________________

When I will do this: ________________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________________

When I will do this: ________________________________________________

Ideally, you should make a plan to continue these practices for the rest of your life/career. Remember from last chapter that it takes sixty-six days to create a habit, so you could potentially start something new every three months and get it to stick. So, for instance, after dressing like a successful Broadway dancer for three months, it will hopefully become a habit for you to dress like a successful Broadway dancer; and after that becomes a habit, you will become more confident in your dance abilities in auditions; and before you know it, you’ll be kicking your face on the Great White Way. Worst-case scenario? You challenge yourself to be confident, purposeful, and stylin’ for a little while, and you don’t succeed in your career. Hopefully, it was fun while you were trying it.

LET ME TELL YOU A STORY. . . .

Here is a cautionary tale. One day many years ago, I received a callback for a recurring featured dancer role on a network television show. I was thrilled. My friend was choreographing the television show (yay, networking for a network!) and I was excited about the prospect of my first series regular role on television. The callback happened to be February 15—the morning after Valentine’s Day. On the evening of Valentine’s Day, I went out with my husband to the fancy dinner that we had already planned, had a seven-course dinner with wine pairings, and then received a text from a friend to join him at an exclusive party in Soho. We went. Sometime around 3 a.m., I remembered that I had a 10 a.m. callback and that it meant a lot to me. After trudging back to our apartment in Weehawken, New Jersey, I got about four hours of sleep before the morning of the callback, and I woke up feeling terrible and guilty. Needless to say, my audition was terrible. It was one of those all-day callbacks for dancers, and by around 2 p.m., my vision started to get blurry and I couldn’t spot or stand on one leg to save my life. My friend the choreographer didn’t cut me (because he was being nice but not because I was any kind of a good dancer at that point), but when it came time to choose the dancers to appear on the show, I was (obviously) not one of their favorites. This was ten years ago, and I still think of that television show when I think of Valentine’s Day.

The moral of this cautionary tale is: don’t give yourself a reason to have regrets! There are so many things in the world of the performing arts that you can’t control. The thing you can easily control is how you care for your physical self. Incidentally, your brain is a part of your physical self, so when you are hungry, sleepy, or dehydrated, you don’t even think as quickly. Did you know that, according to a recent scientific study, dehydration “impairs cognitive performance, particularly for tasks involving attention, executive function, and motor coordination when water deficits exceed 2% BML [body mass loss]”?³ Hydration is something you can control (and it’s free!). Why would you risk impairing your performance, attention, and coordination when you can just drink more water?

Focus on caring for your instrument. Drink a lot of water, eat healthy food, try to get eight hours of sleep, and exercise. If you’ve read a mainstream magazine in the past decade, you know exactly what you should do, so make optimal health for the sake of your art your goal.

NOTES

1. Max Weigand, “The Science behind ‘Fake It Till You Make It,’” Medium, December 6, 2017, https://medium.com/@MaxWeigand/the-science-behind-fake-it-till-you-make-it-3b6a4a59438b.

2. Brandon Vallorani, “Dressing for Success and the Achievement of Your Dreams.” Forbes, February 16, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2018/02/16/dressing-for-success-and-the-achievement-of-your-dreams/#7f397d6c485b.

3. Matthew T. Wittbrodt and Melinda Millard-Stafford, “Dehydration Impairs Cognitive Performance,” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 50, no. 11 (November 2018): 2360–68, https://doi.org/10.1249/mss.0000000000001682.