Here are a few things you can do to expand your creativity, improve your health, and performer self-esteem. What an intense time we live in. It's during these times that performers must double down and focus.



Here are a few tips for how you can work on yourself every day:

1. Take inventory throughout your day. How do you feel? No, really, how do you really feel? How does that person, smell, song, place, memory, dream, daydream make you feel? Are you able to express that feeling, physically and vocally? If not, why not? Find a time to express yourself physically and vocally, fully, each and every day. 5-10 minutes of sound and movement improvisation, in your home or studio, before a show or an audition, is a wonderful thing to do. Don't use words, it's too limiting and rational. Allow yourself to express MORE of who you are with non-verbal sounds and movements. Use your whole body: your knees, your ankles, your high voice, your broken voice. Hang out in the cracks of your voice and see WHO lives there.

2. Fantasize. Daydream. Explore your imagination. Look at people, add horns coming out of their head, or blood coming out of their mouth. Find a way to make a person you find unattractive super attractive. Exercise your imagination. You can exercise your imagination all day long. And you should! Great actors have wild imaginations, AND they know how to focus their imaginations for crystal clear story-telling.

3. Affirmations may seem cheezy to some. But, research proves they work. Go to the mirror. Say and mean (feel it!) five things nice to yourself like, "I deserve respect. I have the right to feel all my feelings. I believe in myself. I succeed at everything I try. I work on my acting and singing every day." Make up your own. Do it often. It can change your life. When I was 18, I made a list of 20 affirmations, written as if they already were true (" I am" or "I do" statements, NOT "I want" or "I will"). Saying them twice a day for a few months changed my life, profoundly.

4. Wake up gently. Try and not use an alarm by going to bed earlier. Write down your dreams. They are the most powerful emotional preparations there are -- when you learn how to use them. They are at the core of your talent.

5. Do morning pages. When you first wake up, free write for 20 minutes. Write anything...anything...It clears and focuses the mind, and gets you in touch with what is really going on, on the deepest levels. It's a great way to start the day. I do this a few times per week.

6. Order Dr. Schulze's "Superfood." It's TONS of fresh superfoods, fruits and veggies. It changed my life -- more energy, more immune health, far more emotional expressiveness, far more muscle, far more creativity. I do 2 tablespoons, in juice, every other day. WAKE UP YOUR CREATIVITY WITH THIS LIFE-CHANGING SUPERFOOD. Herbdoc.com.

For more thoughts and tips about acting, visit our reading room here. There are hours and hours of reading there. Go here to read testimonials from working actors who study with Jason Bennett.

Best wishes,

Jason Bennett, for The Faculty and Students
The Jason Bennett Actor's Workshop
JBActors.com