In the quiet space between preparation and performance, there’s a moment where everything can shift. Where you can choose presence over perfectionism. This is where the real work begins.
What is the “Audition Mindset”?
It’s a simple truth that most actors audition for far more jobs than they ever get booked for. It can feel like a thankless burden: little time for preparation, intense competition, and often at the end, you don’t even get an acknowledgment that you didn’t get the job. While there are excellent resources on practical audition preparation, less attention is paid to the mental and emotional preparation. Listen to any group of actors and you will hear an endless story of stress, disappointment, and frustrated hope. All of this leads to a set of thoughts, beliefs, and expectations that you carry into every audition.
Your audition mindset is the lens through which you see yourself, the casting team, and the entire audition process. This mindset isn’t fixed—it can be transformed with awareness, positivity and conscious practice—but it profoundly shapes the way you present yourself as a performer and the impact you have when you audition.
The Audition Mindset That’s Holding You Back
Your agent has called. You’ve been sent the sides. It’s a part you’d love to get. You’ve prepared the lines, planned your outfit, thought about energy, intention, stakes. You’re doing everything “right”—on the surface. But underneath, something is already pulling you off-centre.
You start second-guessing every choice before you’ve even made one. You imagine other actors in the waiting room who are more talented, better connected, somehow more right. You tell yourself you’re being realistic, not getting your hopes up. But something about it feels heavier than that.
This is what happens when an unhelpful audition mindset doesn’t just show up on the day—it sets the tone before you even begin.
When Imposter Thoughts Hijack Your Audition Mindset
Many performers experience what’s commonly called “imposter syndrome”—that persistent feeling that you don’t belong or that you’ll be “found out” as not good enough. You can read about it further on my page that discusses it in depth. It’s a debilitating experience for sure, but it helps to notice that it is just a set of thoughts, weaving a story—not a syndrome or diagnosis, just a thinking pattern that affects your audition mindset. It also apprects how we approach auditioning.
These imposter thoughts, usually expressed by our inner critic, can be particularly intense for actors, where the very nature of the work involves being judged, scrutinised, and selected (or not). It’s hard not to view every audition as judgement on your worth as a human being.
It never shouts. It doesn’t need to. It works quietly, spinning stories about how you’ll fail, or freeze, or fall apart—long before you step into the space.
And if you’re anything like the actors I work with, you know how quickly that mindset can take over.
The Audition Begins Long Before You Enter the Room
By the time you’re walking through the door—whether it’s a physical casting studio or your own living room with a self-tape setup—you’ve already had a full internal battle.
You’ve:
- Procrastinated because you didn’t want to spend too much time on something you probably won’t get, or it wasn’t the right time to start
- Stressed about your inability to learn the lines
- Rehearsed to the point of rigidity
- Second-guessed every character choice
- Changed your character choices multiple times
- Convinced yourself you stand no chance at all and prepared for disappointment
- Avoided feedback from people you trust, because hearing their notes might confirm your worst fear: that you’re not good enough
So when it’s time to perform, you’ve already disconnected.
From the work.
From yourself.
From the reasons you wanted to be here in the first place.
Understanding Your Inner Critic
Here’s the thing about your inner critic—it isn’t evil. It’s not trying to sabotage you out of cruelty. It’s hard to believe, but it’s on your side, doing its best to keep you safe. The only problem is it doesn’t have the faintest idea what it’s talking about.
So the only thing it knows how to do is keep you small.
- To keep you rehearsing endlessly so you don’t make a mistake.
- To keep you “humble” so you’re never caught being too much.
- To keep you guessing what they want so you don’t risk just being you.
It doesn’t mean to—but it’s feeding the mindset that actively undermines your ability to show up as your awesome authentic self.
Because while you’re busy managing all of that clutter, you can’t be present. You can’t connect. You can’t breathe, listen and allow something to happen in the moment.
Reimagining Your Audition Mindset
How would it be to walk in to the audition with a different mindset?
What would it feel like to leave the imposter outside in the waiting room?
What might shift if instead of feeling like you have to earn your right to be there, you trusted that you already belong?
It doesn’t mean you have to feel confident all the time. You don’t have to ignore your nerves or pretend you don’t care. It just means not letting the negative pattern of thinking, which we call the inner critic, run the show and taking over.
You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be available. Present. Connected to the work. And, crucially—connected to yourself. That’s where the mindset shift happens.
And when the mindset shifts, all the world’s a stage for you.
How Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy Transforms Your Audition Mindset
When I work with actors, I’m not just helping them calm nerves or manage anxiety (though we often do that too). We’re identifying the thought patterns and mental habits that sit underneath the nerves—the stories we write that create the limiting audition mindset in the first place.
And then we get to work rewriting them.
CBH gives us a way to:
- Unpick the internal scripts you’ve been rehearsing for years
- Understand where those beliefs came from
- Understand that those core beliefs were wrong because you are, and have always been more than good enough
- Rehearse new ways of responding—mentally, emotionally, physically
We use cognitive techniques to bring awareness and reflection, hypnotic work to rehearse new responses at the level of imagination and belief—so they become natural, embodied, and more easily accessible in the room. And just like learning lines for a play, the more you practice and perform these new ways of thinking and behaving, the more you will adopt this new way of being.
The Power of a Positive Audition Mindset
This work isn’t about tricking yourself into confidence. It’s not about pretending you’re fearless. It’s about making space for doubt without letting it steer the ship.
It’s about building an audition mindset that helps you act from choice, not fear.
An inner compass that allows you to say:
“Yes, I’m nervous. Yes, I want this. But I can still show up as myself.”
And that’s the version of you casting directors want to meet.
Not the masked version.
Not the over-rehearsed one.
Not the version that’s trying to guess what they want.
The real one.
Transform Your Audition Experience
You’ve done the training. You’ve done the work. Now it’s time to trust yourself in the room.
Want to explore what’s possible when you develop a positive audition mindset?
I offer a free 20-minute consultation to talk about how cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy can support your creative process, transform your relationship with auditions, and help you walk into the room with presence, confidence, and clarity.
