Filmmaking can feel like an impossible journey.

There’s a mountain to climb, and the further you step the larger it grows.

Every day there are setbacks. Rejections. Personal difficulties.

You complain. Procrastinate. Find excuses for why it’s not clicking.

All your energy gets spent worrying about useless things:

I didn’t get into Sundance. My friends think it’s stupid. My work sucks.

You spends weeks, months, years silently waiting on the sidelines.

Thinking, but never doing.

Waiting for the money to fall in your lap. Or to be discovered.

All the while, years are passing by.

Somewhere between the pursuit of perfection and the fear of failure, you’ve lost your way.

Before long, you’re back at square one. At the bottom of the mountain.

All the pessimism has taken you further away from your goals.

Now, even thinking about making your film feels heavy. So you don’t.

You take time off. Hope that someday it will all fall into place.

But it never will unless you completely change your mindset.

You need to re-wire your brain.

To react to negativity in the only way that actually helps:

By working.

Not by blowing off steam with friends at the bar.

Not by putting your script in a drawer so you can binge Netflix.

Not by talking about your movie with time-wasters to feel productive.

Work is the only thing that works.

The faster you get out of your own head, the faster you will get ahead.

It’s not complicated.

Imagine what where you would be if every time you decided to procrastinate you worked instead.

If you can cultivate discipline, anything is possible.

Every time you feel bored – Work.

Every time you want to wait – Work.

Every time you get rejected – Work.

Every time you want to complain – Work.

Every time you decide to quit – Work.

That’s it.

Simple, but not easy.

We all have the same amount of hours in the day.

Saying “no” to your negative instincts is the only answer.

There’s no time to be wasted on negativity or procrastination.

You don’t have to be consumed by it. There is still a balance to be found.

But if you could just work instead of wait, create instead of procrastinate, great things will happen.

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