Gabriel Shaughnessy: Actor, screenwriter and singer in Toronto, Canada.

SUNWING SHOOT: DOMINICAN REPUBLIC One more smile and I'm going to puke. I'm pacing around my hotel room in our five-star resort. The sun has set in the Dominican sky. I should be making my way to the sushi bar, or the Greek restaurant for dinner, but I can't eat. We resume shooting in 20 minutes - a commercial for Sunwing Vacations, and I've had an afternoon at the beach to stew on my performance from the morning. It was shit, it was total shit. I'm letting everyone down. My hand was shaking during the stills of the champagne toasting. Why did they make me use my right hand. Fuck. I'm a natural lefty. Fuck... Now I know why Zoolander couldn't turn left... This is ridiculous. I need to get my shit together. Find the magic. Where is it. I know I was feeling it. Where is it. I've been alternating between states of bliss and static. "Okay now smile! Bigger smile! More love! Move your hand a little lower. Angle your shoulders away from the camera. I'm not buying it... More love!" We're shooting 2 days of film and stills (pictures) for TV and billboards. I'm getting married. The scenes are of a paradise wedding and honeymoon - walking on the beach, taking in the nightly entertainment, sailing a catamaran, lounging by the pool, feeding each other bites of steak. My bride-to-be is a young, austere Polish woman who's already married with children. I was banking on consummating this marriage pre-shoot but no such luck. We'll have to find love in another place. I'm hyper aware of the fact that the camera is picking up my every thought. In between scenes I'm painstakingly maintaining a blank mindset. Don't think. Just relax. Have fun. Champagne, cognac, room service, it's all at my fingertips. There's a private moat-like pool connecting the back decks of each of the luxury suites we're situated in. I'm living like a God. Now all I have to do is feel like one. My biggest fear is that I won't be able to get the magic back. The magic being the feeling of oneness. That this moment is perfect. A state of total clarity, where anything is possible and nothing can hurt me. Sometimes I can ride this feeling for 10 or 20 minutes, surfing the gentle wave of time. Then I fall out of it and desperately try to get it back. The problem is, it only comes when I let go of wanting it. The best I can give happens when I stop trying. But how do I surrender when everyone is here to get the best I can give. This is the conundrum my mind has been wrestling with all day. I get mad at myself for thinking, and then try to think my way out of my self-inflicted migraine. The company has flown 14 of us down to paradise. A family of four, two lovers, a crew of six and two brand representatives to make sure things are up to their standards. I'm having a hard time looking people in the eye. It's too intimate. They'll see right through me. They'll know I'm totally insane. Every part of me is resisting this lesson. I'm being forced to confront my deep-seeded fears, the fear of not being perfect. The fear that they will know I'm afraid. The fear of letting people down. The fear that I'm not worthy of love. Amidst all this, a realization cuts through the blur. I'm already everything I need to be. There's no need to search for what's lacking. I don't need to claw my way back to a state of magic. I don't need to raise my game to give these people what they want. I'm already it. I've had "it" the whole time. This mental static is me resisting my own greatness with every ounce of my strength. I'm on the edge of experiencing a major breakthrough and I'm doing everything I can to trip myself up. Then I let go. "Beautiful! Yes! Oh yeah keep it there! Now whisper in her ear! Yes! Oh my god............ Got it! And this is just the beginning.

From conception to promotion, yours truly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDKw4zHqg7A&spfreload=10

One way to judge how high you are is by the number of people telling you to come down. A few years ago I had the thought that you know you're heading in the right direction when you get a few haters. And I've been noticing a few more people telling me my ego is inflated as of late. Now, such comments should be cause for some self-introspection, which I do, or at least try. But I also use them as a sign that I'm breaking through some ceilings, shaking up some comfort zones, making an impression on the lives and minds of others. And that's the big thing, are you making an impression on the lives and minds of others. And it doesn't have to be doing some glamorous pursuit like acting. Your presence on a moment to moment basis has profound effects on the lives and minds of those around you. Never underestimate your power. Some people will tell you that to become an actor you need a big ego - how else can you go around shamelessly promoting yourself. And make no mistake, that is what needs to be done. You need to sell yourself, you need to sell your ideas and you need to sell your presence. All the time. And that applies to every industry. That sounds like it could be stressful. I don't like stress. The thing is, the best salesmen don't sell. They don't need to, because you already bought, and they know that. I've also been told, "Well I do it because I love the art. You're just doing it to be popular." Ahh yes, the starving artist mentality. What is this art you speak of? Is it the sorrowful lament of he who hasn't been able to create the life he's dreamed of? Because that's art I most likely won't buy. I've been noticing that as I gather strength, and am doing things this year that I would've squawked at last year, that I need to watch the ego even more closely. After you kick some ass, and a bunch of people see it happen, it can be quite tempting to replay the scene over and over in your head, analyzing various sentences, various reactions, revelling in how awesome you were, and are. At the same time when you look like a duphus in front of a bunch of poeple, you can question the purity of all the golden nuggets you just shit out. A lot of very talented people reach a ceiling in their lives and their careers, and it is self imposed. It comes from the highs and lows of being pretty sweet. To become great, you need to dissolve the ego. This means you are in the moment, ideally, all the time. It's one thing to be in the moment when you're on camera, or in the game. It's another thing to be in the moment afterwards, letting go of whatever trials or triumphs happened in the public arena. And that is the toughest thing about putting yourself out there - everyone can watch, judge, praise or condemn. I regularly notice myself getting caught up in past performances - on stage or in passing conversation. The trick is in giving less fucks while expanding at an ambitious rate. I like sales. And I especially like selling shit that I like. And I like selling me, not so much because I think I'm The One, but because I feel like I've began to uncover The Source, within myself, which connects to who knows what - the universal order and whatnot. You can feel it when you tap in. Things get easier. You're in flow. It's like hitting a home run, or landing a knockout punch, there's almost no resistance when you find the sweet spot. Everyone's connected to it. You might just be thinking too much to know.

I've been going around telling/bragging to people that I got an acting agent for about 4 weeks now. It's pretty exciting stuff, a step forward in my endeavour to take over the world. Just the other night I was getting mildly haranged by a fellow actor in the dog park about the fact that I hadn't been set up with any auditions yet. I listened for a while and then told her to shush up. The move must have brought me good karma because today I went to my first professional acting audition for a commercial. I was biking downtown, visualizing myself laughing hysterically with Brad Pitt. So I was feeling pretty awesome when I showed up. I sat in the waiting room with a couple other guys and then all of a sudden it was just me, alone. Boredom is a man's greatest enemy, and I could feel the energy start to build up inside me. So I decided to get up and start moving around the room. Own the space, you know. Turn this place from a foreign entity into my home, a place of freedom. So I was doing the two-step, dancing around and singing lightly - Blurred Lines. The casting director finally came out and we got down to business. The only thing I was thinking while I was in there was - I want to give myself to this woman, and this project. In fact, I wasn't even thinking it, I just knew it in the back of my mind. I was present in the room. I let go of the expectation to be good and just let my imagination take over with the scenario she described. Bing bang boom it was done. I shook hands, smiled and walked right the fuck out of there, leaving my presence in a nicely wrapped box at the foot of her mind. Picture it... There you go. My present.

TRUE DATING STORIES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMep0RbZOAM

By Gabriel Shaughnessy I was recently reading an article by Sal Khan, creator of the free online school, Khan Academy. It was titled, "Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart." When I was a kid, I was a genius. Then again, who wasn't. Science says that when they test for genius potential, they find it in over 90% of children. As they test in later years, fewer kids still have it. Then again, what does science know. Anyways, I was killin' it as a kid. Sports, academics, music, it just worked. I didn't really think about it, I just seemed to be top of the class in whatever I was doing. One of my sports was baseball. At the beginning of this one season, as I was getting old enough to be conscious of human error, I took the mound to pitch. In previous years, I just chucked the ball and kids struck out. This year something different happened, these guys were smacking the ball all over the place. I didn't know what was going on. In the car ride home my Dad was baffled, asking me what happened. I had no idea, and I lay awake for many nights dwelling on it. This is the earliest I can remember of the emergence of fear and anxiety in my life. I didn't like not being perfect. How did I respond to the challenge of the batters catching up to my inherent ability to pitch? I buckled, I panicked, I ran. I liked being the best, and my whole life till that point I was untested, I conquered with ease. All of a sudden I wasn't sure. Maybe I lost it. I didn't want to pitch anymore. A few years later I stopped playing baseball altogether. That fear of failure slowly permeated into all areas of my life and I entered a period of struggle, maybe even suffering - which can be defined as getting something different than you want out of life, During those years, I figured the only way to improve at something was to try harder. After all, they say it takes 10,000 hours of practice and you'll be a master right? You just have to put in the time. Bullshit. "You don't want it enough!" the clueless coaches used to tell us in the hockey dressing room. "You have to want it!!" I do want it, shut up and tell me how to get it. But they didn't know, and neither did my Dad. Sal Khan talks about fixed vs. growth mindsets in his article. He encourages his son to struggle with problems, and applauds him when he finds something he fails at. He knows that intelligence, and ability, is not a fixed trait. If you believe otherwise, you will soon be wondering where it went, as I did. Failing doesn't mean you're unworthy, it is not something to fear (what I unconsciously learned) it is an opportunity for growth, significantly more growth than success in fact. Sal Khan stresses that point in his article - you grow more from failure than you do success. So don't stay too comfortable. Growth means you become able to do and understand things you previously couldn't. I entered a growth mindset in my 2nd year of university when I picked up a book on seducing women. I applied the principles and started getting laid more. Next I read books on people skills and communication, I applied the teachings and my social life flourished, which also helped me get laid more. I then started getting into spirituality, understanding my existence, my relationship with myself and with life around me, and I changed the direction I was heading. Compare that to fixed mindsets. In the final year of my science degree I told my family I was planning to become an actor. They suggested that I get checked for bi-polar disorder, something my Dad takes drugs for. After all, our family "doesn't do acting," or singing, or dancing. We do engineering, law and medicine. We do the system - where you go to school, get a job, have kids for the sake of dinner conversation and then repeat. Think about the benefits package. You must be out of your mind if you think you can break though the matrix. It's called reality kid. Besides, we don't want people thinking we've got more instability in our genes. Well that may be your reality, but I don't believe in genetically inherited mental illness anyways. If you believe you've got it, you'll start to get it. That principle applies for everything - good and bad. I've only begun to understand what an amazing tool, and great enemy, your mind can be. But I'm being dramatic, my family can be quite lovely. My point is, if the universe isn't giving you what you want, instead of banging on the door in frustration, look for the knob, and take a minute to think about how you think.

Straight Kill Film Audition - "street dice is a hustle for life" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q1LpAAeU8o

Acting and the 4th Dimension https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMJDQuMPYQ0

Reel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8JWsVkJO2c