JUSTIN ROGERS

Post Category:

Connecting with others

No regrets

May 28, 2026

I think this is a good goal. Sometimes when I hear people say “no regrets”, it’s a bit like they are being careless or maybe even reckless.

“No regrets” for me is about never coming out of a situation or interaction with a regret.

I never want to look back on how I was and see someone who is unkind, unjust or short tempered.

And those moments come up, for sure. You’re a bit tired or at the end of your tether.

This frame helps a lot: “will I regret it later if I act in this way?”

If you can do that over and over again, you’ll have a regret free life.

And that’s a pretty great outcome.

“No regrets”

The kind choice

May 21, 2026

We always have a choice in the way we communicate.

We can let our mood make a choice by default.

Or we can be intentional about the way we want the other person to feel.

You always have the choice to be kind and make someone feel seen, heard and safe.

So it’s up to you.

How you tell it

May 9, 2026

Recently I’ve noticed a pattern emerge in how I respond when people say “How are you?”

I mightn’t have noticed it if I only saw one or two people, but it happened five times so it really stuck out to me.

“Tired, but really glad to have some down time”

“Really busy, I just feel very behind”

“Yeah, it’s been a big few weeks”

Look, I’m an advocate for connecting to our true emotions and taking the bad with the good… but I’m also smart and I can see when patterns aren’t serving me.

The problem with the above responses is how I’m framing my experience for someone else. It’s a good litmus test because when someone asks how are you, you have to dilute it down to make it understandable in a sentence or two.

I also think these kinds of ‘it’s been hard but I’m surviving’ responses are so socially acceptable- people often nod and say things like ‘yeah, me too’.

It seems less safe, perhaps to say “I’m absolutely awesome!”

As if theres a fear that it’s weird to feel good or something.

My challenge to myself (and anyone else interested) is to choose carefully the story we tell others when they ask how we are.

Because it’s the same story we tell ourselves. And if we tell it enough times we start to believe it.

Sparkle Noticer

April 10, 2026

What is a sparkle noticer?

It’s what I call the people out in the world that notice real presence. I’ve been to 5 different states in the US across the past few months and everywhere I go I’m trying to make connections with strangers.

Buying a coffee, passing a stranger, getting in a lift; these are all opportunities to connect with another human.

And the rule is you can’t just say hi and look away.

You have to actually be present. You have to SPARKLE.

Sadly, most people are quite closed off to strangers. I turn on my sparkliest most present eyes and give them a sweet little hello… and there’s often not a response.

And that’s okay! I get it, it’s a bit weird.

But now and then… you get a sparkle noticer.

Someone who catches the sparkle and notices the real life presence you’re bringing to a moment.

They see you seeing them and thus you see each other!

The goal for me isn’t to be the person always saying hi with a warm smile.

The goal is to become the person who notices the sparkles when they fly my way.

We all get caught up and walled off day to day. But if we let ourselves, we can be a sparkle noticer and the world is a deliciously good place when you let that in.

Wrapping paper

April 9, 2026

I’m a big believer in wrapping paper.

I’m mostly fine with people speaking their mind. If I’m in the way, tell me. If I’m being too loud, please let me know.

My problem comes when people put it in the wrong wrapping paper.

For example, someone is speaking a little too loud. You can tell them to ‘shut up’. Or you can gently let them know know.

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

You can say the difficult thing, but you can do it with kindness, levity and generosity.

I’m a BIG believer in wrapping paper.

The infinite power source

March 8, 2026

The golden goose of any initiative is implementation.

Starting out, it’s up to us to get ourselves to follow through on the work we know needs to get done. We have to work out what it takes for us to do the hard thing.

We find that ‘pushing through’ isn’t sustainable. Eventually we find a reason that drives us.

Whether it’s a diet, a new skill to learn or a formidable project- we each find our own way in to get it done.

When we lead others, we come up against the same challenge- how do we get people to follow through?

How do we get others to own outcomes and claim autonomy in their work? There’s a lot of things that help, sure; clarity of objective, clear milstone tracking, step by step systems, authority to make choices… all of these things contribute to the work getting done.

But those are all the tools- just like when we were doing it on our own we all needed tools. But if all it required were tools it would be easy.

Like you discovered on your own, you need heart. What do I mean? Well it needs to hook onto the thing that we value most. That’s how we bring heart to our work.

Why do I teach? I teach because I love bringing possibility to life for young people. I love learning and I love growing and I love contributing to something bigger than myself. Those are called values, by the way. Values are a steam train zooming off into the sunset and our outcomes are the things we hook on the back of that train.

Values are our own power source. The same is true for those we lead. It’s not enough to give excellent tools, protocols and outcomes- we have to hook it to their steam train.

What does this person value most? Don’t guess, get in conversation and ask them. It’s in the language; “My work is about X” or “The most important thing for this is Y”.

Find their values and align the job to that.

This is the never ending power source that gets the job done and has them fulfilled in the process. And that’s WAY better than merely implementing something.

We all want to work for a meaningful cause. Implementation… sure.

But doing meaningful work in the world with people that care?

That’s where it’s really at.

Nice

March 1, 2026

We should be nice to pessimists.

They say that pessimists are optimists who have been disappointed.

We’re all doing the best we can with what we’ve got. No one is trying to be unkind or hard to be around.

We should probably just be nicer to everyone.

Authenticity

February 12, 2026

One of my favourite things about acting is we have to make something that isn’t real feel authentic.

You don’t do that by being really good at lying, by the way. You do that by being really good at being real.

Actors aren’t liars, they’re truth tellers.

I’m amazed at how authenticity cuts through. I watch a video of a thought leader I really respect and I can feel their words, I understand them not from their words, but the heart behind the words.

Authenticity cuts through. We can get caught up in trying to make things slick or perfect but at the end of it all, if your intentions are pure and in congruence with what you’re trying to do. It’ll come through.

It’s the great gift us humans have. We don’t need you to be perfect, we can feel you.

We’re made of blood and bones and our hearts are running all the time.

We can feel you.

We all have a way in

February 6, 2026

The fact that you’re a human being means you have a way in.

Early on as a teacher I’d easily feel out of my depth when teaching things I didn’t have all the answers to. We get hypnotised in the culture to believing that we have to be experts.

More often than not, we don’t need to wear that responsibility. We just need a way in.

In acting, we’re encouraged to find truth in the imagined circumstances of a character. One of my teachers Miranda Harcourt calls this ‘make it true for you’. The text talks about a cousin? Build an internal reality of that person.

Make it true for you is the secret to finding confidence when we feel out of our depth in other arenas too.

I don’t know about drums and I can’t play the drums. So I have not connection to them right? No way to make it true for me?

Well I’d say the fact that I can’t play the drums is a relationship to the drums. I know what drums are. I had a friend at high school who played the drums. I’ve always liked that drum solo by Phil Collins.

I suddenly have found my way in.

No matter what we bring ourselves to, in any arena, we always have the ability to make it true for ourselves.

Education is about connection. So finding that connection to any material we teach is vital.

Make it true for you and you’ll have a never ending source of connection.

Is it alive?

February 5, 2026

A director I worked with gave me a key question that I use to guide all of my work.

It was after a show and he’d given us all a few pages of notes for things to focus on and improve in the show. A collection of ultra specific tweaks.

He turned to us, knowing that hitting all these in one show was a long shot. He acknowledged this and said simply “All I’m looking for is the life. All these notes are there just to support that. So all your job is is to search for the life.”

“{Is it alive?”

That’s it. We have tonnes of technical moments to hit, emotional beats to play, connection to each other, the material, the audience- one million things that culminate in a single outcome; life.

When I act I come back to the question.

When I rehearse. When I create. When I teach. When I converse. When I collaborate. When I build. When I help. It’s all in service of the same question:

Is it alive?

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