Connecting with others

Under the bus

November 22, 2025

When people make jokes about other people, they say it’s throwing them under the bus.

Why do we do this?

This kind of humour is easy- it’s like junk food. It might taste good- get a little laugh- and it may bring you closer to other people in the environment…

But it’s junk food. It’s trash and we shouldn’t eat it.

Let’s not throw people under the bus for a quick laugh or some cheap connection.

Let’s put them on the bus and give them a bunch of flowers.

Congruence

November 19, 2025

Things are better when they line up.

My least favourite phrase people say is “Do as I say, not as I do”. Why should I do what you say if you hold yourself to a different standard?

To lead, we have to be trusted and to be trusted we have to be congruent. And to be congruent we have to be clear. Clear on our values, standards and boundaries.

The leaders I admire most walk the talk.

Their actions match their words, their words match their beliefs and their beliefs match their values.

It all lines up.

Not only do we trust these people more, but they have more leverage to make things happen in the world.

Why?

Alignment is strong. Congruence is king.

Words fail

November 15, 2025

My dad just graduated from a year full immersion te reo Māori course.

The ceremony was full of emotion and as I watched family after family get up in support of their person, they performed beautiful haka, waiata and karanga.

As actors, words are our weapon to carry emotion. In musicals the character must sing because the emotion is too big for mere words. There’s no other option.

But of course the emotion is always too big for words. Shakespeare knew that words fail. The prettiest, fanciest or coolest words strung together pale in comparison to the ocean and galaxy of energy they represent, pumping out of our heart.

These families had the gift of song and of haka to carry their pride. To stand and make all the beautiful noise they could to show a tiny preview of what’s going on inside.

How lucky that we have our culture and our art to begin to express what’s inside us.

Yes, words fail. Songs fail. But the humble pursuit to use both to express ourselves is a beautiful one.

SING! MAKE NOISE! SHARE!

Some people are magnets

November 14, 2025

They make you smile, they make you feel heard and they make you want to shout “Heck yes!” when they share their vision for the world.

They aren’t magnetic because of any communication tricks or hacks- sure, they may have honed their craft, but theirs is an elementally magnetic core.

Where does it come from? Like most delicious meals, it’s a balance of all the good stuff.

Here are some of the raw materials:

A listener.

This person has the ability to deeply listen to people with both brain and heart.

A purpose.

This person has a burning purpose that will cut through anything. This might be a grand vision for change or something that leads them to hold down their corner of the world and enact the purpose daily.

Values

This person has a strong set of values. Values that make decisions for them.

We not me.

This person is not out for themselves. They understand that a win for you is a win for me. They know that there is no feeling greater than lifting up others.

Leverage.

This person makes big things happen with short conversations.

Abundance.

This person knows there is more than enough.

We need magnets in the world.

We need you to be one and we need you to create them.

I’m a model

October 29, 2025

I’m a model.

Although people don’t take my picture for money and I’ve never been on a runway- I’m modeling everyday.

You’re a model too and it’s the greatest honour for us all.

Teachers especially are models. And anyone in a leadership position; guiding or teaching souls who are seeking growth.

Whether we like it or not, our behaviour is teaching people the way to be. I’ve always hated the phrase, “Do as I say not as I do”. I really hope people only ever use that as a joke.

We can tell people what to do all we want but our biggest tool for passing on knowledge is the behaviour we model.

It’s not for me to tell you what to model- I think it’s enough to know that we are always modeling to those we lead. We can pretty much guarantee that your attitude and behaviour around certain things will be passed onto them.

Do you model optimism or pessimism?

How do you greet your students and what does that tell them about the world?

How do you react when something goes wrong?

What do you model when you’re tired?

Do you model gratitude or complaining?

Abundance or scarcity?

The classroom is our runway and we have choices to make at every turn.

What will you model today?

Being right

October 24, 2025

We all want to be right.

This is what most arguments are really about. And for me I’m much more likely to fall into this trap with people close to me.

Rarely am I going to argue with a stranger- I’m okay with them being ‘right’ because it affects my life less I guess.

I look back on moments where I so badly wanted to be right- those arguments really didn’t serve me. Even when I do end up being right, who even cares?

For me, it’s the wrong orientation. When it comes to being with others, it’s care and curiosity that wins.

One definition I have for intelligence is being flexible with your beliefs.

Have you ever looked back on videos of yourself, or old emails and texts where you are whole heartedly defending something that makes you cringe now?

In retrospect we look back; “Well, of course I was wrong about that!”

But of course when we were in it, it was a firmly held belief.

The orientation of wanting to be right mightn’t age well.

Remaining kind and curious always does.

This opens the possibility for learning and (even better) opens us to the word view of another and connects us.

It isn’t about being flakey in your beliefs or being a push over.

But it’s about keeping agile and flexible. Curious, kind and connected.

That’s far better than being merely ‘right’.

Don’t try and be good.

October 19, 2025

Looking back on my experience of drama school, it seems a lot of the initial training was about getting us to focus on the right things.

There’s this thing people say about actor training where they “break you down and build you back up”.

I’ve never really liked this saying- it seems kind of negative or unnecessarily fear inducing. From my years of training it’s more about discovering patterns and building new ones.

And that’s just the learning process. But I guess people like making things sound dramatic and scary when it comes to acting.

It’s confronting, sure, but so is meeting your edge in any arena.

One of the main focuses I needed to undo in my training was this thing of trying to be liked. Of monitoring in an audience or in a director- am I doing the right thing? Do you like this?!

It makes sense, of course; my only frame of reference for learning was the school system that was all about being ‘right’. But of course acting isn’t about being ‘right’ it’s about being true.

Even that is a tricky metric- true according to who? Looking elsewhere for how truthful your work is is just another way of outsourcing your certainty.

Instead, as actors we must become experts of placing our focus. One way of doing this is to give your character an objective:

To make this person stay

To make them leave

To make them understand me

You get the idea. This is how we pursue truth; to what extent did you fight for your objective?

I love this way of thinking because if I’m feeling nervous I can ask myself, what is my objective?

And more often then not in those nerve wracking situations my objective has accidentally become “to make these people think I’m clever or funny.”

You lose when this becomes the objective, you really do. And this is what can happen if you’re not clear on your objective as an actor.

Trying to be clever or funny or attractive will always set you up for failure. Those things MIGHT come as a result of what you do in pursuit of an objective (emphasis on might, haha).

So in life, I think we should practice the same thing; give ourselves objectives that get us out of our own way. Objectives we can fight for, use our full selves to pursue them.

That’s playing big and that’s where the real magic is.

Residue

October 10, 2025

I had a teacher at my school who had this amazing ability.

Whether he’d been shouted at by a student, had to have an uncomfortable meeting with a parent or just had a hard morning-

The very next person he spoke to was always treated with kindness, levity and warmth.

In acting I’ve heard the term ‘residue’ often used. It’s the idea that people carry over experiences that have immediately happened to them into the next moment.

A director might say to me “Justin, your character has just had an argument with his wife in the next room- I want to see the residue of that in this next scene.”

We never see the argument but we feel the residue. It’s a great story telling tactic, but it can be unhelpful in our day to day life.

This teacher of mine had the remarkable ability to get rid of residue.

He understood that any unpleasantness that happened before had nothing to do with who walked through his door next. He took responsibility of the way he might make some one else feel.

How generous.

The opposite of course is to be short tempered with someone who has had nothing to do with your difficult morning.

Here’s two questions I’m asking myself today:

How can we meet people anew in each moment?

What can being searingly present, warm and open in new interactions give us- and most importantly- those around us?

Words change how we feel

October 8, 2025

“You’re a liar” vs. “you’re wrong” vs. “you’re mistaken”.

All of these could mean the same thing- but they have different levels of emotional intensity.

So when we speak to others we have a choice- and a responsibility- to be intentional about what we say.

We also have a responsibility to choose the words we say to ourselves.

Is this the end or the beginning?

Did you ruin it all or did you find another way not to get there?

Did you make the wrong choice or does everything happen perfectly?

It’s not about toxic positivity, it’s about intelligent naming.

Let’s choose words that help us and others.

Plugging into passion- Make it true for you

October 2, 2025

What do you do when you feel completely bored by what you have to teach?

If I feel uninspired by something that I kinda have to muster some enthusiasm about, I turn to an old acting trick…

Make it true for you

One of my acting teachers Miranda Harcourt taught us this idea at drama school. If there’s a bit of dialogue, circumstance or situation you’re struggling to bring to life or connect to , she suggests you ‘make it true for you’.

For example, you have the line “My cousin used to play in the back garden”. You could just say the line, but if you don’t feel a connection to it or a little spark of life, neither will the audience.

Miranda had us ‘fill out’ the picture in our head. She’d ask things like ‘what was your back garden like when you were a kid? Can you picture it? Which of your cousins are you talking about? What kinds of clothes do they wear?’

Once you’ve spent some imaginary time with this real person and place, say the line again, inviting those images in as you say them. It’s true for you now and that added depth will be read by the audience. Not consciously maybe, but there is a micro-congruence going on in the actor.

The same thing happens in my brain if I’m faced with learning material that isn’t immediately lighting my world on fire. I ask some ‘make it true for you’ questions:

What have I experienced in my life that this reminds me of?

What is a silly metaphor that helps me understand this?

What is something I am so excited about right now and what are three ways I can connect this to that?

I particularly like the third question because I’m pretty obsessive and week to week there will be something that I’m absolutely taken with- a new actor or film, some gadget or thing I’m learning about. If I can connect it some how to my current obsession I’m home free.

Not everything will inspire us, but we always have the ability to bring ourselves to life.

JUSTIN ROGERS

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