Games
Why playing games is good for families.
-There’s a shared low stakes goal.
-Everyone is focussing on the same thing.
-Different combinations of people have to deal with the difficulty of losing (and winning)
There’s a reason actors use games in a rehearsal process. They’re building connection, emotion and love.
Might be time to get a pack of cards out.
Just do the next thing
Most things are just a matter of jumping through the hoops.
You do the first thing you can see in front of you, then the next thing and then the next thing and the next. And after that the next thing will present itself.
I (and you might too) feel the need to have the perfect plan architected out from the outset.
But we can save ourselves the hassle and the time and just do the first thing.
Smile
Great workout advice for the gym? Smile on the last rep.
The last rep is the hardest and it’s often where we want to fail.
If we smile on the last rep it’s a small signal to the brain:
“Hey, you know this difficulty you’re feeling? It’s growth. And it’s so good it’s worth smiling”
You’re on a spaceship
Imagine if you were on a spaceship with a group of strangers.
Imagine as well that it was common knowledge that in approximately 60 years the spaceship would crash into an asteroid.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
How do you spend those years? Do the people stay strangers?
If you knew you’d be gone after the asteroid, how would that affect your day to day?
Earth is a bit like a giant spaceship isn’t it?
And our inevitable end is an awful lot like an asteroid.
With stakes like this, it’s not just about using our time wisely, it’s about using it lovingly.
Wouldn’t you agree?
Building and dismantling
There’s two types of communications:
Building and dismantling.
“Yeah but…” dismantles
“Yes, and…” builds
Our job is not only to find the ones that build, but to eliminate that ones that dismantle.
The ones that dismantle are good at hiding from us.
They hide behind our need to protect ourselves, our ideas and our egos.
If we can release the need to protect whatever it is we feel we need to protect, we can focus instead on the ‘yes, ands”
Resourcefulness follows commitment
Said another way: If you’re committed you will find a way. What does it mean to truly be committed? Well I think it means there is no other option. If you’re hungry you’ll find a way to get food. So the magic doesn’t actually come from the ‘how’ but from the commitment. Let’s not look for resources before we commit. We don’t need to vet our commitments. We just need to decide this is the way it will be, ensuring it aligns with higher human values of love, generosity and growth and we will simply find a way. With commitment comes resource. Don’t worry about the level of your resource. Concern yourself with the level of your commitment.
There are little hidden pockets of time and space all around us
I went past a petrol station and it was packed with people with wait times through the roof. This morning I visited the same petrol station but I had the place to my self.
Why?
Well it seems obvious, right. The first visit was 9.48am on a Saturday morning.
The second time was 7:02am on a Sunday morning.
The same thing happened at my gym. Monday morning at 6.30 am it’s packed and you’ll be lucky to get a spot at the hip thrust machine.
The same gym (and hip thrust machine) was completely free at 6.30 pm on a Friday.
The hidden space and time I’m talking about is the made up meanings and associations we have about where we should be and when.
Sure this reality is a persistent illusion (as Einstein would say) but it is just an illusion.
They say work has to start at 9am on Monday and that Friday night is for partying and that Saturday mornings are for road trips to start.
But if you can divorce yourself from everyone else’s stories, you get to stop waiting in everyone else’s lines.
Meaning makers
We are the ones who get to decide what things mean to us.
Is this the beginning or the end?
Is life a war or a test?
Yes, yes this is all great in theory… but this morning I spilt a third of my pristine smoothie and had an unsatisfying amount left.
The knee jerk meaning was that “this sucks, life sucks and I’m sad now.”
But then I realised that your highest behavioral aspirations only have real meaning when the going gets tough.
Sad smoothie? Yup that’s tough going.
So I decided to change the meaning. I looked down at the spilt smoothie and smiled…
“Yay, I get to have more breakfast!” I made a bowl of weetbix- something I don’t normally do- and enjoyed a Petit Déjeuner instead of being mad at my one third empty smoothie.
Oh wait, no- it was a two thirds full smoothie 😉
All the kings horses
Mark Duplass has this great speech he gave a few years back to aspiring film makers.
He warned us about waiting for the cavalry. That as creatives we can fall into the trap of thinking that the cavalry is coming and that any tiny incremental improvement we make in our work might trick us into believing that.
Big breakthroughs make us think the cavalry is coming. Those small wins can be intoxicating too.
Mark says the cavalry is not coming. It might feel like they are and people will tell you they are. But they’re not.
And Mark says this isn’t something to be sad about. The truth is, you don’t want the cavalry to come and save you.
The truth is, you get to a certain point of success of your own creation and the cavalry kinda is coming. Massive career changing opportunities come to you. The cavalry!
But when that happens, you don’t want ‘career changing’
You’ve worked hard for this career, thank you very much.
They came too late and you’re not interested in all the kings horses.
Because you are the king of your own castle now. And you are your own cavalry.
Mark is pretty on to it, I reckon
I think everyone should warm up their voice
At drama school, the idea of warming up the voice and body was very normal. Before that, I think I’d only heard of warming up in the context of sports.
There is a bit of a belief sometimes that if someone is warming up they aren’t good enough to just do the thing.
It would be great if we didn’t believe that.
Actors warm up to free and flex their voice because they are about to use it.
The reason I think we should all have voice warm ups is because we all use our voices to do things in the world. Sure it’s not in the context of a performance, but we still use it.
Your voice warm up doesn’t need to be fancy. Here’s a really easy way to warm your voice up:
Step 1: Choose your favourite song
Step 2: Do a lip trill along with your song. Follow the melody as precisely as you can.
There you go- you’ve warmed your voice up!