Plugging into passion- Make it true for you
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.
Only one energy can win
At drama school we played a game that’s always stuck with me. We had been learning how a cast of actors can create a palpable feeling or energy in a room with their collective focus.
(Don’t you just love how ‘drama school’ that sounds!?)
Collectively we might direct our energy to the feeling of anticipation… or dread… or grief… or bliss.
You get the idea.
It was one of those- ‘is this really real or is this in our head’ moments.
But as we did the exercise, sure enough the chosen feeling flooded the room, to the extent even that if someone came into the room, they’d be able to sense the mood pretty easily.
Once we had done a few rounds of creating these moods in the room, our teacher split us up and allocated each group a different and apposing mood to evoke. I was in the group whose mood was ‘serenity’ and the other group had been assigned ‘chaos’.
‘Lol’, right?
So we, the serenity group, started off in the studio while the chaos group began out in the hallway. We were each to generate our mood and then the chaos group would come and join us… and we would see what happened.
I think you can imagine what happened. All our efforts to maintain, grow or share our serenity were bulldozed by the chaotic energy that had just entered.
Only one energy could win. Two couldn’t exist at the same time. One overthrew the other.
Now, it’s not to say there are hard and fast rules around what kinds of moods will ‘beat’ others, I don’t think it’s that simple. For instance, if we had persevered a bit with our serenity maybe chaos would have tired out and eventually we would have won.
Knowing that only one energy can win gives us the ability to see if we’re on the ‘winning’ side or not. To shift ourselves to create the equilibrium we desire in a room.
It makes me think of those classroom days when the kids are just completely hectic for what ever reason. I have in the past tried to hold onto my quiet energy and have of course become frustrated.
Instead what I’m experimenting with is shifting myself to something that stands a chance of facing off against their energy. And eventually finding a middle ground we’re both happy with.
But of course, it could all just be in my head 😉
Rhyming with people
We can be speaking a different language as someone but both be speaking English.
Our favourite people are those that are either like us or are the way we aspire be to be.
The saying goes: “People tend to like people like themselves”
I like to think of people who get dogs that look like them as well- I find it’s hilarious when that happens and often wonder if it’s because the dog reminds them of themselves…
ANYWAY-
Here’s simple implication of this idea I use all the time.
“Language Reflection”
What are the key words you hear someone use over and over and how can you authentically incorporate them into your speech?
Kids especially have a certain vernacular- I’m definitely NOT encouraging people to awkwardly slip words in that feel uncomfortable or unnatural.
“That’s ‘rad’ man”
But it is figuring out the point of view those words come from; the family of ideas they relate to. It’s not just cut and pasting a word, but reflecting a thought rhythm and rhyming with that language style.
There’s an art to matching someones speech to align more with them.
In the past, I could understand how people feel a bit funny about doing things like this- that it’s a bit tricky or something.
But I’ve come to value helping people achieve their own potential as one of my highest priorities- so if shifting the way I speak removes a barrier and let’s them connect with me in a deeper way, then I’m okay with it.
Find their map of language and reflect it back to help them get where they want to go.
Micro overcommitments
Forcing more out of yourself (in a fun way…)
I have a daily commitment to make a little movie every day and share it. It’s my way of connecting to acting and producing something relating to my craft each day.
There are days when I have zero ideas, or interest in doing it… so one day I thought I’d play a game with my future self.
I created a little skit, and in the title card called it ‘episode 1’.
Did I have an episode 2 or any other storyline in my head?
Absolutely not! BUT, I knew my pedantic brain couldn’t let a an ‘episode 1’ live on it’s own. There HAS to be at least ONE more episode.
I ended up making 20!
It got me thinking; how can we box ourselves into producing results that we want?
What constraints can we apply to ourselves creatively to free us.
One way this has manifested is when I’m teaching.
I’ll sometimes force myself to have more thoughts on something a student says than I immediately have top of mind. The simple way I do that is say out loud:
“Great idea! That makes me think of three things…”
I’m committing to greater outputs in advance of them existing. I don’t even have one thing most of the time.
It’s a fun little game to get more out of myself.
Greatest hits of the generative classroom
“What’s funny about this?” The greatest hits of a generative classroom.
The questions we consistently ask ourselves direct our focus.
If we know that to be true – do we really have an excuse to not consciously direct the atmosphere of the environments we lead?
When I’m feeling the least creative, the least generous and the least accommodating of others, the questions in my head all rhyme with each other:
Why is this so hard?
How much longer?
Will they ever get this?
Why am I so bad at this?
You can pretty much guess the limited types of answers these get.
A new question is: “What is the environment I want to create and what are the recurring questions I can ask of myself that will create it?”
Here’s the greatest hits:
“How many smiles can I give? … Or get?!”
“What’s funny or surprising about this?”
“How many ‘a ha’ moments will I create?”
“What will I learn?”
“What breakthroughs will we create together?”
These all presuppose the presence of newness, of joy and learning. They open the door to possibility.
How many generative questions will you create today?
Take responsibility for your remarkable results
What’s a remarkable result you created recently?
Sometimes lighting strikes in the classroom- for whatever reason you were absolutely on fire. You were off book, speaking from the heart and the kids were completely connecting to the learning material effortlessly.
When I have days like this I remember why I do what I do.
And then there’s the part of my brain that says it was a fluke and there was some special set of circumstances outside of my control that made the lesson happen like that…
I have to fight this part of my brain.
It says that remarkable results are outside of my control. That it all depends on what the kids ate, whether they got enough sleep or if it’s a cosy rainy day out there.
Sure, these things contribute. But the minute I start yielding responsibility to things like this, I stop myself.
What was awesome about that day in the classroom? How did I contribute to it being that way?
We can treat it a bit like a recipe. What did I do first? How exactly did I do it? And then what happened?
When I break it down like this I always find the patterns that worked. And the great thing about recipes is they can be replicated or experimented with.
If you’ve don’t it once before, then you can do it again. And I’ll do you one better; if someone else has done it once before then you can do it too.
Or how about the ultimate: If you can picture and imagine it, then you can create it.
Take responsibility for your remarkable results- then make more of them.
Are you using questions or are they using you?
At drama school they taught me about “working questions”. Basically it was a tool to reverse engineer performance and art. My first go at working questions were pretty clunky:
“How can I use lighting in my work to enhance story telling of the character’s plight?”
Not super juicy… BUT a way better orientation to work than just “Wow, that’s good! I wish I could make something like that!”
They taught us this to transform what were seeing in artistic product into something we could work with as crafts people.
Questions, by nature elicit responses. So by asking a question, you’ll get some sort of response. A quality question get’s a quality answer.
The difference between:
“Woah! How come I can’t make anything like that!”
To
“How can I make something like that?”
It’s subtle but extremely powerful. I’m amazed at how many times daily I use this skill.
Giving an ‘A’
What if you give an ‘A’ grade before someone ‘deserves’ it?
Benjamin Zander has a concept in his amazing book, The Art of Possibility called “giving an A”.
It’s named after the a grade he gives his students at the beginning of the semester BEFORE they have turned in any work.
He stands before the class at the start of the term and congratulates them all on their A grade. He asks them to write a letter to him, as if from the future, explaining all the reasons they deserved the A grade they had received.
I absolutely love this idea.
Ben encourages us to ‘give an A’ to people in all aspects of our life. Someone cut you off in traffic? The barista is rude to you? Your boss is short with you?
What would giving an A to these people look like?
It’s making the most generous assumption of them. It’s not asking “Why do they hate me!?”
But asking a much more generous question like “I wonder what difficulty they’re facing right now?”
A couple of things might happen.
Number 1, you stop the loop of negativity because you have a generous belief about them. They may well be snapped out of the pattern they’re in. Of course this isn’t guaranteed, but it opens the possibility for them to live into the best version of themselves.
Number 2 (and this one is pretty certain) you will feel much better about the interaction if you’ve given the person an ‘A’. If you generously assume that something awful and truly difficult must be going on for them to be like this, you have a lot more peace in your day. You may even get some of the lovely side effects of a ‘metta’ type meditation- loving kindness.
There’s zero downside to giving an A and infinite upside.
It’s my favourite thing.
Learning and playing for keeps
Psst, have you tried bubbling?
And have you ever wondered how we keep what we learn…?
A year and a half ago I learned a great new voice exercise from a friend called the ‘lax vox’ exercise. The singer in me is on a constant journey of improvement so I was excited to try something I’d never done before.
The exercise involves having a straw in some water and signing through the straw; in my house it’s affectionately known as bubbling.
I loved bubbling! Every morning before breakfast, I was bubbling musical scales and my favourite musical theatre songs. The exercise is designed to strengthen your voacal muscular coordination and breath use. And it worked!
I was thrilled because my vocal technique really had changed. My daily bubbling turned into every other day, then would pick up again when I’m performing or teaching, then it dropped off nearly completely. And this morning I could hear and feel some difficulty in my voice.
I realised I hadn’t bubbled in a long time and I’d fallen into a familiar trap: Just because I learned the skill once, it doesn’t mean its mine forever. It’s the equivalent of going for a run once and thinking I’ll be fit for life.
We get what we practice for.
When I was in the daily practice of bubbling, my voice was always getting stronger and so it’s obvious that that would drop away when my daily practice did.
So this morning I got bubblin’ and decided I’m playing for keeps.
Understanding the values of those you seek to change
It seems so obvious, doesn’t it? To associate a desired outcome with something that is highly important to us.
For instance, if we want to exercise regularly we’d do well to link that in our mind to what’s most important to us. Maybe, to be around for our grand kids and show them the family traditions. Exercise = Family connections.
Fundamentally, I guess, people value pleasurable experiences. And as long as those don’t harm us, these kinds of valuable experiences are great fuel for change and growth.
I know that if I make a kid laugh, I’m much more likely to affect change for them. They begin to associate the good feeling with the learning I deliver.
Link the desired growth (learning) to the value (feeling good).
The loop becomes this: elicit pleasurable experience, hook it to the learning. Elicit the experience, hook the learning. And so on and so fourth.
It’s not about silly fluff for a laughs sake, but it’s about creating deeply valuable and richly pleasurable learning experiences for our kids.
When kids link ultimate pleasure to learning and growth, then we’ve done our job.