It won’t always be that hard
Things that start off being difficult are usually things that are worth it in the long run.
Remembering that may help us to stick at it in the beginning.
Because it won’t always be that hard.
Do you remember something that’s easy to you know that once seemed impossible?
yeah, keep going.
If you don’t go you won’t know
The other day I booked some private rehearsal space to prepare for a show I’m about to do.
Because I was committed to only myself, I nearly didn’t go.
But I’m glad I did because I made some character discoveries that could only have happened with that quality of time, space and focus alone.
If I didn’t go, I may never have found that new thing (or it may have come up in another way too late)
The point is, if I didn’t go I wouldn’t know. I shudder to think of growth that I have missed out on because I didn’t show up to things like this.
There’s only one way to know- GO.
You don’t always have to be amazing
But being present is a pretty close second.
Striving, pushing or forcing an outcome can lead us down the opposite path to the one we want.
Being present doesn’t do this.
Questions like:
Who’s here now?
What needs my attention?
What’s real now?
What actually matters?
Will guide you along the way. The results may or may not be ‘amazing’
But they’ll be real and you’ll have been serving more than yourself.
And that’s pretty remarkable.
What’s useful and what’s hiding?
There’s a quiz that happens every day. It’s called the “are you hiding?” quiz.
Certain things present themselves throughout our day that pose as helpful but really they’re helping us only to hide from our real work.
Sorting your computer desktop is one. Planning how you will do something when you actually already know how to do it is another.
The big clue is if it’s a step removed from the scary thing- but it might still feel like it’s in the same area.
“I’ll just watch a few more videos on this first before I get going”.
If it’s scary and awkward and a bit unknown you’re probably not hiding.
Spend less time hiding.
Acting is a tapestry
I’m preparing for an upcoming play and part of that process is to examine every line with a fine tooth comb.
In doing this, I realised that so much of my job as an actor is this part: it’s having an intellectual, emotional, visual and three dimensional understanding of the words.
The words infer an entire world of this character. As I work with each one; taste it, see it, try it and live it… I’m building an intricate network of threads that will eventually make up the whole piece.
Acting is this tapestry. It’s not showing up on the day with all your might and pushing a performance out. It’s weaving it and investing time, energy and heart into it in the lead up.
Then when you show up, you merely wear the tapestry you’ve created.
But you can’t wear it elegantly without putting the time in on the front end.
I wonder where else we mistake giving our ‘all’ on the day with simply doing the work before hand and letting the complexity live?
Actually DOING your habits
Every week, I create a habit checklist of all the tasks I want to do across that week. I do it weekly rather than making one master list for the whole year, because life shifts a little each week, and refocusing regularly helps you stay honest about what actually matters right now. Things like a ten minute vocal warmup, a breathing exercise, or journaling.
For a while, I kept this checklist on a wall in my house, but I only did the habits when I happened to see it. I didn’t want it on the fridge either, since guests don’t need a tour of my personal habits. So this morning I found a better spot, the outside of my journal. Journaling is already one of the habits on my list, but it’s also something I reach for naturally anyway. Now, every time I pick up my journal, I see the checklist too, and I’m far more likely to actually do those small tasks, the kind that are easy to complete but just as easy to forget.
So here’s the question worth sitting with. What’s something you already do without thinking, and something you’d like to do consistently? And how could you link the two together, so one carries the other along with it?
Don’t compartmentalise
I just interviewed high performance acting coach Jon Hunter on my podcast. We were talking about the idea of living the lifestyle of an actor, as opposed to treating it like a career.
What he meant was, instead of compartmentalising the soft skills necessary to be an actor, things like empathy, creativity, listening, playfulness, and so on, instead of saving those for when we have a job to do, we just practice them in our everyday life.
I really love this idea. One, it’s a time saver, but also, the things we need to learn in order to be an actor make us better humans.
I think for many endeavors, creative or otherwise, that we pursue in our lives, there are things that, if we allow them to just exist in our everyday life, they can start to improve our experience of it.
So, what are the things you’re currently compartmentalising that you could actually just live in your daily life?
Conor’s two steps
My friend Conor Bowden made an entire film across the span of four years on his iPhone.
It’s finally finished and it’s about to be in the NZ International Film Festival.
I asked him what the secret to getting this kind of thing started.
He said step 1 is start before your ready.
Step 2 is ask for help from people you trust.
Both of these things are totally within our grasp- the thing in the way is probabaly fear.
What is the thing you most want to do in the world and how can you use Conor’s two steps to get there now?
Set the scene
What kind of evening do you want to have?
If I want a gentle evening, I make sure it looks and sounds like one.
For me that just means I make the lighting soft, I don’t move or speak too quickly and I make sure the volume of the house is low.
If you are ever having an experience you do not want to have, you need only look at your environment and see how it is contributing to the way you feel.
You can change your environment to change how you feel.
A walk doesn’t take very long
But you almost always are glad you went on it.
There are lots of things that are good for us that don’t take long that we seem to avoid.
And the things we’d rather do takes longer (like watching an episode of a tv show)
So would you rather take a shorter amount of time, feel reset and feel energised…
…or take a longer amount of time, doing something slightly easier but that doesn’t really serve you?