Defining and Playing Your physical Instrument

Your Instrument

 

Your physical body is the instrument you play as an actor.  You need to know how your instrument is designed to support your goal of being a successful actor.   Of course, you know your physical body is the instrument you play to create a character.  You also know that your instrument is controlled by your emotional and physical responses.  These emotional and physical responses are notes that can be played on the physical body similar to the notes of a musical instrument. 

Like the notes on a musical instrument, the emotional notes played on the actor’s instrument are objective. They are real and definable. The actor’s instrument is objective because the emotional notes are shared by the human species.  Therefore, you want to know how the emotional notes in your body allow a character to experience emotional differences in their reality of make believe. 

 

You want to understand:

your life energy

how to describe your life energy

how you support your life energy, and

how your life energy supports you. 

 

You also want to know what makes your life energy different from someone else’s energy.

When is your life energy working against you? 

When is your life energy working for you? 

What relationship does your life energy have on your conscious thoughts?

What relationship does your life energy have on your subconscious thoughts? 

What relationship does your life energy have on your physical body?

Your energy is an integral part in creating a talent for playing the emotional notes of the actor’s instrument. You want to know how these emotional notes can be identified in the body, and how these emotional notes can be practiced like the scales on a musical instrument. 

You want to know how to release the effects of the emotional notes in relationship to a scene.

You want to know how the French scenes affect the choice of the emotional note played.

You want to know how the rhythm of the French scene effects genre in relation to the emotional notes.

You want to know how the energy to maintain a character in make believe effects the emotional notes and the intensity of their play.

 

Energy and Talent

 

There is a direct relationship between energy and talent.  Talent is created by taking control of the life energy in your body.  There are things that you can do to keep your instrument in greater harmony with your energy, and how your life energy is maintained. You can be clear as to what effects your life energy.  You can know what keeps life energy connected to your vessel.  The duality of the human experience affects your life energy.

 

The duality of the human experience is the understanding of the physical you and the spiritual you.  One deals with the earth and the compounds that hold together while connected to the spiritual (life energy) side of you.  One is temporary (physical) and the other is eternal (life energy).  Learning how each functions,  both separately and collectively, is the journey of life.  Without this understanding duality narrows itself to the physical being good and evil.  By now you should be aware when your life energy sabotages your efforts.  You also should know by now how repetition is used to increase the power of your energy (focus).   It has a great deal to do with your personality connection.

The personality connection is your ability to use your personality, the way you present your views and relate in life based on your understanding of life energy: your part of all that is.  There is a connection between the uniqueness of your personality and the use of your life energy.  That is why you want to be aware of the connection between your life energy, your motivation, and your skills in order to get out of life what you truly desire.

 

Your personality connection is your social contract.

A social contract is an agreement you have made between those relationships in your life that allow for behavioral patterns good or bad.  It is the right of relationship even if the behavioral patterns are unacceptable.  Like in story telling if a social contract is breeched the relationship alters to a different social contract.  One should be aware of the liberties that are taken within a social contract and work to kept the social contract built on respect, honesty and trust. 

 

It is clear that the use of your life energy is the actor’s primary product.  It is important that you understand how life energy works and your responsibility to that life energy. Your basic responsibility is to understand how your life energy is used by you to create that place called Talent.  Uncontrolled energy happens when your life energy is sapped from you by fear and ignorance.  You don’t want to become a victim of this process.  It is how the audience feels about you that will dictate how they think about you.  This is achieved through the process of talent maintained by controlled energy.

Your Power to Heal

 

You use your controlled energy, through the process of talent, to radiate your life energy out of your body into the bodies of your audience.  That radiated energy is controlled by you through the physiological process of knowledge becoming muscle memory resulting in a place called Talent.   That physiological process forces your life energy out of its hiding place.  That hiding place is your muscle tissue.  Having been forced out and replaced by knowledge your energy then radiates out of you and blends with your audience’s energy giving them a sense of peace and comfort.  At that point for the actor the challenging part begins.  You must have the ability to sustain this talent position for the duration of the physical presentation of the character. 

The physical presentation is your make believe circumstance.  The make believe circumstance is when ever you and your character have blended.  And, the circumstance will last as long as this union of actor and character is needed to be in make believe. It is the use of your body/instrument to maintain emotional control of your social contract for the character. The more you practice the longer you can sustain the union of the actor and character.  The stronger your working talents, the longer you can sustain this energy transfer. 

Energy transfer is when your knowledge (for the script, your technique, your medium, your story responsibility, your interpretive skills, etc.) has been converted to muscle memory therefore allowing your life energy (which normally resides in your muscle tissue to defend the vessel irgo fight or flight) to radiate out of your body connecting to the life energies of your audience and giving them a feeling of peace.  This energy transfer (from protecting your body to moving to talent) is the gift the storyteller shares with his audience.  It is powerful, learnable and divine.  The longer you can sustain the transfer the more effectively you can fulfill the ultimate goal of the storyteller; to release your audience from their pain with your life energy and give them access to their own healing powers. 

This is the actor’s divine gift.  That gift is the ability to caress the audience’s life energy with the actor’s energy (through fact based talent) and give the audience a feeling of safety; a feeling of once again being part of All That Is.   That gift is diverting the individual audience member’s innate energy responsibility on the earthly plane from defense to comfort, from fight and run to calm.  The longer you can sustain the transfer (through repetition of knowledge) the more effectively you can fulfill the ultimate goal of the storyteller;  to release your audience from their pain with your life energy and give the audience access to their own healing powers.

 

By allowing the audience member to release their own healing powers you have given them their birthright to the promise of All That Is. That innate life energy responsibility of each audience member, as members of the human race, is to protect their individual vessel by keeping their life energy in that fight and run state.  It is the body’s primitive survival instinct that all members of the human species share.

When the individual audience member is in his normal fight and run position his senses are activated. This causes the audience member to constantly evaluate every second that passes as possible danger.  This results in his brain being under a constant barrage of thoughts (internal dialogue), often painful, and resulting actions.  Your ability, in talent, is to free your audience’s life energy from their overzealous defense system. While your life energy comforts their life energy you allow their brains to redirect its focus, not on their pain and suffering, but on their joy and excitement for life. 

 

It is during this magical and majestic state the actor has given his audience a respite from their pain. The actor, with the control of his life energy through talent, has put the audience’s life energy at a temporary state of peace.  In that state of peace the audience member will use their subconscious power to access the healing power of their life energy.  This redirection of their life energy can literally heal their physical body from the ravages of disease, real and imagined.

 

Then, and only then, the actor achieves the true power of story telling.  The actor has the power to use his gifts, talents and vulnerability to allow storytelling to continue to be the oldest form of healing known to man.  The actor then has the ability to give his audience the power and freedom to heal themselves. 

 

Energy and Purpose

Let’s explore your company’s product… energy. Let’s understand the actor’s instrument.  Let’s understand the emotional notes that must be played. This understanding must be in place so the craft of acting has an objective base by which art can find its path. We know that when your life energy no longer resides in the body it dies and the body can then return to the dust of the earth.  The circle of physical life is complete.

You may not think of that very often but it’s certainly indicates the importance of your life energy while you occupy time and space in the physical form.  Many believe that life energy is part of all the energy of the universe.  It is part of All That Is.  While in your present physical form your energy is literally separated from the whole.  Like the metaphor of storytelling, all life energies are searching for a feeling of going home. We are all searching for a feeling of that reconnection to All That Is.

Mythology is the basis of storytelling as we know it. Mythology is an allegorical or figurative narrative to explain the use of myth (legend) to support the power of metaphor.  The mythological idea of storytelling has an everyman on his journey to get home.  Home, metaphorically through mythology, is the concept of Heaven.   The Everyman must face obstacles.  In the purest form these obstacles are represented as the devil (a physical manifestation of everyman’s fear) and are based on selfishness rather than love.  These obstacles demand the everyman make choices that are difficult for his hope for the future: heaven.   The choices are difficult because choosing the correct one often requires everyman to be unselfish or to sacrifice.    Everyman’s battle is always between good and evil.  The challenge of the battle is always for heaven or hell.

In storytelling we metaphorically label this circumstance as the Devil tempting everyman with earthly pleasures.  Everyman’s sins could be his bad choices to life obstacles.  All solid storytelling puts Everyman against the obstacles of the earth (everyman’s fears) on his journey through life.  The battle is between good and evil, the immediate or the collective, the body and the soul. 

 

Storytelling traditionally begins by placing Everyman in his/her natural habitat. The  natural habitat is the life circumstance of an everyman character before he/she is set on a journey.  It constitutes the living style, the work ethic, the relationships (and rights of), the way of living.  It clarifies the everyman intellectually, socially, financially, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. It defines the uniqueness of personality in relation to their life energy.  It defines everyman as to character, conviction and responsibility.  The natural habitat allows the audience to understand the impact the journey of the story will have on the everyman’s choices. The choices will lead everyman to be confronted by a fear (metaphorically the Devil) thereby telling a story. 

The Devil is also known as the antagonist or the dragon. Regardless of the name, they are all a physical manifestation of everyman’s fear.  A physical manifestation is when a physical being is used to represent an emotional reality for a character in story telling.  There are three kinds of physical manifestations in a story.  There is the everyman who is the physical manifestation for the metaphor of the story.  There is the antagonist who is the physical manifestation of everyman’s fear defining the metaphor of the story and there is the bird who is a physical manifestation defining the metaphor for everyman’s hope for the future.  These characters (physical manifestations) allow for the metaphor of a story to become universal as well as individual.

A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.  Storytelling uses metaphor to excite the imagination and personalize the power of a story.  When everyman sets out on his journey to fight that fear, metaphorically represented through the telling of the story, he comes to that critical point where all his abilities and strengths have been depleted and his fate seems unavoidable.  

At this point the universe, metaphorically known as All That Is, sends a character known as the Bird.  The Bird is a physical manifestation of everyman’s hope for the future. 

 

In storytelling the Everyman, flawed as he may be, is in truth, pure of heart for he comes from All That Is.  She is entitled to the power and grace of the universal flow of energy and all the rights that come with it.  When Everyman confronts and conquers his fear, with the help of his bird, he will grow spiritually while in the physical form.  Like the characters you will play, your life energy is your part of the energy of the universe and your vessel, your body, is the means by which the life energy will be challenged and will evolve.  In life you will experience being the everyman of your life.  You will experience being the bird in the lives of selected others.  And, you will unfortunately find yourself being the devil (dragon, antagonist) to others.  It is life.  And, like storytelling, we are all part of it.

 

Your Energy

 

One could describe your life energy as a soul created by All That Is.  One could be bound by religious doctrines that give a literal meaning for heaven and hell.  Perhaps you do.  Life energy is what separates the living from the dead.  Life energy, unlike the body, is eternal.  It is what we do with it while it is incased in the human vessel that defines its position with All That Is. 

 

All people have the capacity to be decent caring human beings. Regardless of philosophy or religious conviction all actors share the desire to be successful storytellers.  The actor wants to be a part of the profession that has the power to give peace and physical comfort to anyone regardless of religion, personal beliefs or doctrines of limitation.  Tthe fact that you are pursuing an acting career indicates that there is a drive within you that makes your life energy and your need to control it a necessary responsibility. 

 

Energy exists.  It is real.  It is what we recreate through storytelling.  The power of this life energy and its relationship to your god-self and your physical-being self are going to be the center of all your obstacles and diversions.  It is your life energy and the battle between your spiritual self and your physical self that will be the focus of your journey and the determination of your destiny.   Support your life energy and your life energy will support you.  You support your life energy by accepting its dual responsibility.  You must reach an agreement with yourself to take care of the vessel (body) for its housing of your current life energy.  If not, your life energy cannot support your desire to rise above the primitive needs of the animal.  It can not explore the experiences, safety and exhilaration of the universal flow of energy and your ability to connect to it. 

 

Your life energy is different in its sameness from anyone else’s.  The difference of sameness is the understanding that each human being who has ever lived or who will ever live will always be different.  They will be different because of the impact the French Scenes of their lives have made them different.  The combination of life energies and the impact of each will result in no two individuals every being the same.  The internal dialogue of their minds will always impact them differently as to the beliefs that they accept resulting in fear and/or acceptance. 

 

It is the sameness of the human species that make the differences so unique and miraculous.  This is also what makes one story different from another. 

 

According to George Polti, the 19^th century French scholar, there are only 36 dramatic situations from which all stories can be constructed.  The reason there are infinite stories is the same reason you are different from anyone else.  The sequence of events or the French Scenes of the character’s life make the story different.  Even if the dramatic situation is the same, the story will be different. 

 

If your life energy has been defocused and directed toward unnecessary defense systems you may find your ability to harness your life energy for optimistic efforts difficult.  Even if taking control of your life energy, in your quest to be a successful actor, is difficult it is far from impossible.  The effort you are now making is a clear indicator that you desire change. Your determination for knowledge is being supported by a conscious dedication and, the time structured discipline, to make it happen. 

 

Energy Against You

 

Life apathy is when your life energy is working against you and you can not get motivated.  It happens when you have found yourself being bombarded with “What’s the use” or any other thought that has kept your life energy away from your efforts. In order to activate the life apathy reversal process you want to recall what was going on with you when your life energy was working for you.  Very often you may find that you do not give gratitude and open appreciation to your life energy when you’re getting things done and your motivation seems undisturbed.  That might indicate that you are not letting yourself be aware when your energy is working for you. 

 

You may think that the efforts you are making and the accomplishments triggered by motivation are not note worthy.

 

Allow yourself pride of these seemingly effortless achievements. If not, it could effect your ability to re-create those feelinhgs when the pendulum swings the other way.  Know how it feels when your life energy is working for you so you know the difference when your energy is working against you. 

 

Note: Change will always come from physical placement and therefore internal dialogue disruption.

 

Thought Process

 

Debilitating thoughts are the negative thoughts that run through your head (internal dialogue).  These thoughts are not the reason that your energy is not under your control.  No matter what the debilitating thoughts might be, instantly your focus could be shifted to something else that appears more urgent or important.  You have the power to make that change.  You only need to learn how to activate it effectively. 

 

Disempowering debilitating thoughts must come from the knowledge you acquire about your body.  Acknowledge how your body uses your life energy to protect itself and then be willing to practice the physical changes you make as you take control of your energy for the purpose of talent. 

 

You want to understand your life energy and its relationship to your subconscious thoughts. 

 

Acknowledge how the communication between the two takes place.  

 

Accept the all knowing information that is stored in the subconscious mind.

 

Use that information so it effects your conscious decisions and focus. 

 

Take control of your understanding of your right to ask, believe and receive. 

 

Look at the amount of time you spend with your conscious mind.  Almost every waking moment is spent with some kind of dialogue going on in your head.  If you take the time to listen to thi internal dialogue rather than act on it emotionally you would realize that most of it is valueless and judgmentally based.  As a result you are evaluating any and everything based on the world according to you.  This may be coming from your unconscious mind.  Your unconscious mind, not your subconcious mind, could be overriding your conscious thoughts.  As a result you are evaluating any and everything based on the world according to that frightened little you that that we all carry inside. 

 

These uncontrolled thoughts do not reflect what you would like to think of as your true beliefs.  Often these thoughts may are laced with criticisms, prejudice, and bigotry. You do not want these thoughts to be part of your life or your thinking process. 

 

To become aware of our unconscious mind is to become aware of the thoughts underneath our conscious thoughts will empower your focus.  This awareness begins by understanding that the world is often not based on language and logic.  It is often based on feelings and fear.  Your thoughts can then become instinct based.  Your thoughts may then expose beliefs in relation to physical or emotional defense by creating illogical thoughts.  This allows the body to take control of your energy and use it against you.

 

It is the analyzing of these illogical thoughts (internal dialogue) that will tell you what beliefs your defense system uses to commandeer your energy to protect the vessel. 

 

These beliefs reverse the process talent uses in relation to your muscle tissue.  Talent takes knowledge and turns it into electrical energy through repetition.  Therefore, your brain is bypassed when the body is taken to the talent position.  It is done with the feeling of basemax™ (discussed later.).  When the unconscious mind (not controlled) dictates responses it by-passes the logical thought process of the mind and creates illogical responses supported only by fear and doubt.  The life energy is locked inside the muscle tissue and used for physical and emotional justification of bad behavior.  These are known as muscle based beliefs (buttons).  Muscle based beliefs are beliefs that can bypass the brain because they have become so accepted by the frightened you that they are not allowed to be processed for approval by the brain.  These muscle based beliefs can be recognized by acknowledging the repetition of bad behavior or unhappy thoughts.

 

Muscle Based Beliefs

 

These muscle based beliefs were instilled in you from the earliest of childhood.  They may need to be reprogrammed and redirected.  There are some who believe that many defensive and negative beliefs can actually be genetically coded into us from our parents.  Recognize the thoughts and beliefs you do not claim. Erase them from your unconcious mind.  You need to know where these memories live.  They can be changed with physical actions with positive efforts and results. Understand the relationship your life energy has to your physical body.  It will help you make sure you are not being manipulated by your body. 

 

To recap: your body uses your life energy to protect the vessel.  It wants to have the power to fight or run based on the circumstances for survival.   When this instinctive based decision is activated the responses are fast and furious.  Logic is bypassed, as is the mind’s effort to feed the brain the information that will give it control. 

 

Without your total understanding of how the life energy is used by the body, you will find yourself at the mercy of physical responses to justify themselves with emotional belief based thoughts.  Once this process has taken place it is very difficult to alter its course.  That is, unless you use the process for creating talent.  This talent process is done by putting the knowledge into repetition so that the awareness of the state becomes a switch that allows you to turn off these negative responses as quickly as they come.

 

I hope all is well in your life,

Have a joyous holiday season and, remember,

I wish you well.

Russ

Your Excuses Pinpoint Your Fears

Excuses Expose Fear

You may see a pattern of excuses that appear in the big seven areas of your life.  It is not easy to look at yourself this objectively.  By employing the process of observation you will be able to avoid letting you use patterns of behavior that have been accepted by you for so long that they have become habits.  You may have created habits for avoiding, facing or acknowledging specific fears.  Yet, you can see by the excuses you use what causes fear of in you.  Acknowledge the common denominators that appear in your efforts to avoid an action, to avoid a situation, or to avoid a confrontation.  Acknowledge the physical manifestations that indicate fear in you. 

You may get restless.  Your palms may sweat.  You may get a headache.  You may get depressed.  You may become self deprecating.  You may become hostile.  You may lash out at those closest to you.  You may even try to justify the feelings of being anxious and agitated on other people or situations.  You may find non-important situations become the focus of your frustration.

You need to recognize these patterns as alarms to activate awareness.

You know what your body feels like when you are on the verge of behaving badly.  Most of the things you do to justify your right to behave badly come from fear manifesting itself in you.  You can acknowledge the feeling as an indicator, an alarm, if you will.  You can use the alarm to let you know that there is an area of your life that is being controlled by fear. The fear could be manipulating your behavioral patterns and defocusing you from going after the real reason for your behavior.  This is why you want to make your fears specific so they cannot manipulate your desire to be a successful professional actor as well as a successful human being.  Use these feeling to discover what causes fear to take control of your body. 

With that knowledge you have the ability to seek out the true reason for your fear.  Right now you may be using your short temper, your irritation with a relationship, your feeling of being betrayed, or your past pains as the reason your body takes on its discomfort.  Accept the fact that these feelings, and resulting thoughts, are activated to avoid discovering what you really fear. You can use this alarm, as I call it, to discover a way to face what really frightens you.

Real or Imagined

Discover the specifics of your life fears.  The fear could be meeting new people.  It could be self worth.  It could be thinking others know things you don’t.  It could be thinking you are being judged by a set of rules you don’t understand.  Once you find a specific fear origin you can find the knowledge necessary to disempower that fear circumstance.  You can create the actions needed to put the new knowledge into physical repetition allowing that knowledge to move into that place called Talent.  If you can recognize how fear controls you then you can work to change that control. 

Fear is a genuine emotional response activated to initiate the hormones and impulses necessary for your fight or flight mechanism to work. 

It will protect you from real harm if you know how to recognize it.   You want to use the instincts that it awakens to separate real danger from imagined danger.   You want to avoid using this human physical protection device to activate emotional or belief concepts that are used to protect the vessel from real danger by the imagined danger of fear.  Once activated the fight and flight defense system releases all sorts of endorphins and chemical secretions needed to give the body additional power and response time.  If these chemicals are not burned off by the body’s actual need for fight or run actions, they will turn on the body itself in their effort to be used.  Sudden outbursts of anger or inappropriate physical behavior may result. Behaving badly will be the result.   You can regain control, both physically and mentally, once you recognize there is no real danger.  You can refuse to mislabel the feeling, or attach it to a belief that can only result in behavior you do not wish. 

Once you recognize the source of a fear you can begin to seek the knowledge needed to disempower it.  Take success for instance.  You know that success means the ability to achieve recognizable achievements in a given area.  Therefore, you want to limit yourself from using general terms for specific areas.  You can not have a fear of success.  That would mean you have never achieved any recognizable talents in any area of your life.  And, you know that is not true.  Understand the areas of your life where you are successful, such as being a friend, a mate, a son or daughter, a swimmer, a cook etc.  Clarify what made these areas successful for you. 

You can then use the same techniques to achieve success in other areas that you will need in your quest to be a successful professional actor.  Using the success you have achieved in any other of the big seven areas of your life will guide you to the other successes you desire.  It will help you isolate specific areas of fear that may be related to success. 

The Pitfalls

You should also be prepared for possible pitfalls when success comes your way.  Pitfalls are hidden or not easily recognized dangers or difficulties.  Any unrecognized fear that causes you worry is a possible pitfall.  The pitfalls can be attitudes such as arrogance, lack of respect, poor work ethics, lack of physical endurance, disloyalty and other possible behavioral problems that may appear because you have not prepared yourself for their possibility.  Pitfalls may cause you to break the three major rules of responsibility for the actor: showing up on time, knowing your lines, and not causing trouble.

If you have not gotten a handle on your talents that are reaping financial rewards for you, then you could run the risk of letting your ego or self destructive mechanism reverse your financial situation. (For clarity, the opposite of ego is confidence.)  You might want to address this now. 

One of the reasons you may not have achieved your desires in this acting career may be a subconscious concern or fear that these behavioral patterns could happen to you.  The number of stories of actors who have achieved a certain, perhaps even monumental, level of success and then self-destruct is legendary.  You have heard the stories all your life.  The stories have been used by people you love and respect to discourage you from pursuing an acting career.  Fears of gloom and doom may have been instilled in you about the dangers of success in the entertainment business. You may have suppressed them in order to pursue this career. 

Because these fears may have been suppressed the core reality of them could be ignored.  The knowledge necessary to keep this scenario from happening to you may not come to your conscious mind.  For many aspiring actors these hidden fears can be used to keep them from being able to break through the non-action phase in order to achieve success in the acting field.  Those who do break through with the actions necessary to achieve success could be vulnerable to becoming victims of the success pitfalls because they never gained the knowledge necessary to protect them from those pitfalls. 

Understand fear as a concept and look for the specific sources of fear rather than the generalized blanket thought as fear of failure, fear of success and/or fear of rejection etc.  You know that for every action there is an equal reaction.  Therefore, if the action is executed without clarity of purpose then the reaction may not be understood.

Rejection Experience

I have talked about rejection and how important it is to change your perception of it from the negative to the positive.  You know that rejection experiences during the formidable years of your life may have left deep scars.  These scares may have created dedicated efforts to avoid the rejection scenario at all costs.  The power of understanding rejection lies in your belief in your abilities.  It also lies in your expectation of the circumstances that could lead to an interpretation of rejection.  Be sure that your avenues for interpreting rejection are clear.  The avenue may be the interview.  It may be the audition.   It may be sending out a picture and resume. 

Know what kind of rejections you fear.  Be specific about the reason why you fear you might be rejected. 

You may fear the buyer will reject your ability to go to make believe.  You may fear the buyer will reject your look, your style, your personality, your choice of clothing, your voice or your body.  Don’t give the person holding the interview or audition the power to undermine your right to be an actor.  Your fear of rejection may be your fear of ability.  If your talent is in question to you then you must get honest and open evaluations from those qualified to give their opinions on your abilities. 

There must be no doubts in your mind that you are an actor.  Waiting for someone who is hiring to validate your ability as an actor makes a rejection interpretation all the more real to you.  The blanket fear of rejection may only be a smokescreen for not having complete confidence in yourself and your abilities.  Without that confidence you will always run the risk of interpreting not getting the job as rejection.  As I discussed in an earlier lesson, all auditions and interviews are part of the “no” responses required to get to the “yes” responses.  You can’t have one without the other.  But this is based on the assumption that you believe in your acting ability and work on your skills daily. 

Type

Type is the way the actor is classified for casting purposes. One of the problems you may have in your effort to change your circumstance in relation to becoming a working actor may be not having a clear picture of what you are marketing as to type.  Many people may wish to be a different type from what they are.  This wishful thinking is not going to make it so.  Not being clear about your type may be one of the reasons for this fear state.  The types include lead, character lead, character supporting, supporting falling within the age categories of juvenal, adult and mature.

It is important that you clarify your type to your satisfaction and your acceptance in order to remove a primary area of fear activation.  Make sure that you review the lesson on type and joyfully clarify your type based on look and personality.  Remember, the formula for creating a character (A + B = C) has to be completely understood by you.  You need to know everything about the “A”, the actor.  That’s you.  That includes your look, style, presentation, personality, point of reference and adaptability.  You need to know everything about how to interpret “B”, the book.  That’s the script.  Know how to analyze it in relation to the written word, the medium, the director’s vision and the other collaborators. You need to be able to blend both to create the “C”, a character that is free to live in make believe.  The only way the character will be free to do that is if the actor has done all his work. 

Your character cannot exist if the words are not learned, blocking and director’s concepts are not integrated into the character’s reality, and your repetitions have placed that knowledge into muscle memory so the talent for the character has become a reality.  And, as you know, your pursuit of a successful acting career cannot be based on the belief that if you achieve this you would find happiness.  This approach should be reversed.  Don’t ever forget to allow yourself to be happy and joyful that you have the ability and talent to pursue this business.  Because, you cannot be happy if you are constantly finding yourself in a fear state without a clear understanding of what is causing it.

 
Tantrums as Defense

Your tantrums may be used to help you defend yourself against bad behavior.  This may seem a bit strange but it is a technique to help empower you.  As you know my desire is to clarify fear as a state.  A tantrum  is a state that is activated by a sense of unknowing.  With focus and perception that state can be attach to an unrelated, yet more manageable circumstance. 

You could select that manageable circumstance from any of the big seven areas of your life.  Recognize when you find yourself “behaving badly” so you can stop that behavioral pattern and explore what you are avoiding in the professional area of your life and why.  You do not want to allow yourself to accept upsets and tantrums as part of your defense mechanism.  The upsets are not meant to hurt you, even if that appears to be the result.  The upsets are tantrums designed by your unconscious brain to defend you.   You want tantrums to be eradicated before they become a physical manifestation.  The need for defense may only be an illusion created by the misuse of your body’s defense system for an emotional defense.  When you recognize this misuse of your defenses you will be able to catch yourself doing it. Allow that knowledge to look at the real issues of your life’s goals. 

Explore the issues that are standing in the way of your goals.  In doing so you may find out interesting possibilities.

It may be the idea of success that is standing in your way in relation to your conscious and subconscious belief systems.  It may be the idea of failure in relation to your conscious and subconscious belief systems.  It may be the idea of rejection in relation to your conscious and subconscious belief systems.  An idea should not be misread as a reality.  An idea is a possibility that can only become reality by action and effort.  You do not want fear to become the action and the effort. 

Imagine the excitement of not being controlled by your misused defense system. You can make sure of this by acknowledging your behavioral patterns that are not supportive of your efforts. Once you do this you can begin to observe yourself and your fears. 

Take control of all the situations that happen in your life. It is possible to override any belief based ideas that are lead by a fear.  You can do this by working on mastering your fate by disempowering your internal sabotage mechanisms.  Acknowledge those bursts of physical pain known as passion.  Do not attach that physical passion to a belief that can result in a position of defense.  Take that moment and use the feeling to activate a mental periscope.  Search around your mind for that momentary thought wherein lays the specific cause of your state of fear.  That specific fear, once recognized, will result in personal growth and empowerment.

Defining Success If Fear were not an Issue

You need to know if your expectations of success are realistic, because, you don’t want to make success too hard to achieve. Success is different for different people.  Some people make their rules for success so demanding that they never truly experience it no matter how successful they may appear to others.  Enjoy your path to a successful acting career. Allow yourself levels of success as you move toward your acceptable idea of success.  Allow yourself to enjoy the lower-level jobs as you work your way up to the bigger acting jobs.  Allow yourself to separate the business into the two different categories; the story telling business and the story moving business. 

Remember, you want to recognize the difference in the two businesses as to their approach and expectation.  You want to understand the value of the smaller jobs so you can appreciate the value of the larger ones.  Do not let them be overvalued or undervalued but valued for what they are.  They are the path to your desired level of success.  They can be used as a guide and a level of comparison to the paths of other successful performers. If you can answer the following questions you know what you would need to be called successful as a professional actor. 

 

How much money do you feel you must make?  

What kind of home would you have to have?

What could be considered enough for you to feel successful as an actor? 

What kind of jobs would you have to get? 

What kind of people would you have to know? 

What would the other major areas of your life include?

What about the other major areas of your life?

What would constitute success in each of these? 

What things do you think must happen in your professional life for you to classify yourself as a failure? 

What would you be basing that failure on? 

What about the other major areas of your life?   

What would constitute failure in your financial life, your personal life, your physical life, your spiritual life, your intellectual life and emotional life?

These are questions you may want to answer.  By not addressing these questions you may be allowing personal fears to lurk in the shadows of your subconscious.  Individual fears will always find ways to pull you into the shadows of their power.  Do not let this happen.  Fears that could lead to perceived failure have to be taken on one by one.  However, the repetition of your efforts to do this will give you a Talent to recognize and disempower a fear.  You can never remove all fear from your life.   There will always be something that comes into your life that you do not understand.  And, this lack of understanding can attach itself to your fear emotions and make every effort to pull you from the light.  Don’t let it happen. 

It is not the impact that fear has on you that must be addressed.  It is the speed with which you can recognize the feeling of fear in you and reverse the process.  Each specific fear , in truth, is a path way to your success.  Nurture them as clues to the answers you seek in your journey through life. The fear can bring to you a negative flow of vibration by the law of attraction for as long as you allow it to hold you.  That is why you want to release the fear as quickly as possible.  You want that energy flow to be positive, the vibrations to be on a frequency of success and the law of attraction working in your favor.

Failure as a Concept

I hope you have no areas of your life where you believe you are a failure.  I hope you recognize that failure is only a word used to discourage action.  Don’t forget, as long as you have breath in your body you are in the game of life.  So don’t let the experiences you have had to date be called failures.  They are experiences.  They are just how the process of turning experiences into good judgment and success takes place.  Make sure the concepts you understand for success, failure, and rejection are concepts that work for you.  Don’t live someone else’s ideas.  Allow yourself the benefit of the doubt.  Remember, concepts are ideas that have manifested as beliefs or rules you follow. They are personal recipes for any given circumstance in your life. Therefore, set rules that work for you, not rules that defeat you before you start. 

Know that the only way you can fail at anything is to give up.  The only way to really fail is to quit.  And, don’t mistake change as quitting.  Change is part of the process of your personal success.  Anytime you learn from an experience has been a success.  Don’t allow yourself to be so disappointed by the desired outcome that you lose sight of the knowledge of the experience.  You are responsible for working for what you want in your life. 

An Idea

How would you approach an acting career if you could not fail?  Would you be doing anything differently than you are doing?  Of course you would.  You wouldn’t let the feelings and thoughts of failure stop you because you would know that these thoughts are not real.  You would know they are not real because you can’t fail.   That is what perseverance and desire are all about.  Swimmers swim, every day.  Dancers dance, every day.  Performance related careers require that they are practiced every day.  Talents must be maintained at peak energy performance level.  Actors must act, every day. If you do not set a certain amount of time each day to act there is something missing in your process.  Something inside of you may be saying you are never really going to need these abilities.  They could be fears that are not acknowledged.  Without defining these fears you cannot begin to change them.  Without change you may not realize your desire to be a successful professional actor.

Playing Your Hand

Life must be enjoyed.  Fulfilling your destiny is about the cards you were dealt and the ability to play your hand.  No matter how many people you may believe were dealt better cards than you, the truth remains that there are always enough cards in every hand to create a combination for the win.  Fear is either going to keep you out of the game or you are going to realize it is one of the major clues to winning the game.  Fear, clarified to its specific cause, can guide you to a successful journey through life.  It is your subconscious that may ultimately determine your success.  But, your subconscious will support you only if you instruct it.  And, those instructions come from action not thoughts. 

Your actions of learning, your actions of taking that knowledge and putting it into physical repetition resulting in muscle memory, are how the subconscious is put under your control.  If you could free yourself from the bondage of fear your life would be different.   If you could free yourself from the manipulation of fear over your actions your life would be different.  Recognize that fear being activated in your body can be used to guide you to the areas of your life that must be explored and empowered.  Discover a way to use fear activation as an alarm to alert you of your hidden knowledge voids and your life will be different.  Learn that fear activation not associated with real physical danger can be stopped.  Use the power of your spiritual Mind to overcome the body’s primitive effort to survive.  Divert your life energy from the fight and run position and employ that life energy to move you to your life’s destiny and your life will be different.  Your life would be different because you have control over it.  You have control over your feelings and your thoughts. 

Experiences Make Success

It will take a dedicated effort on your part to do what is necessary to achieve the talents needed to get to where you want to be.  People who have become major successes in their professions have had to follow the same process.  There will always be a series of apparent failures before success manifests itself.  So, the failures are not failures, they are steps.  Each step leads you closer to the level you wish to reach. 

To classify an effort as a failure only causes you to take a step back with each two steps forward.  If you didn’t call the steps failures you would not lose a step with each experience to your destination.  You do yourself harm by attaching too much disappointment or self criticism to a circumstance that need take place for success to happen.  Certain steps need to occur so that desired knowledge is put into place for the expected success to happen. Allow yourself the appreciation of the experience when the steps, you call failure, happen.  Remember, if you allow the steps to be viewed as failures you increase the odds that you will give up. You may not take any more steps toward your goal.  The talents that you were striving for may not be.  The physical part of your being will rejoice in this decision. It will feel it has defeated the spirit’s effort to redirect your life energy from survival to enlightenment. 

Breaking the Wild Horse

The effort to create any talent is analogous to breaking a wild horse.  The wild horse will buck and fight you all the way until suddenly the horse realizes that you are not going to get off his back.  The horse at a certain moment realizes you are going to stay on him no matter how hard he fights for control.  At that very moment the wild horse will stop his fight and become one with the rider.  That is what will happen with your body as it fights to keep your life energy for survival.  Once the body realizes that you are not going to stop, once your body realizes that no distraction or defeat, no step you take is going to stop your efforts, your body will submit to you.  You have achieved a talent.  You will now be in a position to use that new talent to pursue your goals.

Obstacles Are Life

You can not let the idea of rejection, failure or fear itself be used against you by you.  All things worth achieving are going to have a path filled with obstacles.  Those obstacles are called life’s journey. They all come to pass if you acknowledge their right to exist.  Once that right has been acknowledged you will find that many of them will just go away on their own.  Life is not meant to defeat you.  Life is meant to excite you, to challenge you and to inspire you.  If the obstacles defeat you then you miss out on the joy of being alive.  It is not the number of obstacles, or the seemingly insurmountable challenge of the obstacles, that are the issue.  The issue lies in your perception of the obstacle’s power over you. 

It is in your willingness to disempower its effects by recognizing the obstacles for what they are.  It is human to feel fear. It is human to think about rejection.  It is human to experience disappointment and perceived failure.  But, it is also human to overcome these obstacles and garner out of life the thrill of living it. 

Know what being thin-skinned means.  Evaluate the various areas of your life.  See how thin-skinned you may be.  Understand what being thin skinned means to your life goals.  Discover what causes you to become thin-skinned in those areas. Acknowledge it and disempower the feelings. The acting profession may appear to require you to be extremely sensitive in order to be affective in creating characters.  This should not be misinterpreted.  Being sensitive should not allow you to be thin-skinned.  Being sensitive to others and compassionate to the needs of those around you is not dependent on being so sensitive to your own ego that you use the slightest criticism as an excuse to get off the horse.  You have the power to refuse hurtful comments or efforts by others to divert you from your goals. 

To be thin-skinned means you have allowed others to instill in you a control device that demands you help them hurt you.  Remove that device.  This is not a gentle business.  It is not a sweet business. Very few, if any, businesses are.  If you desire to become a contender you must eliminate those distracted thoughts and fears that keep you on the bench rather than on the playing field.  When you are in the game you can expect a few scratches and bruises.  They hopefully will not kill you.  And, those scratches and bruises can be worn with great pride.  Fear is nothing but the control device of your vessel in life.  And, when fear is real your five senses will let you know. 

 

Have a wonderful week and know that the power of your success can be found in your willingness to address the fears (lack of knowledge) that reside in your mind.

 

I wish you well,

Russ 

Using Your Fears to find Your Path

Fear 

Fear is an unpleasant and strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.  Fear is to consider or expect with alarm.  Fear is often caused by the lack of knowledge and the ability to go to a physical place of control.  Fear is a feeling that is translated into an internal dialogue of confusion and doubt.  Fear causes the body to be in a fight and run state and therefore on a negative frequency level.  In fear the body attracts "like" negative energy.   It is the law of attraction.  Fear is either real or imagined.  Fear as a generic term is often in odds with being in fear of something that you do not understand as apposed to being in actual harms way. 

Fear of is the reverse of talent for and can be reversed through the formula for talent.  The formula for talent is knowledge plus repetition equals Talent, therefore, the lack of knowledge without the ability for repletion supports fear of.  It is important to know how to translate the thoughts of confusion and anxiety to a specific fear.  Without having a specific knowledge of what you are in fear of then fear itself can dominate your inability to action.  You could have a fear of success, a fear of failure, and/or a fear of rejection.  You want to be very clear as to what causes fear in you.  You want to know what fear is to you. 

You want to acknowledge how fear works for you as well as against you.  You want to acknowledge how you can control fear and reverse its effects on you.  You want to know what you need to know about fear and success.  And, you want to know what you believe about the reasons someone is successful in spite of fear.  I want you to understand the meaning of fear of success.  I want you to know how to evaluate success in the right perspective.  I want you to know how to use the knowledge of fear to change your financial situation.  I want you to define fear in relation to the big seven areas of your life.  And, I want you to know what the pitfalls of fear are and why fear is used against you. 

You’ll do this by understand the meaning of rejection. You’ll find the techniques that work for you in your quest to change the circumstances of rejection in your life.  You’ve done it before.  What you want to do is remember what you did to overcome fear in the past.  Remember, fear is the opposite of Talent.  Fear is the lack of knowledge and the ability to go to a physical place of control.  You can now do this. 

I want you to prepare yourself for the joy of the journey.  I want you to come up with ways to ensure you happily achieve your goals rather than achieve goals in hopes of happiness.  You may have heard the expression, “fear of success”.  For a long time I took the position fear of success was impossible.  Why would I fear success?  What was there about success that could be feared?  I mean, if I were successful I would be respected, right?  If I were successful I would be loved, right?  If I were successful I would be happy, right?  These are the things I had programmed myself to believe.  “I can not look at success as something that I do not have. If so, I might find myself thinking, ‘If I’m not successful then I must be unsuccessful’.”   Success, therefore, is a perception. 

You may be basing success on money.  This perception should be changed.  You need to be very specific when you are talking or thinking about success or failure in relation to the human experience.  Many people are successful in some areas of their life and not successful in others.  There are some areas of success that need to be achieved in order to sustain one’s self-worth.  You want to acknowledge and explore these areas. 

A successful relationship, for example, means you have someone in your life who you share love, respect, loyalty, life experiences, up’s, down’s and all things in between.  If you want a relationship and do not have one, the reason may lie in your fear of them.  It could be “fear of commitment”, “fear of intimacy”, or “fear of losing your independence”.  In any case, there is a reason for the fear and there is a way to take control of the fear.  Recognizing the fear is the first step… and perhaps, the hardest.  As you seek out a successful relationship you may find that the process opens up an endless list of clichés that explain, with back seat psychiatry, the possible reasons why you don’t have a relationship or you don’t have a successful relationship.

Clichés

Many of the clichés you hear about fear of success, fear of failure and fear of rejection are annoyingly simplistic.  “Nothing in the world is beyond the reach of every man.”  “Success is totally up to you.”  “You hold the power of financial abundance in your hands.”  “You are what you want to be.”  There are thousands of clichés. You can take a cliché and translate it so that the simplistic answer can be explained in complete detail.  Ironically, the answers to most fears are found in clichés.  Acknowledge the possibility that clichés are solutions.  Find as complete a list of clichés regarding a particular subject as you can.   Remember, a cliché is created when many people suffer the same problem. Therefore, clichés have truth to them. 

The explanation of that truth has been whittled down to; you got it, a cliché.  Find the clichés that address the area of your life that you want to explore.  If it is a financial dilemma then look for clichés that address that area of your life.  When you put them all together and boil them down you’ll end up with basically the same answer.  You should acknowledge that your problems, or perceived problems, are created from fears that have not been addressed.  Clichés are collective answers to the fears that have been addressed to solve commonly experienced problems.

Ways to Remove Fear

It was your choice to pursue the challenge of this career.  Don’t be surprised or disappointed by the results of your continuing efforts.  Be sure that acting is what you want to do for your life’s work.  Commit yourself to the entire spectrum of your life in relation to acting as your career choice.  You want to know what causes fear in you.   You want to acknowledge how you recognize fear in you.  I’m not talking about a specific fear.  I’m talking about fear of.  You are going to understand and eliminate as many personal fears as you can.   You are going to recognize fear of and what to do with fear when it creeps up in your life. 

You are going to do this by working for the results you want.  You are going to turn the idea of work from pain to pleasure.  You are going to be excited about the prospect of your success.  You are going to accept your right to success.  And, you are going to trill in the knowledge that you can separate fear as a concept and personal debilitating response to fear of and how it can be conquered.

First, clarify your talents and approach them with an objective awareness.  This way each new day will provide you the opportunity to be grateful for being able to meet the challenge of fear.  Fear is based on the unknown.  The unknown is based on lack of knowledge.  Lack of knowledge can be reversed.  It is in your control.  Each new piece of information will get you closer to eliminating a fear once you understand fear as a concept.

Universality of Fear

Fear is a human experience.  Fear is as common place as rain.  However, people fear different things.  The reasons for these fears are as different as the fears themselves.   All fears have certain things in common. They have the ability to cause inaction, anxiety and avoidance. Recognizing what causes fear in you is fundamental to your changing a fear into a talent.  Take control over a fear.  As you know you can turn a fear around with knowledge and repetition. 

The process to eliminate fear is always the same but the process depends upon defining the specific fear to be addressed.  It is important to acknowledge the literalness of the fear.  Fear of specific things is not only easier to grasp it is the only way to change.  It could be the fear of the interview.   It could be the fear of the director.   It could be the fear of the script.   It could be the fear of the audition.   It could be the fear of the contract negations.  Any specific fear can be overcome by knowing what the fear really is and how it works. To remove the fear the mystery of the fear must be eliminated.

De-mystify

To de-mystify is the process by which the unknown of something is replaced with specific knowledge.  Demystifying is the means of overcoming a fear.  Once the mystery of anything has been removed, fearing it becomes difficult.  How then do you overcome a fear that appears to be as non-definable and illogical as fear of success?  Like so many things in this world, you must accept that this fear exists because the results indicate that it does.  You cannot see air, but it exists.  You cannot see time, but it exists.  You cannot see microwaves, but they exist.  They exist because there is a cause and effect that you can experience. 

Accept that if you have not achieved financial success through acting, then you are avoiding it.  That avoidance is controlled by something inside of you.  Some part of your reality leads you to believe that you are not to have success as an actor.  That is a fear.  Once it is recognized it can be addressed with knowledge.

Translating Body Response

Do not let the physiological use of body response to indicate danger is near (such as a strange noise, a dark street corner, a menacing dog) be used by your thinking process to create a physical defense scenario when a fear does not exist.  By doing this you create the emotions of fear by attaching them to events that haven’t even happened.  It results in worrying about something that more than likely will never happen.  This worry time eats up the time that should be used to learn what you need to know to disempower your real fears.  Worry is an indicator that the subject of the worry is fear related and should be addressed.

Let’s look at fear of success.  It will manifest itself in ways that can be translated.  There are patterns that happen to all people who have this fear.  Accepting these patterns in relationship to you may not be as easy as it sounds.  Think how easy it is to see why your friends and family are doing the wrong thing.  Think how easy it is to analyze their behavioral patterns and fear avoidance issues.  Why don’t they recognize their own patterns of fear?  If you want to recognize these patterns in you look at yourself as a third party. 

Be as objective with your personal observations as you can.  As a third party, right down the things you see yourself doing that are not supportive of your desire to be a successful professional actor.  Acknowledge what is getting in the way of your progress.  As an outsider look at the big seven areas of your life and list the actions and efforts you should be taking.  Don’t worry about your feelings.  Don’t worry or allow yourself to hear the criticism you make about yourself.

Take the time this week to look at yourself from the third party position.
Have a great week.
I wish you well.
Russ