Hi Guys!
Last Tuesday I was taking a walk at the Farmer’s market with an actress friend of mine. Let's call her... Boogie;-)
She had auditioned for an amazing show 2 weeks prior and thought she had done pretty great + she was COMPLETELY right for the part.
BUT she hadn't heard back from casting so she felt bitter. She was disillusioned, anxious and quite angry.
So as a friend, I was trying to help her feel - less- bad about it. Pretty basic right? When you are a decent human being.... Friend is on her knees? You pick her up, simple. Done.
But after throwing her a bunch of " don't worry it’ ll pass", “the second season of that show was horrible anyway", " you have to get over rejection if you are in the acting business”, or even ”what do you think you could have done differently?”, I could see that she wasn't feeling any better at all.
So suddenly, I remembered, I wasn't a decent human being after all ;/
In comes THE COACH...
I usually don't coach my friends, as I use my friend brain with my friends… The other -professional- part of me is then usually switched off. ( Thank God)
But I got triggered when I noticed that she looked even worse then before we started the walk/talk!
So "DING-DONG" coaching brain switched on and I told her what I always trust and know to have worked with every single coaching session I have ever had in 20 years...
"SIT WITH IT". “You just need to sit with it Boogie. Let it hit you".
"WHAT THE HECK?!"Boogie was thinking HELL NO, that's exactly what I don't wanna feel: the rage, the fear that I'll never book a job as great as that, the bitterness they didn't pick me when I was probably better than anyone they saw, etc, etc. But I remained firm because I have one certainty: we can trust our instrument.
In comes the “shit philosophy": If it feels shitty, it needs to be shitty! Let your instrument be shitty for a bit and it will get tired of being shitty.
And my second certainty is : resist the shit your instrument is feeling and IT WILL PERSIST. It, - the shit- will get bigger and bigger until it will take over and you will feel and look like shit or bitter Boogie at the farmer's market!
Suddenly Boogie felt relieved. Like she had received permission to feel. She took care it that night and when I saw her the next day she didn't even mention it + she looked like a different person. In other words she had forgotten what the shit was all about;-)
The tweet of the day is obviously: "Stop resisting the shit. Allow the shit and it will leave you the shit alone;-)"
Gossip: last week’s Boogie ( remember the one who refused to connect with his character) got a call back ... So creating empathy for his character worked for him...
See you next week for the next "Don’t act, just be".
PS2: I am giving a free online workshop soon. If you haven’t registered for it yet, you can do it here.
Jo