Freedom over control. It's never about following the rules
- Jo Kelly
- Aug 11
- 3 min read
When you step into the room — whether it’s an audition, a stage, a board meeting, a competition, a date — you may feel the stakes rise. The mind begins its familiar negotiations: “Make sure they like me. Make sure I do it right. Make sure I win.” And without even noticing, you leave the only place where your power exists: this moment.
Control will seduce you with the illusion of safety. It will promise that if you just adjust your behaviour, your emotions, your appearance, or the outcome itself, you will secure the reward. But the reward you seek — fulfilment — does not live in the moment after this one. That “next moment” is not real. The only reality is here. Now.
When you try to control, you place your energy in the outcome. You abandon your experience in favour of someone else’s approval. You give away your power, making your sense of worth dependent on an external “yes.” This is a broken formula. No role, contract, applause, or victory can replace the depth of your own human experience.
You once knew this. As a child, you were absorbed in the doing, not in the winning. You played without checking if you were “doing it right.” You lived inside your body, inside your senses, inside your instinct. Presence was your natural state.
Then came the conditioning — the rules, the authorities, the silent agreements to obey in order to belong. Slowly, you learned to bypass yourself in service of some imagined standard. And now, perhaps without realising, you perform for approval rather than for truth.
Your art — and your life — does not want that from you. It wants you. Fully. Freely. Truthfully.
The work we do in our community is not to teach you something new, but to help you unlearn what has kept you from yourself. To help you undo the programming that makes you chase the outcome instead of inhabiting the moment. To return you to the freedom that was always yours, so that you can meet your experience without fear, and let the results arrive as a natural by-product.
Because when you are here, in your body, caring for your own experience, something happens: people see you. They hear you. They feel you. And without trying, you draw them in.
This is the foundation of your craft. This is the only path to the art you were born to make.
Below, you will find the full training on Freedom vs Control. Watch it, let it move through you, and notice where you have been trading your freedom for control — and what shifts when you choose differently.
Watch my training below to hear all my thoughts on this topic.
After you watch the training
I’d love for you to join in the conversation happening in our private Facebook Group THE INSTINCTIVE ACTORS’ SOCIETY. You can get answers for your specific situation directly from me and connect with THOUSANDS of like-minded actors across the globe, so we can move things forward faster together.
See you there!
Jo KellyCreator, The Reset Journey From Resistance to Freedom
✨ Want to taste this work?
If something stirred in you — if a part of you knows that you’re ready to stop performing confidence and start embodying truth — I invite you to come taste the work.
The Reset Taster is a 5-day introduction to our full 33-Day Reset Journey — our immersive deconditioning process for actors and artists ready to reclaim their truth, not just their technique.
You’ll begin to:
Undo the internalised pressure to perform.
Meet your feelings without fixing them.
Reconnect with presence, sensation, and honesty.
Stop trying to “get it right” — and start getting real.
It’s pay what you can — truly. This isn’t a marketing trick. We operate in the gift economy, which means you can participate at the level you’re able to commit, with integrity.
👇
You don’t need to add anything else to yourself.
You just need to undo what was never yours to begin with.
Come back to you.
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