The Great Acting Blog: “Habits Help Us Cope With Pressure”
Knowing that we can hold up under pressure enables us to seek out greater challenges and accomplish more. It empowers us to be more creative because our attention is off ourself, we’re not worried about ourselves and this lack of self-consciousness enables creativity to flourish.
Whether it’s an acting technique, voice work, learning lines, a philosophy, a way of thinking about a situation, a way of handling difficult people, the hours of practice are about embedding them within ourselves, turning them into habits of work and thought, so that they come to the fore during those flash moments of pressure, and work for us. An audition, on stage, in front of camera, in rehearsal, a meeting, in order to function at our optimum, we need to have total confidence in our tools and in our ability to employ them. Making them habitual gives us this. If these tools don’t help us when we’re under intense pressure, they’re not much good are they?
This is the problem for actors who don’t have an habitual technique of acting, who don’t know how to think about their work. They are insecure, they unravel during difficult moments, or they have done in the past which undermines their confidence and limits what they’ll attempt now. They cannot take creative risks because they would be crushed if it all went wrong.
Practice whatever it is you’re doing until it becomes a habit, then it will work for you when you most need it to.
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