The Great Acting Blog: “Stop Judging Experience And Expand Your Mind”
As the Stoics said, nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so – in other words, we decide whether what happens to us, or whether what might happen to us, is good or bad.
This need to judge, this need to affix a label to experience, is the need for control. There are not many things that actors are in control of, but their opinion is one of them, and it can be used to cushion themselves from events. It is comforting to be negative, especially for actors because they face so much disappointment, the tendency can be to prepare oneself for it by refusing any longer to dream, and that is a tragedy.
If we refrain from judging experience but simply try to learn from it, then the pressure is lifted, and any fear of failure is removed because we will no longer be stressed by potential outcomes – it will be neither good nor bad, it’ll be just another opportunity to observe and develop. Consequently, we will function more effectively because we’re not carrying emotional and psychological baggage around with us, and, crucially, we’ll keep expanding our minds.
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