Honesty With Yourself
Hello world, it's Kodi here to tell you about something that has been on my mind almost constantly since it was brought up in one of my classes. I've always found the profession of acting fascinating, and there are so many different theories and methods that are believed to lead to the best acting. But something that is underlying in almost all of them is being incredibly grounded in who the actor is as a person before they begin to embody the personality of a character. An actor's job, in the most simple definition, is to bring truth to a lie. And the only way that an actor can acheive that successfully is to use truths from their own life to find the honest and raw moments of truthful emotion within the tale being told.
One of my professors has been reminding us continually from day one that the only way to truly succeed in this career is to have complete honesty with yourself. Now, this is much much harder said than done, as our society and it's rules have influenced our lives and personalities almost from infancy. As I've gotten older I've become more keenly aware of the parts of myself and the choices that I have made in my life that were 100% because someone I knew or society influenced me. Because of that I feel immensely lucky to be doing the training that I am because it has given me the time and a reason to look at myself and my decisions throughout my life with no holds barred. I have to admit truly being honest with yourself about yourself is one of the scariest things that you will ever do.
In one of my classes we did this absolutely eye-opening exorcise and it's something that I think everyone should spend time doing at least once in their lives if not regularly. Firstly, before we began we were all assured that this would be something for our eyes only, it was not to be shared and we could do whatever we wanted with it after the exercise (burn it, frame it, hide it away, etc.). It began with us being given 10 minutes to write down what we honestly thought our golden qualities are, the parts of ourselves that we were proud of or that we firmly believed made us who we are. Now the interesting part of this was even though the exercise was private and individual, society still wormed it's way into all of our brains. We all had so much trouble finding these qualities at first because we are taught not to boast or brag or be self-indulgent in our confidence. Eventually however everyone hit a point where they were able to push past that barrier.
The next part of the exercise as you can probably guess was to write a list of the qualities in ourselves that we regret. There was a large influence on them not being 'bad' or 'dark' qualities because without the qualities in ourselves that we regret, we would not be the people we are today. In the opposite way of the golden qualities list, societal norms still wormed their way in, we all had a list of regrettable qualities twice as long as the golden ones, because we tapped into humility, and self-judgement. And yet, this was the hardest one to be honest with ourselves about. Being truly honest about yourself with your faults is a terrifying thing to do, but at the same time is insanely liberating. Being a list maker and organization-obsessed person, it was almost like I had created a list of things to slowly work on to become the person I have always wanted to be.
This post ended up being far more philosophical than I intended but I think honesty with oneself is something that we as a culture have lost over the years as there are more and more distractions with every generation to hide away from raw honesty and truth. I certainly intend on doing this exercise more frequently in my life to keep up the practice of honesty and full self-awareness and encourage anyone reading this to try it as well.
I hope everyone has been enjoying a wonderful first month of 2016 and I will be speaking to you all again soon!
One of my professors has been reminding us continually from day one that the only way to truly succeed in this career is to have complete honesty with yourself. Now, this is much much harder said than done, as our society and it's rules have influenced our lives and personalities almost from infancy. As I've gotten older I've become more keenly aware of the parts of myself and the choices that I have made in my life that were 100% because someone I knew or society influenced me. Because of that I feel immensely lucky to be doing the training that I am because it has given me the time and a reason to look at myself and my decisions throughout my life with no holds barred. I have to admit truly being honest with yourself about yourself is one of the scariest things that you will ever do.
In one of my classes we did this absolutely eye-opening exorcise and it's something that I think everyone should spend time doing at least once in their lives if not regularly. Firstly, before we began we were all assured that this would be something for our eyes only, it was not to be shared and we could do whatever we wanted with it after the exercise (burn it, frame it, hide it away, etc.). It began with us being given 10 minutes to write down what we honestly thought our golden qualities are, the parts of ourselves that we were proud of or that we firmly believed made us who we are. Now the interesting part of this was even though the exercise was private and individual, society still wormed it's way into all of our brains. We all had so much trouble finding these qualities at first because we are taught not to boast or brag or be self-indulgent in our confidence. Eventually however everyone hit a point where they were able to push past that barrier.
The next part of the exercise as you can probably guess was to write a list of the qualities in ourselves that we regret. There was a large influence on them not being 'bad' or 'dark' qualities because without the qualities in ourselves that we regret, we would not be the people we are today. In the opposite way of the golden qualities list, societal norms still wormed their way in, we all had a list of regrettable qualities twice as long as the golden ones, because we tapped into humility, and self-judgement. And yet, this was the hardest one to be honest with ourselves about. Being truly honest about yourself with your faults is a terrifying thing to do, but at the same time is insanely liberating. Being a list maker and organization-obsessed person, it was almost like I had created a list of things to slowly work on to become the person I have always wanted to be.
This post ended up being far more philosophical than I intended but I think honesty with oneself is something that we as a culture have lost over the years as there are more and more distractions with every generation to hide away from raw honesty and truth. I certainly intend on doing this exercise more frequently in my life to keep up the practice of honesty and full self-awareness and encourage anyone reading this to try it as well.
I hope everyone has been enjoying a wonderful first month of 2016 and I will be speaking to you all again soon!
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