How Acting Helped Me Make Better Choices in Life
Last evening it was a thunderstorm here in Mumbai when I asked my mother what she wanted to have for dinner. Neither of us was in the mood to cook, you see.
I got the usual response from her, “whatever you like….”
Well, I am not sure about you, but I used to get overwhelmingly stressed whenever someone asked me what I wanted for dinner.
The enormous challenge used to be the ‘choosing’ part.
Life has become an unprecedented age of options. Making a choice was never easy, and here I was, wanting to make a choice; when we have ease with food delivery apps giving us hundreds of choices for restaurants, cuisines and dishes under those cuisines, telling someone what I want for dinner is even more difficult. Isn’t it?
But hey,
Isn’t life simply a series of choices–sometimes easy and sometimes tricky? And in the age where everyone constantly talks about living a conscious life, isn’t making these choices an even more daunting task?
And it doesn’t need to be that way.
Well, first things first!
Ever wondered what a ‘Choice’ means?
Why it has to be such a challenge for many?
My father always says that making a choice is the purest form of exercising your free will. That, in turn, allows you to mould your life exactly how you desire. Aha, now that’s simple. Right?
And that also makes me curious about why so many of us feel overwhelmed by the freedom to choose. Maybe because many of us are not used to it, you see. And also, we are not trained on what and how to choose. Of course, you also need to have the resources to do so.
Want to know an actor’s technique to make conscious choices?
So, conscious living is a buzzword these days. And they say it is about making consciously aware choices. Taking charge of your life is what it is about. It is all about making thoughtful decisions. It is about taking the driving seat and sitting behind the wheel of your life. Right?
Targeting:
Let’s do a simple exercise: Tell me what you had for breakfast.
Your mind quickly pulled up an image of your breakfast.
Right?
Maybe even a remanence of taste or smell and perhaps even a slight flash of emotion.
You and your mind just ‘targeted.’ Simply and in a non-active way,
And it’s the same principle.
To add to this, for example, my mixer had some technical issue this morning, so when I remember breakfast, I also remember a strange grinding sound, and I relive the frustration and disappointment of my morning smoothie.
The long and the short of it is this: “You think about what you are speaking about.”
We’re doing this all the time. We relive experiences and emotions and act and react accordingly.
Agree?
Next time you want to make a choice, think of the target or the outcome of all the options you have to choose from. Let your brain do the magic and, in a non-active way, allow it to bring the visuals, the feelings and the thoughts as an outcome of the specific choice.
Take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Pick a target (read: likely choice) for yourself, and take it to the next stage.
The Magic ‘If’:
Now the question is: “Do we just choose for the sake of making a choice or make a conscious choice?”
We actors make conscious choices every time before it becomes second nature to us. “Imagination” is the key ingredient. Training your ‘imagination muscle’ is crucial. Ever wondered what word engages the imagination the most?
“IF” — two letters make a big impact.
What if…?
Would it be different if…?
If I were you, I would…
This comes down to being able to put yourself in the new and developed character’s position.
The techniques called ‘Targeting’ and ‘The magic if’ are the actor’s keys to making conscious choices.
Asking yourself how you would act, feel, behave, or react if you were in the character’s situation is the first step of fully embodying a character and their surroundings.
The result?
Now you have a choice to make a choice.
Happy Improvising!
