The Vs. Studio Blog

Welcome ladies and gentlemen
To the 8th wonder of the world!
The flow of the century, always timeless: Hov!
Thanks for coming out tonight
You could’ve been anywhere in the world
But you’re here with me, I appreciate that -song “Izzo (H.O.V.A) by Jay-Z

For the actor…

You and your character could be anywhere else in the world tonight, but the play calls for you to be right here, right now, under these given circumstances, with these other characters, fighting desperately for what you want.

You know who else could be anywhere else in the world tonight but chose to be here with you? The audience.

So, for yourself, your character, your fellow actors on stage, the play, the playwright, the designers, the stage crew and most especially, the audience…

Fight, man! Raise the stakes! Play your actions to the motherf-ckin hilt! Live dangerously. No turning back.

Cuz that’s what makes it theatre. Live. Special. Magical. Ephemeral.

Here today. Gone tomorrow.

Blood and guts. Leave it all out there on that stage. Play like a champion.

“Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.” – Leo Tolstoy

“Fulfillment is found through connection to something bigger than the self. Find service, find joy.” -Sahil Bloom

“Joy is the abiding and pervasive sense of well being.” -Fr. Mike Schmitz

“My advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: Seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys.” -Herman Hesse

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” -Thich Hat Hanh

“Joy is always in process. It’s under construction. It is in constant approach, alive and well in the doing of what we’re fashioned to do.” -Matthew McConaghey

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” -Rumi

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise. -William Blake

Happiness is a feeling, and as such, it is fleeting at best. It comes and goes like the wind.

Joy, on the other hand, is a choice. It’s not dependent on circumstances or emotions. It’s within your control. You can actively seek it out by willing the good of the other. And it lasts.

Therefore, in all things and circumstances, choose joy.

“If you cringe at your former self, that’s good—it means you’ve grown. Never stop cringing…It’s impossible to be a life-changing presence to some without also being a complete joke to others.” -Mark Manson

You will write or do something that at the time you think is amazing. You think you couldn’t have said or done it any better.

Later on, a year or two, maybe more, maybe less, you will look back on said thing and cringe. (This happens often to me when I re-read my past blog posts.)

That’s good. Cringing is good.

It means you’ve grown and your standards have grown.

It also means you were courageous enough at the time to ship your work. Good on you.

Never stop cringing.

Never stop making and shipping your art.

So, so what’cha, what’cha, what’cha want? (what’cha want?)
I get so funny with my money that you flaunt
I said, “Where’d you get your information from” huh?
You think that you can front when revelation comes?
(Yeah, you can’t front on that)

So what’cha, what’cha, what’cha want? (what’cha want?)
So what’cha, what’cha, what’cha want? (what’cha want?)
I said, what’cha, what’cha, what’cha want? (what’cha want?)
I said, what’cha, what’cha, what’cha want? (what’cha want?) -song, “So What’cha Want” by Beastie Boys

The eternal question:

“What do I want?”

Besides consulting the Oracle at Delphi, below are some practical strategies that might help:

(1) Ask…Listen…Notice. Ask the question. Listen with an open mind. If/when thoughts or answers arise, don’t judge. Just notice them.

(2) Ask the question in some slightly different ways: “What might I want?” This lets off the hook from coming up with the “right” answer. Or drill down a little deeper: “What do I really, really want?”

(3) WRITE. Journal about your thoughts and feelings. Again, don’t judge. Just write. (For some inspiration during your journaling sessions, put this song on repeat.)

(4) If you have some potential answers, now ask yourself WHY you might want it. Repeat steps 1-3 above. Don’t worry if your “why” isn’t coherent. Just capture your feelings. Tap into your subconscious. Trust that clarity will come later.

(5) If you have an inkling of what you might want and why, then now, go try stuff. Get into action. Experiment. Turn it into a project. Prototype. After a few months, see how you feel. Energized and excited?…Then, keep going in this direction. Not so much?…Make something else.

(6) Remind yourself to be grateful that you even get to pursue what you want. It’s a gift.

This all might seem a bit tedious. But if it unlocks your true purpose and calling, your WHY…then isn’t it worth it?

“What’s worth doing even if I fail?” -Brene Brown

The above question is a great one to ask yourself. Repeatedly.

For if you arrive at an answer, and then take action towards it, there is no way you can “fail.”

The true value always lies in the attempt.

“You’ve gotta love the dirt.” -Gary Vaynerchuk

“The dirt is where you start. It’s where you’re built. It’s where you find your initial success. We all start in the dirt on the journey to success, but few are willing to remain there. Few fall in love with the dirt. The day you leave the dirt is the day the clock starts ticking down on your run.” -Sahil Bloom

Before you get the big, bountiful rows of corn, you’ve gotta do a ton of hardscrabble, unfun, thankless, unseen, pick and shovel work. You’ve gotta love the dirt.

Besides the farmer, this applies to any endeavor. Some examples…

The actor: learning lines.

The producer: writing cold (yet thoughtful) emails.

The athlete: getting up early and working out.

The musician: constantly playing scales.

The investor: doing tons of research to find one opportunity.

No dirt. No glory.

“My anger is more likely to do me more harm than your wrong…Moreover, if it be the duty of the wise man to be angry at base deeds, and to be excited and saddened at crimes, then is there nothing more unhappy than the wise man, for all his life will be spent in anger and grief.”” -Seneca, On Anger

“Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Anger is not impressive or tough – it’s a mistake. It’s weakness. Depending on what you’re doing, it might even be a trap that someone laid for you.” -Ryan Holiday, book The Daily Stoic

“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!” -Euripides

In 1976, Howard Beale got up on live television and screamed “I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Gonna Take It Anymore!!!” And then he urged us to get up, go open our windows, and scream those same words.

It’s nearly fifty years later and we’re still mad as hell. Angrier than we’ve ever been. But the question is, what are we doing with all this anger?

Are we just taking it? Because that’s what the media wants. Get angry and then “take” these two pills to feel better. (Ever notice just how many pharmaceutical ads run during the nightly news?)

Or.

Are we taking that anger and using it as fuel to affect real, positive change in the world?

P.S. – Big thanks to John K. and the Vs. gang for a sizzling Tuesday Night Reading of “Network” yesterday, and inspiring this post.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” – Ernest Hemingway

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.” –Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” -Alexander Pope

“All happiness depends on the proportion of what we claim and what we receive. It is immaterial how great or small the two quantities of this proportion are, and the proportion can be established just as well by diminishing the first quantity as by increasing the second.” -Arthur Schopenhauer, book The World as Will and Representation

“In a very real sense, we are as young as we feel inside. what we feel and think will determine what we experience, which will in turn influence what we feel and what we think, in a never-ending cycle.” -David Robson, book The Expectation Effect

Teddy Roosevelt once said “comparison is a thief of joy.” He’s right. It is.

I’ll add another thief of joy: Expectation.

Yet comparison and expectation are inevitable. We do it all the time without even thinking about it. It’s hard not to.

So what to do? Repress these feelings? Just accept our fate and be doomed to a life of misery?

I present another option.

How about we make friends with these thieves? Or as the Buddhists would advise us to do with any negative feelings, “invite them in for a cup of tea.”

Huh? Say, what?

Take the first thief: comparison. Let people’s accomplishments inspire and motivate you. If you’re a bit jealous, good! Get curious with your jealousy. Be thankful for it. Maybe it’s a clue as to where you should direct your time and energy. A potential passion project lurks.

And with the second thief: expectation. Use the power of expectation to believe good things will happen. Get specific. Write down your goals and your “why.” Visualize not only the outcome, but the whole process, warts and all. And so you don’t get overly attached to the expectation, use the mantra of “this…or something better.”

Make friends with the joy thieves. Harness their skills to assist you in setting goals and achieving your dreams.

“Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.” -Jim Carrey

Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Game Of Tennis, has a nifty formula to measure performance. It’s as follows:

P = P – I

Performance = Potential minus Interference.

There are two ways to boost your performance.

(1) Increase your potential. You do this largely through gaining experience. Training, Learning, and most importantly, DOING. Call this The Outer Game.

(2) Decrease your interference. This has to with our mind. THINKING. Eliminating (or at the very least, being aware of) our fears, doubts, assumptions and self-limiting beliefs. This is The Inner Game.

Most people spend all their time on the outer game and no time on the inner. But as you can see from the equation, each game is worth 50 percent. So it makes sense to spend just as much time on the inner. If you’re working hard but not getting the results you want, perhaps give some focus to your inner game. See if that does the trick.

When you’re giving equal attention to both games and they’re working hand in hand with one another, that’s when your performance will really soar.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” – Franz Kafka, novella The Metamorphosis

if you don’t become the ocean
you’ll be seasick
every day -from the poem, “Good Advice For Someone Like Me” by Leonard Cohen

In his masterpiece, The Inner Game Of Tennis, (a must read for any artist, trust me it goes waaay beyond tennis) author Timothy Gallwey talks about the importance, yet inherent difficutly, of true concentration. He gives all kinds of practical advice and tips on how best to do so. One strategy he espouses is to “watch the ball.” But not watching in the traditional way we might think. Rather, to watch it so intently that one almost falls in love with the ball. Or “becomes the ball.” Gallwey writes about Bakhti yoga which aims at “perfect concentration through devotion.” A story from the book…

A seeker after Truth sought out a yoga master and begged him to help him achieve the enlightenment of perfect union with his true self. The Master told him to go into a room and meditate on God for as long as he could. After two hours the seeker emerged distraught, saying that he could not concentrate, since his mind kept thinking about his much beloved bull he had left at home. The Master then told him to return to the room and meditate on his bull. This time the would-be yogi entered the room and after two days had still not emerged. Finally the Master called for him to come out. From within the seeker replied, “I cannot; my horns are too wide to fit through the door.” The seeker had reached such a state of concentration that he had lost all sense of separation from his object of concentration.

Makes you wonder…maybe the reason why Gregor Samsa turned into a giant bug is that he just concentrated on it so much.

P.S. – “Be the ball Danny.”