Your Personality Holiday

It’s helpful to remember our personality, the way we express ourselves and communicate with others, isn’t as set in stone as we might imagine.

Most understand there’s always room for an adjustment here and there, but what is the best approach?

For example, perhaps you become aware that you’re envying or resenting someone in your life. It makes you feel unsettled, uneasy and even though you know it’s not nice to feel that way, as much as you try, you just can’t shift the feeling. It seems to be just the “way” you are, as if that kind of reaction is hardwired into your very sense of self.

“Trying” to have the higher perspective just doesn’t work, you still feel the same.

Will researching all the latest psychological catchphrases with a very scientific and studious intent be the best way to go, or would a playful perspective be far more beneficial?

Psychologists often instruct us to adopt a playful attitude and yet because of life’s hardships we may sometimes feel as though it’s impossible to find the motivation for that. A person can’t just demand we become more “playful” - it doesn’t really work like that does it? You’re either in a playful mood or not right?

This is where having an actor’s perspective might be helpful, how “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes” can become more than a fanciful thought in your mind that never really bears fruit.

If you can’t play, you can’t be an actor - the bottom line for any actor, is to fundamentally play within the given context of any scene and experiment playfully with the relationships the characters share - the ability to improvise, bend and stretch on an imaginal level.

A good actor is always trying to adopt a more playful approach to any scene he is in, knowing that an obvious response is not as compelling as a surprising one.

We can be like that in everyday life. We can firstly determine what aspects of our personality have become too rigid, too robotically repetitive. We can catch ourselves in the middle of sounding like a broken record. We can decide to “play the scene a different way!”

There really is no better analogy when it comes to the quest of knowing ourselves more authentically than through the methodology that the craft of acting demands.

Firstly, no one is ever “acting” . The word “acting” implies putting ON , when in fact the real task of the actor is to reveal and therefore take off the various masking and disguising that people are unconsciously training themselves to do.

Everyone’s doing it - the “masking” thing, but just how much and how deep is the real question. And of course it’s so easy to justify it because EVERYONE else is doing it too!

However, you must remember dropping your particular mask, would ultimately be for your benefit.

Those masks we wear aren’t really masking anything to our own selves, and they do become so very burdensome after awhile. The more we refuse to wear them, the better off we will be.

In other words, the masking IS the personality we have identified with so much we often then feel trapped by its limitations.

Gorgeous Women - Cristina D’Riviera

So play around with your personality construct - you don’t have to do the same things every day in the exact same way.

Perhaps you tend move through your day in a very hurried way, throwing things together, barely taking time to breathe…

Slow it down, just have fun for a bit, acting AS IF you are someone else doing those same simple chores, completely differently, with a different energy.

Don’t just throw the towel haphazardly into the laundry basket - place it there deliberately and carefully. How does that feel now? Try the more unhurried approach with other activities as well. Close doors purposefully. Switch off a tap with a perfectly directed use of your wrist, in a more focused and intentional way than you would ordinarily.

Or if your personality self usually feels rather constrained in its ordered, deliberate movements, then why not see how it feels to actually throw the towel into the laundry basket! Did you manage to score a goal or not?

Everyday chores can become very interesting if we choose to see ourselves reflected in them…

Playfulness can be very useful. It’s not just playing, it’s actually remaining free and malleable, rather than so set in your ways.