First Empty Your Cup

If you’re a professional actor, your main focus is getting work. But your second thought should be on being as good as you possibly can be.

For most actors, development is a problem. They struggle to develop because to develop requires change, and change includes risk and risk makes you vulnerable and can potentially lead to failure. Most professional actors do not want to even consider potential failure, and so, they fail to develop.

I understand. Everyone is like that. None of us want to risk our reputation, our income, to potential failure.

But it reminds me of what Bruce Lee once said “Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.”

If you want to be really good, you have to risk failure, in fact, failure is part of the story behind every success.

It also reminds me of another story.

An academic went to visit a Zen master. While the master served tea, the academic talked about Zen. The master poured tea into the academic’s cup, kept pouring until the tea came to the brim, and then kept pouring it over. The academic watched until he shouted “stop, it’s full!”.  “This is you” the master said. “How can I help you learn anything unless you first empty your cup.”

There are many versions of that story, but the message is the same. If you want to learn something, you must put aside what you believe you already know.

You have to put aside what you believe you know, your preconceived knowledge, so that you can take on board new knowledge.

If you see everything through the filter of your existing knowledge, you may not understand the new thing you are learning.

This is the case with acting.  If you can first empty your cup, you can learn, you can develop, you can thrive. If you cannot, you may work, but you’ll never reach your true potential.