The Inner Game of Acting: Pt 1 – An Introduction to the Inner Game
“There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure.” - Tim Gallwey, Creator of The Inner Game
No matter whether we’re talking about business leadership, tennis, golf, playing the violin or being a successful actor, there is both an inner and outer game to be played. The outer game concerns the technique of building excellence in skill, while the inner game is concerned with what we might today call Performance Psychology.
Actors go from class to class, technique to technique in attempt to find an outer game that works for them, but unless they address the inner game, the outer game could be irrelevant.
So, what is the inner game of acting? Following Gallwey’s examples in his book The Inner Game of Tennis, the inner game of acting concerns removing those mental obstacles that impede performance. Exceptional performance is potential minus mental interference. The interferences that we experience include: negative self talk, expectation, limiting self beliefs, fear of failure, frustration, procrastination, self doubt – and many more. No matter what kind of performer you are, we are all impacted by mental interference and it steals our true potential from us.
To win the Inner Game of Acting, to achieve our maximum potential, we have to learn to overcome these interferences.
The tools that we have for developing our game is WILL, AWARENESS and SELF TRUST.
WILL is a system of setting goals. In the inner game, there is a broad understanding of the types of goals that can be set. When a goal is set, it directs the energy of our attention into action. Internal and external goals have different outcomes, but choosing a set of powerful internal goals often leads to success with goals (external) where the outcome is often out of our hands.
AWARENESS, or specifically non-judgmental self-awareness is the key to development in all fields. Coaching is all about bringing the student to a new level of awareness. Non-judgemental means that we do not allow our own negative self-chatter to interrupt our experience of learning, developing or performing. Non-judgmental does not mean that we do not criticise, we choose not to make that criticism brutalising or diminishing.
SELF-TRUST is accepting that we have huge capability and capacity for being the most exceptional actor you can be. Awareness helps us develop the type of feedback that we can trust, feedback that comes from ourselves. I have seen some incredible work from my students lately when they learn to trust themselves and listen to their own self-feedback. The trouble with external feedback is that it has to pass through the foggy haze of perception.
When we properly direct our focus and energy towards the right kind of goals, when we grow with non-judgmental self awareness, we develop the confidence with which we begin to develop self-trust.
I will go into all of this in much greater detail over the coming blogs, but for now, Welcome to the Inner Game of Acting.