Struggling means you’re getting good
Becoming the best actor that you can be is tough. It’s not that acting is particularly complex to learn, it isn’t. But it involves refining aspects of yourself that takes time and can be extremely challenging. In yesterday’s blog, I spoke about the amount of time it takes to become good at something, to become REALLY good at something. That’s about 10,000 hours and that’s been backed up by psychologists and experts. But one or two of you might have been thinking, well hang on, is that all it takes then? Ten thousand hours of practice? I’ve been driving my car or playing xbox or football for over 10,000 hours in my life, but I’m not world class in any of these things.
That’s true. Because what makes a big difference to you becoming truly expert in something is not just the hours that you put into it, but the shifting goal posts as you practice. That’s why one of our motto’s at Acting Coach Scotland is ‘the bar raises as we go’, it’s a quote from Bill Macy and it means that we need to keep making things more difficult in order to develop. In fact, the further up your career you go, the more difficult it’s going to get, it’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. And only if you’re willing to take risk, and bear the chance of failure are you going to become the most that you can become.
Syed talks about figure skaters. Thinking about amateur and professional skaters, which do you think end up on their bums on the ice the most? Well, the obvious answer is the amateurs, they’re skill proficiency is less, so we expect them to be feel cold ice on bare skin a little more than the experts. But no, research has shown that those that spend most of their time getting up with bruised backsides are the professionals. Why is that? Because the professional expert skaters are the ones that push themselves constantly to excel, and therefore push themselves beyond their current limits, stretching those limits, but feeling the pain of it too.
Most people don’t want struggle or challenge, even if they say they do. They’d like it handed on a plate, and unfortunately, that marks out the good from the great. Because most of the good will practice what they’re good at, but the great will put most of their energy into their weaknesses, eventually turning them into strengths. They’ll fail more often, but they’ll experience greatness in their time.
Struggle makes us better, the task set needs to constantly challenge us and when we’re getting good at something, we need to maintain practicing that thing but change of focus to our weakness. Good at improv? Start doing script work! Feel comfortable singing? Work on your dance skills. Yes, of course, we don’t like the feeling of being weak at something, but if you want to be great, if you want to be truly excellent, you will put up with the discomfort and you’ll bruise your bum on the ice and you’ll get up, knowing that every bruise means you’re getting better.