Reclaiming Your Role and Directing Your Own Narrative

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone as passionate and stoic as the committed actor. I speak from experiences. I have had the honor of working with actors in one capacity or another my entire career. I am repeatedly astounded by their unwavering courage and integrity and often most often in the face of incredible vulnerability, all in service of the story. Characters are some of the most brilliant and gifted people in the world.

They have this mystical, ineffable ability to transform themselves into the characters that they play. They delve deeply below the surface to understand the needs and wants of their characters and what drives those thoughts and words and actions. They seek to clarify their intentions and motivate their actions in alignment with those values and beliefs, so that they can operate from their characters. Why?

There’s a lot we can learn from an actor’s process and, for those of you who are actors, there is much that you can learn from your own artistic methodology that you might apply and benefit from as you create your own life story. William Shakespeare said that all the worlds of stage and all the men and women merely players and, as the Bard so aptly observed, we are indeed all players on that great world stage.

We too spend our days in service of the story, except more often than not, our stories are centered around what we think we are supposed to be rather than who we truly are. So many of us play a part or multiple parts in our own lives, cast by a panel of limiting beliefs that dictate and determine what the role requires. We memorize and deliver the lines on cue, playing the role as written and directed by someone else, telling someone else’s story, barely scratching the surface of who we really are, let alone diving deep into our why.

I mean, I guess you could say it’s easier to play a part that’s already written and default to being a certain way, rather than developing a deeply committed self, kind of like a recurring role in a program on Netflix. You know it becomes expected of us to show up the way we always do in the many roles that we play in our lives.

Life is like a wide, open stage, just waiting to be set.

Except unlike theater, your story is real and the story that you tell and the roles that you play are yours to create.

Each of us is the lead in our limited run production, but have you considered that we can also be the director? The role of director requires having a vision, making tough decisions, collaborating and, above all, leading. We will appear in a multitude of scenes and roles in different stages throughout our life, leading toward the grand finale, which is the same for all of us In theater, if you don’t stand in your light, you won’t be seen. Why should life be any different? I’m Lisa Hopkins. Thanks so much for listening. Stay safe and healthy, everyone, and remember to live in the moment.

Listen to Audio Version here!

Published in Collaboration with:

Also by Lisa Hopkins:

Living Life Unconditionally

Overcoming Speaking Anxiety on Stage & Off

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