An insight from acting

One of the remarkable things I discovered in my brief acting course was this:

"It's easier to act yourself into an emotion than feel your way to an action". Shake your fist and frown, you'll feel angry. Smile, you feel happy. Much research is available to back this up, though I'm too lazy to list it here - but today I had a little reminder from this article linked from a tweet:

"Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and powerlessness through closed, constrictive postures. But can these postures actually cause power?" The answer is "a person can, via a simple two-minute pose, embody power and instantly become more powerful"
- http://www.leadershipembodiment.com/postures.html

'Power' is a tricky word here: it's meant in its helpful guise, the ability to enact useful change, rather than 'power over'.

I went into acting because while 80% of communication is non-verbal I was spending 80% of my time and effort on the other 20%, the words and the research. So my congruence and self-awareness of 80% of my communication was minimal. Bringing that forward into consciousness, even a little, has been a great thing to attempt.

Actions speak louder than words (particularly silence).

I hope to do more acting, but not quite yet.