The Joy is Real

It has been almost 2 years since my last post. In that time, I’ve moved to London, submitted about 100 auditions, landed 4 jobs, performed at the Olivier Awards, made my West End debut, joined a charity as a board member, started development on 5 original shows, taught at schools in Scotland and London, and have found a new richness in my inner life.

I have just completed a UK and West End run of the Broadway transfer of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”. It has really driven home the message that the opportunity to truly embrace joy is a real and present reality - and that all we need to do is find a way to be with it. The magnitude of the lessons I have learnt will take me years to fully comprehend. I’ll try to describe them here as best I can:

1) For over 120 shows, I was tap dancing to what is likely the most famous musical theatre tap routine. I mean … if that doesn’t convince you that anything is possible, I don’t know what will! :)

2) Find the right time and moment to learn the lessons in life. So often, we get impatient with learning. But rushing is driven so much by fear and by ego and can often lead to the opposite result. I found the right moment for a lesson I had been struggling with all contract long, and I’m glad that I waited - because it was authentic, it was rich, and it was real

3) Take the time to really SEE people. The industry is a dangerous combination of insecurity, ego and fear, and a gift like that is priceless

4) Always learn, always listen and always explore. I never stopped playing with my characters, I never stopped learning from others, I never stopped asking questions of myself and I never stopped trying to get better - even on our very last show. And now, as I prepare to step into another production, I’m going to put what I’ve learnt into practice

5) Find a way to truly connect with your cast and crew. Actively create a community - because it WILL show on stage

6) Find your own way of having fun. For me, it turned out to be readings books, crossword puzzles with the cast, sharing songs during the intermission, scratch (lottery) cards and a shared love for food

7) I deepened my inner life every single day. I found ways to practice it daily and I learned to be so much more patient with myself

8) And above all, if you dare to show who you really are, trust that the right people will see it, and the right people will stay

-

My name is Eu Jin. I am a professional actor, writer, educator and coach. This blog charts my inner journey and my personal Inner Life Practice. I am committed to supporting and nurturing performing arts education - specifically in the area of career sustainability through practical approaches to inner health. If you would like to engage in a conversation about your inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you.

Whose standards do I want to hold myself to?

Over the last week, I have been struggling with the possibility of disappointing someone whom I greatly admire and look up to. I spiraled down bottomless rabbit hole scenarios where I would lose an irreplaceable friendship and a kindred spirit who has been an indelible source of courage and support during the last few years. I replayed the scenes over and over in my head, trying to figure out exactly where I had gone wrong or where I said the wrong thing. I kept coming back to how disappointed he must be for reacting the way that I did, how he must be questioning whether he had put his trust in the wrong person and I slaved over what I could or should do to salvage the situation and our friendship. Of course - throughout this titanic inner struggle, I have been keeping this all to myself for fear of pissing him off even more.

I was at my wit’s end. Then yesterday, this question popped into my head: “whose standard do I want to hold myself to - his or mine?”

The answer was: MINE.

And all of a sudden - things became clear. All of a sudden, it was easy to see that I had - ridiculously yet very understandably - created this perception that I had to be perfect all the time. I asked myself who actually holds me to a higher standard and the answer was ‘me’. I asked myself if I had let myself down and the answer was ‘no’. I asked myself whose opinion mattered more and the answer was ‘mine‘. I asked myself if I had actually done anything to piss him off, and the answer was ‘no.’

And of course - when I told him about all this, he laughed at me and said: “No wonder I haven’t heard from you all week. You are always going to be your worst critic. But that’s your process and it will always be a part of your process.”

It takes the tiniest things to send us spiraling down rabbit holes, and that’s fine. Life is complicated. Rather - it’s the trust in myself to pull me out of a spiral when I have had enough - that is important.

-

My name is Eu Jin. I am a professional actor, writer, educator and coach. This blog charts my inner journey and my personal Inner Life Practice. I am committed to supporting and nurturing performing arts education - specifically in the area of career sustainability through practical approaches to inner health. If you would like to engage in a conversation about your inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you.

Permission: the best and only gift you can give yourself

Every time you think to yourself “that won’t work” or “they’re better than me” or “I know I’m going to screw up” or “it never works so why bother” or “they won’t let me” or “I’ve never done this before” or “it’s too hard”, you are essentially telling yourself that you’re not worth your own time and energy. And if you - who have the greatest amount to gain or lose - don’t hedge your bets on yourself, do you really expect the rest of the world to?

Most of us spend the first 20 odd years of our lives going through an educational system, familial and societal upbringing that indoctrinates us into the sanctity of rules and convention. We make decisions (or rather decisions are made for us) that shape the remaining 60 to 70% of our lives that we really have no actual ability to make, and we definitely don’t have the cognitive or emotional maturity to understand the true consequence of those decisions. This isn’t to say that rules and convention, education and familial upbringing are irrelevant. Collectively, they have ushered modern human society into an era of unprecedented prosperity. No, this isn’t a conversation that is black and white and the purpose of this conversation isn’t to denounce rules and convention.

The purpose of this conversation is to create space to discuss how to give yourself permission to invest in yourself, to plot your own path, to embark on a journey to find out what makes your life worth living, then to go out and make those changes so you can live that life. I would love to get the a point where we stop putting people who “find success later in life” up on a pedestal - not because these people aren’t amazing and not because their stories aren’t worth celebrating - but because everyone is doing exactly the same thing: they are living a life they are proud of.

During these last five months since the global lockdowns began, I have found ways to give myself:

• Permission to be afraid, claustrophobic and paranoid without reason

• Permission to worry myself into sleepless nights

• Permission to get fat and beat myself up for getting fat

• Permission to stop exercising after 1 day of trying

• Permission to beat myself up for not having any of my shit together

• Permission to beat myself for trying too damned hard to be in control

• Permission to beat myself up for failing as a son and an uncle

• Permission to hold unhealthy amounts of tension in my body

What I didn’t realize at the time - and all through that process - was that giving myself permission in this way would unlock a deeper recess of “fight or flight” and I found myself also giving myself:

• Permission to take a breath

• Permission to step away from performing for as long as I needed to

• Permission to be an introvert

• Permission to keep dreaming big dreams

• Permission to create some amazing pieces work

• Permission to discover new ways to love and care for my family

When I started giving myself a deeper and more connected form of permission, the world started to reciprocate. Now, still in the middle of a global pandemic, I find myself on a visa with permission to work in the UK in the performing arts for the foreseeable future, and I have been given the amazing opportunity to deliver my ‘Inner Life Practice’ curriculum at one of the top performing arts schools in the world.

-

My name is Eu Jin. I am a professional actor, writer, educator and coach. This blog charts my inner journey and my personal Inner Life Practice. I am committed to supporting and nurturing performing arts education - specifically in the area of career sustainability through practical approaches to inner health. If you would like to engage in a conversation about your inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you.

How relevant are a performer's skill set in the white collar business world?

if a performer isn’t performing, how are they earning a living? The very-cliche thing to say is: waiting tables, teaching or being an usher or FOH (front of house staff). And during this time of COVID19, I’ve seen many friends come up with wonderful ways to earn a living like selling home-made baked goods, jewellery making, teaching yoga, remote customer service and working in supermarkets - just to name a few.

But an intriguing question came up during a recent conversation with a good friend: just how relevant would the skills of a performer be in the white collar world of business?

The immediate and obvious answer would be: not relevant at all.

Personally, I think that is a conditioned response that has more to do with the separation and hierarchy of “achievement” and “value” in modern society. It has more to do with the societal need to compartmentalize individuals into the way they contribute to society and are “successful”. So, it shouldn’t be possible for a successful business person to also find success as a performer. And vice versa. God forbid a dominantly right-brained individual find success in the logical, goal-oriented and financially driven corporate world.

The truth is, we ALL have the ability to access logic as equally as we do intuition. They are not mutually exclusive. They are just different sides of the same coin.

So this leads me back to the question - and it is particularly relevant during a time when performers do not have the option to wait tables, to work as ushers or FOH or do many of other side jobs they usually would find:

Do we have the skills to work in the white collar business world?

The resounding answer - based on my 20 years of experience in the corporate world - is a big, fat YES! So perhaps the more relevant questions are:

How do we understand the skills that a performer has and RE-FRAME it within the context of what the white collar business world can offer and also needs? How do we teach performers to market themselves and their skills within this context? How do we engage the business world for a win-win?

Watch this space.

Side bar - From the tens of thousands of people in the business world I have met, I can count with 2 hands - the people who would survive a week as a performer on “The King and I”.

-

My name is Eu Jin. I am a professional actor, writer, educator and coach. This blog charts my inner journey and my personal Healthy Inner Life Practice. I am committed to supporting and nurturing performing arts education - specifically in the area of career sustainabilty through practical approaches to inner health. If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website. Thank you.