Thanks LaMa and Petal! The acting class should actually be interesting to eaves drop on. It's taught by an actor/improvisor who is teaching an acting philosophy called second circle, which is about how to connect with the other actors on a personal level instead of being so inward and introverted (first circle) or so outward and attention seeking (third circle). The premise is that 1st and 3rd circle are necessary and healthy at times, but with acting and often in life as well, it is good to have the skills of connection and listening and responding to the present. This is basically a mindfulness for actors class, and I know this is what I need to practice to overcome social anxiety. So really it'll be a loud pajama party with a super cool teacher leading it. I tend to shy away from the improv people because the ones who aren't advanced students tend to be attention hogs (3rd circle) but this is an advanced class, so maybe the people won't be so "look at me, me, me!"
I am reading a book by a former stand up comic turned motivational speaker, Kyle Cease (I Hope I Screw This Up: How Falling In Love With Your Fears Can Change the World), who is writing about how to process "negative feelings." I like him because he is like me and doesn't believe there really are such things as negative feelings, that all feelings are valuable and are there to help people grow and mature. He also doesn't believe that the goal in life is to be happy all of the time, and because of that, he works on not pushing any feelings away. This is something I have believed my whole life, but didn't practice until recently because no one else (outside of the psychology community) seemed to feel this way until just recently, so it is great to read from a normal, non-psychology person that all feelings are valuable and you can appreciate and learn from all of them. He writes about his process of a feeling like anger or fear coming up, and feeling those feelings and wondering why they are coming up now. Often people are looking at their past and are feeling defined by that, and feel like they are their image of themselves that they get from looking at their past behavior. And that limited sense (defined by the past) of who they are feels like it can't deal with the present situation so it panics and tries to control the situation or tries to flee or other reactions like that. So he is saying that instead of reacting, we could respect the current challenge as a way to grow beyond our limited image of ourselves and see that we are a lot more than our limited image of ourselves, with a lot more creativity and flexibility and acceptance available to us than we think - we can move into our potential instead of looking back at past limitations.
"I know that when you step into opportunity, you cut off the fear. When you step into fear, you cut off the opportunity. Which means, if you step into what your heart says, you cut off the worry of your mind. If you step into what your head says, you cut off the guidance of your heart. The decision to step into and take action toward anything in your life that excites you creates an entirely new vision of yourself and opens you up to more ideas and inspiration for what the next step might be... You don't have any limitations, you're just addicted to them. If you listen to the fear and don't move into action, you cut yourself off from the flow of creativity and the next step can't show up (p. 33)."
What he means by being addicted to your limitations is that we get our social identity from what makes other people happy with us, so if we go to try new things while worrying that we will change and not be what other people want us to be, it can bring up a lot of worry that we won't be accepted or we'll be judged. So instead we tend to limit ourselves.
I thought I would share this because we all seem to be challenging old images of ourselves and redefining who we want to become!
