Play The Game

From my dear friend and coach Tony Shoffner...

Just about every morning at 8:30 and just about every afternoon at 4:30, weekdays only, my good friend and amazing business coach George Watson (http://www.revcoaching.com/) and I have a conversation. Some are drab and weather talk, but most are powerful, inspirational and, true to the name of George’s company, revolutionary.

Today was one of the better ever. So good, in fact, that no sooner was I off the phone with George that I texted him with my sudden stroke of creative genius that we should record these calls to share with others. Stay tuned for further announcements on this.

George and I have both performed, acted, on the stage and in front of the camera. I love drawing parallels between acting on the stage, the motivation of it, the intention behind it, the clear and precise subtle nuances that create the arch of the character and contribute to the unfolding of the story. I wrote about one the other day and shared it with George this morning.

But it doesn’t take experience on the stage to relate to this. Just read on.

Back story…

In late 2004, I was in a play at Theater Schmeater in Seattle. The amazing play is called Euology for Citizen, by the great playwright, Josh Beerman. I had an amazing role, the cast was brilliant and fun and quirky and the director, Rob West, did a masterful job of bringing the story to the stage. After four years doing theatre in Seattle, I felt like I had arrived.

Then in early 2005, I held my own eulogy of sorts. The word “divorce” was spoken with finality and inevitability. Once the dust of the emotional tornado settled, one thing became clear to me: as a single father, if I were to stay involved in theatre some real sacrifices of my time with my daughter were going to have to be made. It took me virtually no time to realize that the trade-off just wasn’t worth it.

About a year later, I started working with a man. A counselor, therapist, mentor, guru type of man. Truly brilliant and wise. He has since become a good friend.

Once we had gotten through the divorce related “stuff” we turned to my life and what I wanted from it. It soon became very clear to me that my career at the time wasn’t doing it for me. I summed it up to not enough human contact. Not enough real connections. Theatre was where I had been feeding that part of me and with that source of nourishment gone, a void in my life was left. From there the path took me to coaching which goes way beyond the intimacy on the stage because the dance between myself and another is truly in the moment.

Which gets me back to my writing and the sharing with George. I explained to him that I reflected the other day on what acting did for me and discovered all these years later that it wasn’t the one to one connection.

Here’s what I wrote:

“The thing about when I was acting, as I see it now, wasn’t so much that I was interacting with people as much as I was putting myself out there.

Acting was a way for me to put myself out there, to take risks. Risks that I was not taking in my daily life.

My daily life was safe.

My daily life was comfortable.

My daily life was, for the most part, expected.

Acting was unsafe. I did stuff that was uncomfortable.

I never knew what to expect.

While acting, I went for it.

Going for it while acting compensated for not going for it in my daily life.

What if I were to go for it in my daily life the I did when acting?

Who would I have to be to go for it, to be unsafe, to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, to welcome the unexpected?

To go for and live the moments that I loved the most on the stage in my daily life?”

That last line was added during my conversation with George this morning and speaks directly to the magical influence we can have on each other.

The best examples of the moments I’m referring to are from a few particular scenes in A Eulogy for Citizen.

Stan Shields, a brilliant actor and very cool guy, and I shared a couple of scenes, he as the governor, me as an otherworldly being that agitated the HELL out of him with my unemotional candor and aloofness. It was not uncommon, in fact if memory serves, more common than not, for Stan, in the midst of his true frustration and anger, to lose his next line. And there we were. Back into reality. Forced to draw upon our improvisational skill to get us back into character, the exchange, the scene and the play.

It got to be so common that I more than half expected it to happen at least once during one of our scenes. But even in the expectation, there was none of it. I never knew exactly if or when it would happen.

In those moments there was a feeling of intense connection, belief in our teamwork, magic and a shared goal to a common end through really going for it. We brought the best out in each other.

Contrast that with the one time I forgot my lines during a monologue delivered facing the audience with only responses to an unheard voice. It was a one-sided conversation. I had only myself to bring myself out of that void. There was only me there to further the action on.

In that experience there was immense solitude, a seemingly inescapable plunge into myself, loss and desperation.

And there it was.

In my call with George today, we stumbled upon the great A-HA for today.

It is this: going for it in life, really getting into the game and making a difference, taking the risks that will have an impact and living fully cannot be done in isolation. In a vacuum. On an island. Sure, we can do things for ourself, but it’s only when we share the experiences, the fruits of our labor and the moments of pure magic and beauty with other people that we truly begin to understand what it means for us to really go for it.

For when we are living big in our lives, those we touch throughout the day are inspired to live life in a big way that only they have the ability to do.

As Shakespeare wrote, “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

Playing is done in a game and you can get in there and mix it up, or keep your comfortable seat in the stands, watching and admiring the action take place from afar. You can make it a big game inspiring others to run onto the court and lose themselves in the shared energy and ecstasy, or you can keep your game small, limited and all to yourself.