William Shakespeare once wrote that, “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women players.” But how true is this?
Being on stage can be quite a rush! You spend hours rehearsing and planning, costumes at the ready. You delve into the personality of your character then finally, opening night is upon you. For many actors, fear and the opinion of the audience play an active role in their performance. The audience have paid to come and see you. They want to be entertained and will be your harshest critics. You have a job to do. But is life like this?
For many of us, anxiety plays a key role in determining our outlook and the way we interact with the world and if we believe that the world is our audience then the pressure is on. But the truth is that life is not a stage. We just structure our lives around this way of thinking, putting undue pressure on ourselves.
If you leave your house to venture into the social maelstrom thinking that everyone is watching you and that they are judging you, are you right?
Let me tell you a secret. Very few people are paying the slightest bit of attention. It’s not as though they don’t care but they are actually fully engrossed by their own insecurities and lives that you pass them by. You have anonymity in ways that would surprise you.
No one has paid to watch you and they are not there principally to critique the way you dress or think. They’ll have an opinion if you ask them. The truth is that we don’t know what people are really thinking. Instead their faces just reflect back our own insecurities!
For some, traumatic events have damaged their trust in the human race. Awful things do happen but the majority of people wouldn’t actually want to cause you any harm and if you struggle to read people or have lost your confidence consider this: No one really knows what someone is thinking. For some this is scary but for others it means what they think people are thinking is only an opinion.
So if the thought of facing the world and “performing” feels overwhelming - don’t get emotional stage fright because there is no audience, and tell the kids you work with to, because it works.
John Hassall
Founder & Creative Director, Johass
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