Wednesday, May 14, 2014
You Only Can Do What You Can Do
It would be nice to be able to do everything, all the time, and do it extremely well. This isn't possible. Optimal is a word with meaning because there are things it does not describe. Many things may be optimal at a given moment:
- you are well rested
- you are feeling content, confident and happy
- you have focus and have what scientists who study creativity call "flow" working in your favor
And when these (or other things) are not optimal it is easy to fall into frustration and anger. Maybe we aren't able to focus as much as we'd like due to lack of sleep. Avoiding short changing your sleep in the future is good, but there is still nothing you can do to add to the 4 hours of sleep you are now functioning on today.
So, breathe. Do the best you can, and let that be enough. Be ok with doing the best you can right now. You are enough. The best you can muster right now is enough. Acting on the urge to judge yourself harshly for not doing your "best" or not being "perfect" comes from somewhere understandable and makes a big assumption:
- It is trying to protect your feelings by making it seem like you could have total control of everything all the time. You can't. And that's okay.
- It presupposes you know what your "best" is. You don't. And that's also okay.
I don't know what is "best" in my work at every instant, and I submit neither do you, and neither does the audience. No one knows what is "best" at any given moment; we only have ideas. Nobody knows anything. There is no perfect in the actual world we all live in.
Do the best you can in the moment. That is your task. It is that simple, even if it isn't easy. And accomplishing it is one part of success.
Maybe you're injured or sick, then do the role and play the scene as best you can while injured or sick. In the first Indiana Jones movie, Harrison Ford was scheduled to shoot a fight scene in which he was to use his whip to disarm a swordsman, at least that is how it was scripted. But he had food poisoning and he was too ill to do the stunt. Ford says, I was no longer capable of staying out of my trailer for more than it took to expose a role of film, which was 10 minutes, and then I would have to flee back there for sanitary facilities.
He suggested filming "shooting the sucker" instead of filming the planned fight. They shot it, and an iconic scene and great character moment were born.
Food poisoning meant he couldn't do some ideal, pre-planned idea, and by just doing what he could do (and with creative flexibility on the part of the director and crew) something possibly better was made.
So if you're stressed, take a moment, breathe, refocus, and simply do what you can do. That's enough.
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this posted by David August at 12:01 PM 
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