Finding Silence: The Final Piece to the Puzzle

Not too long ago, I began training in the Stanoslavsky method of acting. It involves finding the ‘truth’ of who you are, deep down at your core, and then putting that truth into the characters you portray on stage or in front of a camera. A mastering of this process is how great actors perform so well, and why Hollywood actors (most of whom are trained in this method) are world-reknowned for creating characters that an audience can perceive as real people. They don’t actually ‘act’ at all- they find the person who they are portraying within themselves, and when speaking lines, they are saying them as that person. They can say each line as if it is true because for the actor, when ‘in character’, it is true. When they cry on camera, it looks real because it is real. (I found that out the first time I cried from an exercise myself.)

In any event, despite the fact that I generally always learn things really quickly, and I fancy myself to be both self-aware and introspective, in the past few months of working with my acting coach, I’ve had a devil of a time with this process. What’s more, I couldn’t exactly figure out why. I thought I would be a natural. After several sessions of opening up, and explaining my thoughts and motivations to her however, she told me point blank what she felt the issue was. She said, “You aren’t here, and you aren’t paying me to teach me how to act.. You are here because you want success and you want me to give it to you. That isn’t how it works. You can not bullshit this, Chuck. The success is a bi-product of caring about learning this process. NOT the end itself. ” After the session, I sat down for a while outside and pondered her words. I let them sink in. Eventually, I realized that she was right. And what’s more, her advice wasn’t just true of our acting classes, it was true of everything.

As I walked around that day, I came to realize that this life of mine for the past 15 years has always been a continual effort to ‘prove something’. Whether it be to teachers who doubted in my abilities, people who doubted my intelligence, or coaches who doubted my ability to fight, everything was about proving them wrong. My number one motivator wasn’t to do what I do because I loved it, I was doing it because deep down in the core of my soul, I had an overwhelmingly powerful desire to prove to them that I could.

To be good at something -indeed to truly master it- you can not do it because of what you think it will make you feel or what you think it will do for you. You have to do it because
You love it. Regardless of whether anyone else is watching or not.

In all my years of martial arts training, I had learned a lot, but I had never mastered it’s most fundamental principle- to let go of your pride, and to simply ‘be’. I knew it in my head, but not in my heart.

This was a tremendous tremendous realization. In a way, it was scary because I felt like my motivations had been taken away from me. At the same time though, oddly enough, it was also soothing. All of a sudden, realizing that the opinions of doubters are only that- oinions- the pressure to succeed was off. It was as if I was in a noisy park, and all of a sudden there was nothing to listen to but the wind, and the trees… and that was fine.

It felt my ears had been unplugged, and now I could hear or like I’d just taken a rather large proverbial dump, and now I was light on my feet and ready to play ball.

It made me miss my Taekwondo teacher in Korea, Master Jang, because I knew he was already walking this path. It also made me miss a Japanese Rock star, Takuro, whom I used to bodyguard for, because I realized that he was walking this path as well.

I came to realize my own mentality towards it is why this battle of mine to find success was just that: a battle. It didn’t have to be. If I cleared my head of it’s desire for vindication, than this ‘battle’ would return to what it was when I started off as all those years ago- a journey. With that realization, I simply let it go. And instead of trying to replace that motivation with some other reasoning, I sat in the silence…and enjoyed it.

That was a month ago…. And I’m still ‘sitting in the silence’ now. What’s more, I’ve since nailed two national commercials, got profiled in two more magazines, got offered a radio interview, got my first lead role (in an American martial arts movie no less) and made more money in Japan than I ever have before.

I don’t know exactly if I will find success on a grand scale or not. I have a feeling that I will… but whether everyone around the world knows who I am or not is of no real consequence anymore. I have something of far greater value than any amount of fame, money or success. I have myself, and I have peace.

Signing off.
Chuck Johnson