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On Acting
blue powder
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
To be honest, I don't really like my personality, I'm terrible when it comes to dealing with social situations, and when i do deal with them I regret the way i did afterwards.
I basically want advice as to how I should help myself act as if I was confident, or even come across as eccentric, I'd like to be interesting. I feel if I'm able to control myself physically and the way I speak, I'd be more confident.
I thought maybe an idea would be to try and mimic actors like johnny depp and christian bale in the mirror, the way they speak and their facial expressions.
It occured to me that if this were easy we'd have a lot of great actors around, so how do I go about this in an effective fashion?
I appoligize if I'm not clear, I'm finding it difficult to convey what I'm asking. Feel free to ask any questoins.
I'm male and 18 years old, just starting college.
I basically want advice as to how I should help myself act as if I was confident, or even come across as eccentric, I'd like to be interesting. I feel if I'm able to control myself physically and the way I speak, I'd be more confident.
I thought maybe an idea would be to try and mimic actors like johnny depp and christian bale in the mirror, the way they speak and their facial expressions.
It occured to me that if this were easy we'd have a lot of great actors around, so how do I go about this in an effective fashion?
I appoligize if I'm not clear, I'm finding it difficult to convey what I'm asking. Feel free to ask any questoins.
I'm male and 18 years old, just starting college.
blue powder on
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Posts
The best way to appear confident is to be confident. Putting on a show isn't the answer, just stop overthinking and be yourself.
Exactly man, I know it seems tough. Just calm down and don't worry about it. Your natural personality can come out then, which is most likely way cooler than that queer Johnny Depp.
'just be confident' doesn't work for most people. How do you gain confidence? through success. How do you get success? by being confident. So where do you start? In addition, 'be yourself' also doesn't work. He isn't confident. just being himself is being not confident. If being himself was being confident, he would not be here asking these questions.
to the OP:
Mimicing others who you find confident, eccentric, and interesting (what you were talking about) is a decent way to gain success in social interactions (it's also a great way to get burned -- beware). As you get success, you will become confident and viola!
Other good ways are to purposefully push yourself past your comfort zones and you will BECOME interesting. Go learn skyding, a new language, and build houses in indonesia. When you're done, trust me when I say you will be interesting, a bit eccentric, and probably alot more confident.
If you're interested in controlling your speaking patterns more, there are such things as voice classes. I've been thinking of checking them out myself.
Maybe I should have been a bit more clear about what I meant.
Success is not the only way to gain confidence, it can even be gained through failure. It is completely a state of mind.
I do admit that positive reinforcement contributes greatly to this end, but it isn't necessary. The OP just needs to realize that every person has something meaningful to contribute, and realize the same about himself. This is what I meant by "be yourself".
EDIT: I agree also, with the interesting activities. They are always awesome icebreakers, which is usually the toughest part of social situations.
Confidence isn't an easy skill to learn; the only way to do it is simply to put yourself in the mindset and keep it for as long as possible. Don't allow yourself to regress into self-depreciating thoughts. If you force yourself to think confident thoughts long enough, eventually you'll believe them. It doesn't come naturally to some people, but you need to forget about finding a shortcut because there isn't one.
Of course YMMV, but I understand based on my life and can say- I didn't know myself yet at 18. Now I'm 26, and realize that I'm an interesting guy. I mean, when I finish Seminary, I'll be one of only a handful of pastors who can cut their own ethernet cables and play video games with their feet. :-D
My point is: Just figure out who you are. Don't be short-sighted in this- you aren't going to come into yourself overnight, so there may be awkward or painful moments that you'll mostly forget after 7 years or so.
Don't know what you are passionate about? Go explore and find out!
Thought and personality is not nearly as significant as what a person actually does with themelves when interacting with others. If you behave confidently, then you are, for all intents and purposes, confident. It doesn't matter if your bowels are getting all jiggly, or you are worried about bad things, or that you have some other great worry on your mind, if you act with strength and determination, then you are strong and determined in every way that matters.
I would suggest different models to follow than celebrities and pick real-life models and people you admire. Create that persona as an ideal, someone you admire and want to follow. It is a good thing, when feeling afraid, when worried, when wondering about a course of action to ask, 'What would X do, how would they behaive in this situation?". With something concrete in mind, it becomes easier to gather your inner strength and commit to what you already know to be right and good. In this way, your ideal, your mask, your persona, helps strengthen your own beliefs and ideals and allows you to act on them in a meaningful and appropriate way.
As with all things, to become excellent requires practice and diligence. To train your mind well requires excellent, tangible examples to follow when you are learning how you want yourself to respond. If you wanted to be a golf pro, you would learn from an instructor, if you wanted to be a superior martial artist, you would follow the teachings, movements and form from a suitable master. Just like these things, where form and structure preceeds understanding, providing correction and encouragement towards a higher ideal, selecting good role-models and 'acting' like them will lead to greater understanding and abilities in yourself.
Once you have practiced form, understanding will follow, with understanding, you will be able to modify your form to accomplish what you see as important. After a long time of diligent practice (usually two years), your own style and understanding will merge with established form and technique, becoming closer to that ideal which you are searching for in yourself. I would encourage you to actively seek out superior examples on your way, so that you always have something fresh to consider and practice through out your whole life.
EDIT: I also remember reading this once upon a time and liking it. A lot.
If you are interested, then you are interesting.
Instead of focusing on the way other people are perceiving you, try to focus more on things that you enjoy talking about. Thats step 1 - Be clear with yourself regarding what your interests are. Step 2 is to make figure out what other people's interests are. If you want to start a good conversation, you need to find some commong ground. Now all of a sudden you aren't trying to make an impression. You're talking about something you both want to talk about.
The other big tip, is of course, to pick conversational partners you already find interesting. Chances are, you find them interesting because they have similar values to you to begin with.
Follow the above and your natural personality will come out over time. You'll start to feel more comfortable. Thats what conversational confidence feels like. Now you can try to capture that feeling even when you're not on familiar ground.