CAREER
Take Your Space
Just as the sunlight starts peaking through the clouds, planning begins for The Pitch Process’ next workshop. This one is all about confidence when standing up and presenting to a room, in team meetings, when communicating with clients and when speaking up in new settings.
Confidence can seem elusive – a slippery fish caught sight of as a flash beneath the surface but impossible to hold on to for long. Where does it come from? Why do we feel it in some mo- ments and not in others? How do others seem to have it in everything they do?
It is the last of these that has captured our imaginations recently: “How do you have the confidence to stand up there in front of so many people?”
I have been asked this question (or variations on the theme) numerous times by friends, family members and strangers. I don’t deny that it takes a certain amount of courage. One can only ever speak from experience but in our time as performers and coaches, there are a few key ingredients we have discov- ered along the way. Any real confidence is borrowed – it comes from the character, the words, the story, the skin of another which we slip into over weeks and months. And it comes from the craft, of course: skill, practise, repetition. After 100 algebra equations, problem 101 is nothing to be worried about. However, to be confident inside one’s own skin, in ‘real’ life, is a slightly different beast.
When I was younger, one of the greatest draws to acting for me was being able to live the lives of others. Characters in stories always seemed so full, so clearly depicted, larger than life. They lived as the most realised versions of themselves and, in conse-
32 FOCUS The Magazine July/August 2019
quence, this ‘living it large’ led to great stories and great lives. It seemed to me that the only way to experience my full capacity, to touch the edges of personality and to truly feel alive, was in this way.
Habitually, we retract. We shrink our outlines and settle into rather limited comfort zones, lulled there by our daily habits, the humdrum and repetition of routine, the daily grind. This is nor- mal and frequently necessary to get us through the day. We quite literally box ourselves in, holding our breath to squish in- side a packed train carriage alongside other vacuum-packed people. I consciously contract into a stream-lined version of my- self in order to dodge between bodies on the high street when I’m running late. We gaze ahead at the traffic or down at our phones but never up.
Comfort zones are comfort zones for a reason of course – they allow us to get things done and in a predictable, low-risk manner. But what’s comforting is also limiting. We forget our- selves. We forget our capabilities. We forget what’s possible in favour of what’s comfortable. Without extreme or unexpected external circumstances forcing us there, we forget just how far we can reach, how high we can jump, how deeply we can breathe, how loudly we can sing, how long we can hold our bal- ance for.
My theory is this: when I meet people in whom I immediately observe and feel a sense of real confidence, a magnetism, some- thing that makes me want to get closer and pay attention, they are usually people who are fully themselves. A friend once said to me that one of the most important
things he’d learnt in life was how to be “full of yourself ”. He did-
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