Are we all actors?

From time to time, I will come across actors or actresses who are so committed in playing their roles that once they have accepted the role for a movie, they start preparing for the role as early as 12 months before the shoot. More impressive is their ability to gain weight or slim down according to the needs of the role they have decided, and better still, they can get back to their normal weight. Of course, these professional actors are disciplined to do whatever necessary to get into 'shape'.  They also have professional advisers or trainers to help them.

However, besides all these external help plus their own discipline, there is another motivating force. They are so engrossed with the role they will act that they 'become' the person they believe they are. They believe they are that person in the movie and that give them the motivation to move towards the shape they want to. There is a shift in their identity. By that change, we are consciously motivated or even unconsciously driven to do what it takes to get what we want. That is the power of identity. When we assume a certain identity, we are ready to accept certain actions or decisions as though it is part of 'us'.

We are not actors and we don't have a role to play in some mega movies. But does that mean we are not assuming a certain role or character in our daily life? You may have come across a smoker who immediately stops smoking when she knows she is pregnant, almost instantly. How can she do it? The mind and body just automatically reject smoking as it does not augur with their new ID as a caring mother. The same goes for a person who still drags himself to give a training despite he is very ill. He believes that he is a professional and he just cannot let 200 participants sitting in a hall staring at a empty stage without the speaker. It is against his ID and he will do whatever it takes to make sure he is there. For some strange reasons, he seems to be able to draw his energy from thin air.

So, we do assume a certain identity in our mind and we are motivated by it and we 'act' towards it. This ID is usually reflected as our values too. That explains why sometimes it is so easy for us to accept certain changes and some changes make us so uneasy and sleepless at night. So, do you know who you are acting as? Start with what you treasure most, what you like most and what you hate most. All these new details will give you an idea or some ideas of who you are acting as.

So, Shakespeare was right - "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"