…you get to see a bigger picture of where you were and where you are going. In other words, you get to see the progress you’ve made in your goals and dreams. According to Tony Robbins, progress = happiness.
My first assignment from my acting class was to write an autobiography of the character I was studying. Not going to lie…when my teacher told me to do this, I was like “Yo this is like a homework assignment from my high school english class”. But I guess the difference is that unlike high school homework, I actually wanted to do this because I cared about being a good actor.
I remember opening the word document of the play and seeing 4 acts and over 50 pages of reading. “shit, this is long. I can’t read this in one sitting” was the first thing I thought haha. So I broke the reading up into 4 days. By the time I finished, I had a basic understanding of my character but not enough for me to confidently write his autobiography. So like my high school self, I went online to find character analysis and summaries of the play so I knew my character more. After like 1 hour of searching, I felt confident enough to write.
Probably like 1 paragraph in, I hit my first road block. How long should this autobiography be? I emailed my teacher and asked “How short should this autobiography be?” (if you notice I said short instead of long). He immediately replies back with this:
Aside from all the details, the one thing that really stuck out to me was “Enjoy the process. The autobiography mustn’t’ be a chore but an opportunity to create and have fun.” I often talk about enjoying the process here on the blog so reading that in the email reminded me to enjoy writing the autobiography. And that’s when I found writing the autobiography became easier. I didn’t focus on how long or short it needed to be. I just focused on how I could capture the entire progression of the character’s life. I even wrote the autobiography is a somewhat comedic fashion. It turned out that writing this autobiography was fun.
After I finished the assignment, I really got to thinking how well I knew my character. When I first started the assignment, I thought there wasn’t enough info (as indicated by my question of “how short the autobiography had to be”); however, as I kept researching the major events in his life and how they connected to each other, I started to pick up on the progression of some of the points my teacher mentioned – stuff like relationships, education, dreams and ambitions. Although I only had 4 acts of a play to work with for the autobiography, there was enough information for me to write an entire page.
Progress = happiness
Our lives don’t span only 4 acts. There are many acts and writing an autobiography of our own life can be incredibly long, but I think we shouldn’t focus on how long our life is but where our life is progressing. We all have dreams and ambitions, important relationships, religious beliefs, major events, etc… in our life that have made us who we are today. Personally, I often forget how much progress I have made in many areas of my life ever since I made my first personal choice to go part time at my job because I am so focused on the present. I’m not saying that focusing on the present is bad to do but in order to know where you are, you have to have clarity on where you came from. And if you can see the progress you’ve made in whatever area of your life you’re trying to change, I believe that’s where you’ll find happiness in life.
