Uncover your act, before life does it for you!

Riding a motorcycle at high speeds, climbing mountains, getting into a shootout – these are things that many men will do bravely. But ask us to expose ourselves – to drop our act – in an authentic workshop setting and it’s, ‘No way!’ A man would sooner drop his pants in public than drop his act. In fact, if he dropped his pants, he would turn that into an act!

Your act is the persona that you present yourself to be. More than that, it’s the persona that you believe yourself to be.

Let’s say you’re the lone ranger,  the one who arrives late for every party, perhaps unattached, or with a new girl every time, and everyone wonders where you’ve been; you leave early too, and dash off into the night, alone most times, and everyone’s left wondering what you’ll be up to, wishing it was them having so much fun.

Their imaginations are more fertile than the reality. For you it’s lonely out there; there’s not really that much going on. Still, you can’t drop the act, because it’s you, after all! Or is it? In fact, the act – your persona – is not really you, but has a life of its own. It’s a psychological construct that occupies you, that grips you by the scruff of the neck and leads you through life, presenting itself as the real you. Read on!

Life is designed to inevitably expose your act as an act

Trying to see the real you behind your persona is like trying to beat your own reflection in a mirror. The persona, like the reflection, moves with you, too fast for you to detach from it. It’s that tricky. So how do you know what’s your act and what’s you?

People have reported feeling separated from their bodies during trauma, like their soul lifted out of their body. There’s actually an ancient esoteric ritual designed to give the initiate the experience of falling to his death. During this short fall he is so convinced that he’s going to die that for a split second he actually has the experience of his soul separating from his body. He comes out of it convinced of the existence of the soul.

Life is filled with little mini-shocks, mini-falls, that are designed to expose your act as an act. The teasing of your mates, the little failures that show up your shortcomings, that ‘catch you out’. If you react by defending yourself, by going deeper into your act, by taking your persona – your act – more seriously instead of less seriously, sooner or later something big will happen to expose the truth of who you are. If your act is to pretend you’re the money guy when you’re really not, you’ll go bankrupt; if you pretend you’re the paragon of virtue when you’re really not, you’ll get caught with your fingers in the till and go to jail (‘The devil made me do it!); the philanderer will lose his marriage and the lone ranger will end up lonely and alone.

You can wait for that to happen and, when it does, pretend you’re the innocent victim, or you can jump ahead of the game and take a transformational workshop that’s designed to help you uncover your act and take a giant leap towards authentic being and self-mastery. (Yes, there’s one advertised below!)

Do it, before life uncovers you – in public!

Be honest with yourself first, then with others

It’s one thing to pretend to others. Then what we usually do is we pretend that we’re not pretending. We actually argue to prove a point that it’s not so. Of course I love you. Of course I’m not interested in other women. Never look at them, never would. Then comes the test – in the form of a raised eyebrow, perhaps – and we go, ‘No, I’m not just saying it, I really mean it.’

More astonishing than this, is how we actually try to convince ourselves that it’s true. I’m happily married, we’ll argue, inside the privacy of our own head, late at night. I love my staff and I’d be sad if any of them ever left. Actually, half the time it’s not true, or it’s not 100% true, but admitting that to ourselves would seem too terrible. Firstly, we tell ourselves, it would mean I’m a terrible person. Secondly, it could mean I’d have to do something about it. As to the first point, please check: who’s the embodiment of the voice in your head? The very person who you’re trying to cover up in front of? Or maybe it’s still your mother! If so, time to grow up, wouldn’t you say?

It is possible to be completely honest –
 if you can bear the consequences

Of course, when it comes to pretending and covering up, we ask, could life be any other way? In fact it can. It is possible to be completely honest, firstly with yourself, then with others. It’s a lofty level of being – it means being centred within yourself and willing to bear the consequences of your every utterance. One of the most powerful and liberating things a man can do is to admit his true thoughts and feelings to himself – and then, if he can find the courage, to act on them.

Your country needs you to lead!

Your country needs leaders, and talking about it doesn’t create them. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’ said Ghandi. Be the leader you want to see. It starts with you. The biggest wave cannot rise without all the tiny water molecules below it. The Taj Mahal relies on every brick for its beauty. It could not be without one of them. What if you were the building block for leadership in your country? Who would you have to be? What would you, leading, look like, right here, right now in your life?

Right now, where are you conforming to the mould instead of being extraordinary? Right now, where are you kowtowing to popular interests instead of leading the sheep away from the abyss? Right now, where are you serving your own survival in a situation instead of risking your position for the sake of something greater?

Being a leader means being willing
to be laughed at, criticised

Being a leader does not feel comfortable. Being a leader means risking being the butt of everyone’s jokes. You can say what you like about our leaders, but at least they’re willing to be laughed at, criticised. If you’re not, and someone else is, that person wins the game hands down, no contest. If you want to stop corrupt leaders from stealing your whole country from right under your nose, then you have to do something. It can be something small. Rosa Parks was one lady on a bus and she inspired a changed world. Would you step out like Rosa Parks, even for one day?