If you google the phrase “taking things personally,” you are going to come up with page after page giving you advice on how to stop doing it. The ability to not take things personally is a valued character trait in our world, the mark of someone who can play it cool and navigate social interactions unscathed. Many of us spend a lot of time trying to cultivate this ability to detach from the things that might hurt us. We remind ourselves to not be so sensitive and not to let our feelings get in the way of our happiness. And it can be helpful at the office or the Thanksgiving dinner table but, unfortunately, our efforts to stop taking things personally in life also cuts us off from the source of our power as actors: our truthful point of view.
When we’re told to stop taking things personally, what we are really being told is to stop feeling so much. To calm down. To be reasonable. To get a grip. There is also an implication that the things we are feeling are destructive to us and to others. Like many of the ways we are socialized, there is a certain logic in the message. It would be very difficult to get work done (and to get to work for that matter) if everyone took everything absolutely personally all the time. But there is a flip side to letting everything slide off our back, which is that we begin to become numb to each other and to ourselves. A fog lowers and we drift past each other relatively unaffected by one another and our days float past without incident.
The trouble, of course, is that plays and films are not about the days that go by without incident. They are about the days when everything changes. And the characters that inhabit these stories are not drifting through life. No! They have been woken up by major events, by given circumstances that shake them awake and demand their action. Hamlet takes things very personally. Blanche DuBois, Willy Lowman and Walter Lee Younger do, too. They rage at the injustice of the world around them, they feel deeply and they act without particular adherence to rational thought. They love hard, not politely. They demand satisfaction. They live as raw nerves in the world and they take everything personally! So how are we, who have breathed in the ether of politeness, supposed to play those roles?
The answer is that we must begin, in our work and our lives, to take things personally. We must open up and let ourselves be vulnerable. You may be thinking that I am asking you to take offense at everything, but that is not really true. What I am challenging you to do is to let the world in, to notice it, to pay attention and BE IN RESPONSE TO IT. This can be good and bad and everything in between. Because it’s not just the negative stuff, the criticism and the hurt that we shut out when we stop taking things personally. It’s also the compliments and the flirtation. The kindness and the tenderness. When we stop taking things personally, we remove ourselves from fully experiencing our world and the people we share it with. And the truth is, that the life of your acting depends on your ability to effect change in the world while simultaneously being in response to it.
None of this is easy. There is a cost to staying present and letting the world affect you. You will feel things more deeply than most people allow themselves and sometimes it can be painful. But other times it can be wonderful. That is the cost and the joy of being an artist and an actor. Our job is to be awake in a way that not everyone has the courage for. We must be awake so that, in our work, others can feel more fully if even for a moment. When you begin to take things personally, you will learn that being sensitive doesn’t stand in the way of your happiness. It only stands in the way of your apathy. To be a true actor, you must experience the richness of the world in the way that only you can. Because it is only through your eyes and your heart that you will connect.
Andrew, obviously we have worked together, but you have hit the nail on the head. I too, have to remind my students to take the things that happen in the work “personally”. My students all know each other, so I believe that many of them hold back from taking things in the work personally because, “that’s just Joe, I know he doesn’t really mean it.” The familiarity with one another is a kind of safeguard. Keep up with the great work. I’m sharing this with my students.
You really cover the delicate balance of it all – it ain’t easy (said the actor who took to writing and directing in his own frustration with this very difficult hurdle). I love that you also focus upon the fact that taking things personally doesn’t just mean being “insulted” or enraged – that it means having your sensory channels flowing in both directions, you take in full and let it come out fully, unique to your own POV. Brilliant, concise article my man.
Andrew Gallant is a fucking genius
Taking it personally is usually good. Taking action on every little thing is usually not. You have to pick your battles.
I know that taking up acting in my mid-thirties was a great thing. If nothing else, it caused me to re-engage with the world emotionally after a time when I had mostly shut down. The trick has been in channeling my “taking it personally” into the roles rather than towards the less exemplary people among those whom I meet in this racket.
I read it. I disagree. I don’t think the writer of the article understands what it is to “not take things personally”. They argue that not taking things personally is an attempt to feel less. That’s not true. Not taking things personally is feeling more. Increasing your empathy and compassion to extend beyond your self centered view, not to disregard it, but to find the deeper truth in the humanity of our interactions, that what others say and do reflects their point of view and being able to see from other points of view is the trademark of acting. Unfortunately, the writer of this missed the mark.
The danger in taking things personally as an actor is that you could very well lose your sanity, ability to accept rejection, ability to collaborate with others. If you as the person, who is an actor, begins to take things more personally, and engage in ego growth, your path will be much more turbulent. If you shed your ego as a person, who is an actor, the deepest truths about your characters will come forth. Yes, Hamlet takes things very personally, but the actor playing Hamlet, must release his/her judgements (personal attachments) to get to the truth of their production and collaboration. Taking things personally leads to defensiveness and that can’t be very challenging to let go of. Opening your heart to the true vulnerability of what it means to see the actions of others as reflections of themselves allows the actor to approach Hamlet in the deepest sense of what it is to be human. The emmensely important events that take place in any play for any character must be approached with an open mind and an open heart, then, the truth can prevail.
Not taking things personally isn’t a trick that can be accomplished by, “playing it cool”, it is a life long journey. Seeing ourselves as unified with infinite potential is a spiritual path for the actor who is looking for divine truth.
Taking things personally, and encouraging others to lock in their mindset to their own understanding can be damaging and difficult for those who do it. Be careful with this advice.