David Chiu

Today I continued listening to “Get the Edge”. On day 3 of the series Anthony Robbins spends a lot of time talking about relationships. At first I thought about skipping forward to the next tape since the majority of his message is geared towards singles. But then I realized that a lot of what he was saying could also be applied to acting. Questions such as - “Why do I feel this way? Do I feel this way because of past or present circumstances? Why am I in this relationship?” All of these questions are perfect when working on a scene and building/finding the relationship with your scene partner.

The next thing he talks about is loving yourself because if you don’t love yourself you won’t have much to give in a relationship. For instance, the Biblical saying “Love thy neighbor as thyself” pre-supposes that you actually love yourself. This also affects your self confidence. The more you accept who you are and are able to love yourself for who you are, all your flaws and who you want to be, the more you will be able to walk confidently in the world.

So one of the exercises he urges people to do daily is look in the mirror and tell yourself what you love about yourself. For instance, I would say something like, “David, I love you for your spirit and not giving up on your dreams”. It sounds stupid and self centered, but sometimes I think we do need to be a little more self centered and concentrate more on our own positive attributes than to be self critic all the time.

This exercise reminds me of a scene in Jerry Maguire where Cuba Gooding Jr’s character is nervous about walking through the conference hall with all the corporate sponsors. Jerry Maguire starts telling him how he is one of the greatest quarter backs in football and reassures him by reciting all of his impressive football stats. Cuba’s character is reassured with confidence and he goes on to become successful. Anthony Robbins exercise is exactly the same except you are reassuring yourself. “Psyching ourself up” for everyday challenges and achieving your wildest dreams. Pro athletes do it all the time before a game. Maybe they don’t look in a mirror and recite affirmations out loud, but they do their own rituals. Mohammed Ali always talked about how great he was. I’m sure his positive affirmations he made in public did help him always strive to be the greatest.

On another note, I weighed myself tonight as a checkin to my current progress. Two weeks now and no change. Not good. I guess I really need to start doing some serious cardio…