David Chiu

This morning I was feeling a little on edge as I was driving to work:

“I gotta make something happen. I’m sick of being a slave to corporate America. I gotta make some films, I gotta get myself out there. I need more auditions. I’m getting older and I’m not doing enough to achieve my goals. I…”

I was getting anxious and I had to force myself to stop my internal chatter. I know part of my problem is that I get so anxious to achieve my goals that I end up going in a million different directions with no focus. My focus right now needs to be changing myself and my thoughts about self. I need to find confidence and power in who I am as a person and as an artist. I need to be able to be unabashedly true to myself and my feelings. If I can’t do this, how do I expect to reach my full potential as a person and an actor?

So I started meditative breathing. Then I started thinking: How do you fundamentally change who you are?

Believe. I remember my friend Matt whom I grew up with through high-school and college. We went to the same oppressive Baptist church and participated in all the church activities. We were decent kids and didn’t get into a lot of trouble, but then we went to college and rebelled. Matt got involved in the typical college life of partying and drinking. Then one night he got in a really bad motorcycle accident and his life started to change. Eventually he went to seminary and now he’s a pastor. Back in college I would have never imagined him as a pastor, but he fundamentally changed his life through his faith and beliefs. The same thing happened with rapper Kanye West. Kanye was a hot beat producer for people like Jay-Z, but he wanted to become something more. One night he got in an almost fatal accident that landed him in a hospital for months with his broken jaw wired shut. There in the hospital he found his faith in God and also found his voice as an artist. That experience transformed him into the mega-star he is today.

So to me, faith and belief are one of the most potent catalysts for transformational change. Whether it’s a belief in God or choosing to believe in yourself or even choosing to believe in the goodness of others. Belief is a powerful force.

Breathe. If you focus and control your breathing you can positively affect your own physiology. This has already been proven by Asian monks for centuries.

Think. This is tied closely to belief. If you think different, you will behave different. If you think positive, your actions will be positive and will eventually lead to success.

Move. Life is filled with movement. Movement effects emotions and physiology. If you want to think different, feel different, move, dance, throw your body into the rhythm of life.

Eat. What you eat determines how you feel, how you think, how you act. Food is fuel for life. Do you think race car drivers put generic gas in their race cars on racing day? So why should you fuel yourself with bad food?

So these are the things I must strive to do to fundamentally change myself for the better: believe, breathe, think, move and eat. I can feel myself changing already.