You Don't Become Someone by Waiting to Be Them

There's a piece of advice floating around the manifestation world:

"Become the person who already has it."

I've always found that phrase interesting.

And a little ridiculous.

What does it mean? Walk around pretending you're a millionaire until your bank account gets the message?

If that worked, I'd have been Steven Spielberg by the time I was twelve.

But there's something genuinely useful buried underneath the woo-woo.

I know because I've been teaching a version of it to actors for nearly twenty years.

And because, years ago, I accidentally used it to become a director.

The Difference Between Pretending and Rehearsing

Actors don't become characters by standing in front of a mirror and telling themselves, I am Hamlet. I am Hamlet. I am Hamlet.

They rehearse.

They enter imaginary circumstances and make real choices within them.

They pursue something.

They encounter obstacles.

They respond.

And little by little, a character begins to emerge.

The actor isn't simply imagining a different person.

They're discovering that person through action.

I think we misunderstand identity when we treat it as something we have to possess before we can begin.

We tell ourselves:

Once I'm confident, I'll make the movie.

Once I'm successful, I'll call myself a writer.

Once somebody hires me, I'll be a director.

But what if we've got the sequence backward?

What if identity isn't something you wait to receive?

What if it's something you rehearse?

The Day I Raised My Hand

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was translating commercials from English into Spanish.

Not exactly the directing career I'd imagined.

But I had already decided I was a director, even if nobody had hired me to be one.

One day, I overheard two producers arguing about a red-carpet event in Pasadena.

They needed someone to shoot it.

Every crew was busy.

I knocked on the door.

"I'll do it."

They gave me a camera and some gas money.

When I got to Pasadena and opened the case, I discovered the camera was in pieces.

I'd never used that model before.

And this was 2003. My flip phone wasn't about to pull up a YouTube tutorial.

For a moment, I had a problem.

Then I asked myself a question:

What would a professional director do?

The answer wasn't particularly glamorous.

He'd find someone who knew how to assemble the damn camera.

So I called a friend in New York.

He talked me through it.

I shot the event.

A month later, I was offered my first paid directing assignment.

Now, I could tell you I manifested that job.

But that would leave out the most important part.

I raised my hand.

I took the assignment.

I made the phone call.

I did the work.

The identity didn't create the opportunity. It changed how I responded to it.

Stop Rehearsing the Reward

Here's where I think the phrase "become the person who already has it" goes wrong.

It puts our attention on what that person has.

The career.

The money.

The recognition.

The beautiful house with the suspiciously clean kitchen.

But those are outcomes.

They don't tell you much about the person.

If you want to become a filmmaker, don't spend all your time imagining yourself accepting an Oscar.

Imagine yourself solving a problem on set.

Imagine yourself making a difficult creative decision.

Imagine yourself finishing the edit when you're tired and the footage isn't working.

Then go do some version of that.

Because the question isn't:

What would my life look like if I had everything I wanted?

It's:

What would I do today if I were already taking this identity seriously?

That's a much more useful question.

And unlike the first one, you can actually answer it.

The Person Emerges Through the Work

I didn't know how to assemble that camera.

I wasn't suddenly filled with confidence.

I didn't possess some magical certainty that everything would work out.

I just made the next decision a director needed to make.

Then the next one.

And the next.

That's how movies get made.

You see something that doesn't exist.

You begin making choices.

Some work.

Some don't.

You adjust.

Eventually, there's a movie where there used to be nothing.

Maybe becoming a different person works much the same way.

You don't need to convince yourself that you've already arrived.

You need to start making the choices that move you in that direction.

That's The Director Within.

Not pretending you're somebody else.

Taking responsibility for becoming who you want to be.

So tomorrow, try something.

For one hour, rehearse the person you're becoming.

Not their success.

Their behavior.

Make one choice they would make.

Then make another.

You might discover that the person you've been waiting to become has been waiting for you to call action.

Don't just direct your movies.

Direct your life.