Your Life is an Art Performance
You can shift your identity at any moment
You can shift your identity at any moment
Whenever I get caught up in the loop of overthinking, waiting for clarity or feeling down on myself that there’s just no way that I can succeed, I like to remind myself that everything is made up.
“Money isn’t real,” I’ll tell my bathroom mirror in between my sobs. Every system we have is something that we as a collective, established and gave value to, so in theory, it is our decision if we want to move forward in that system or not.
And these systems, for the most part, help us move through life. But, our mind likes to play this categorization game with us, where it constantly searches for a path within those systems; a step-by-step guide on how to “win.”
Essentially, we are always trying to find the “how” in life before doing the actual living part of life, with everything. With money, relationships, art, writing, on and on. We created these systems, so there must be a guidebook somewhere on how to use them. Right?
Just Do it
Nearly every self-help book can be boiled down to the Nike logo; JUST DO IT. All of them give wonderful anecdotes about how motivation is a game of momentum. Motivation comes to you as you’re taking action, so starting is the most important part. I would say clarity is in the same boat as motivation, where it doesn’t precede action, but finds you as you take action. Really great advice when you’re being suffocated by your blankets because you just want to hide and give up on your dreams. just do it.
No one really cares about the chicken or the egg conundrum with motivation or clarity if they feel like everything is stacked against them. How do you beat a system that was completely made up to begin with? (I mean really, what is inflation? It’s a made-up rule. We decided how money works.)
What has helped me move out of my low self-worth binge, I first heard from PeatheFeary on Instagram. They talked about how you can shift energy when you view your life as art, as a performance piece. Every decision is creating more art. That was when I started realizing how important identity shifting was.
You can look at life as something that happens to you. That you’re in these systems and have to make the most of your experience, having little say in the matter. You can also look at life as something that happens for you. That shifts as you shift and directly reflects the identity, or art performance, you are choosing to experience and radiate.
When life becomes a performance piece, then every day I get to wake up and ask myself, “who do I want to be?” My identity isn’t this thing placed on me; it becomes this energy projected out and designed by me.
If I view my identity as this avatar that I get to build and design, then the systems that I play in are a little less Matrix and more like Sims, if I had all of the cheat codes.
It can get so easy to feel like our identity is something we have no control over. The attributes we associate with ourselves turn into these chains keeping us from exploring the different aspects of life. You can always always always shed your identity for a version of you that feels good. That’s really what those self-help books are preaching for when they tell you to take action.
It starts internally.
I hated winter. So much. I would get so angry when winter came. Almost never leave the house. I would go into hermit mode and feel unmotivated, unhealthy, and just plain sad. It wasn’t until I had left winter for the constant sun that is California that I realized I didn’t hate winter at all; I just wasn’t allowing myself to enjoy it because I didn’t want to live in that area.
So I decided to shift into the person that enjoys winter. I started small. I started telling myself how amazing winter was. I told myself how I love the sound of ice cracking under my shoes and the look of the snow on the ground. After a bit, I started to bundle up as much as I could and drive down the street to the park and go on a walk in 30-degree weather. My favorite thing is sitting under trees so I made sure I did that and really felt myself enjoy it.
I started researching winter activities, looked into buying snow pants, and asked my friends about snow-shoeing.
I became an art performance of someone who loves winter.
Which, give me an Oscar because I can feel myself stepping into that identity. And I think that’s why we are so captivated by actors when they do method acting and become the character that they are portraying. We all have it in us.
We have the ability to do that in our daily lives. Your identity is not something that will cause the world to collapse the day you choose to shift. In fact, the world will probably open up when you decide to.
Viewing life in this way cuts out the overwhelming feeling of consequence for our decisions. We get so worried about how our shifts will affect everyone, that we stay so tightly to who we have been, even too afraid to change up our hair.
When we allow ourselves the play to step into any character or avatar, we wish to experience, we open up the potential for the systems to shift too.
Systems are meant to be designed to help us live our lives better, not restrict us to living in an endless cycle.
The easiest way that helped me understand the concept of life as performance art is by playing Sims for a few hours. Play, fully unrestricted. Give yourself all the cheat codes. And then play completely broke. Or with one room. Or a mansion. Or as a vampire. Play as many possible ways you can.
When you see these avatars running around, still experiencing life with anything you throw at them, you get to see the autonomy you truly have over your own experience. If you choose to be the person that lives a magical life, you will start seeing magic everywhere. And if you choose to be the person that life just happens to them, well you’ll have experiences where you give up your autonomy.
It’s all an art performance. How will you choose to experience it?
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