There are a lot of scientific benefits to having an active sex life.
It decreases stress. Boosts immunity. Increases self-esteem.
So what does this have to do with our acting and our life?
Well, everything it seems.
The qualities that are induced when we engage in intimacy – we feel alive, connected, our self-esteem and confidence soars, we stop focusing on the end-results (unless we suffer from performance anxiety!), we feel passionate and joyful and fully expressed – are the same qualities that we are seeking in our work. And our lives.
So what if we gave ourselves a spiritual and metaphorical lay every day?
We have to do this for ourselves.
When things fall apart – When the girl you like doesn’t text you back. When the casting director says you’re not getting a callback. When your agent dumps you. When you totally bomb an audition. When you want to quit acting and move back to Kansas. When you stand in line at the bank and get stressed by the amount of time it’s taking to simply cash a check. When things don’t go your way – you have to spin a new story.
When you can tell a new story – rewrite how you perceive events that are occurring to you – you get connected to your own lay.
“What can I find joyful about this experience that’s not going my way?” is a good question to ask yourself. Or maybe it’s an experience you can use to cultivate compassion or patience or surrender control. If you’re willing to look, you’ll find something positive about an experience that you generally judge (at first) as negative.
We burn so many minutes in our daily lives complaining about things and telling negative stories, or playing the victim, or imagining doom-and-gloom scenarios that never serve us.
Replace that useless energy with the obvious benefits of a spiritual lay.
When we stay in the feelings that feel good we not only are more creative, productive and energized, but we also become a magnet to those good-feeling things as well. More people like us. Our work gets better. We have more fun. We spend less time worrying.
We need to self-administer our own love hormone. We can’t wait for someone else to do it.
More oxytocin.
More self-love.
And then you realize you don’t need a job or a lover or a callback or a booking or an agent to make you feel good about yourself.
You just need a spiritual lay every day.