I wasn’t on this one. I was out for a stretch, and Joey took the microphone at seven in the morning with a slide he had built himself and one word on it. Momentum. It came from a team meeting where I had told Brian and Joey that if we were going to run classes in the building and online at the same time, momentum was the only thing that would carry it. Joey took that word and went somewhere with it I hadn’t heard him go before.
How do you get your momentum back after you fall behind?
You do the thing you said you would do, and you do it now, before you feel ready. Momentum runs both ways. Positive momentum is a goal in your head at all times and one piece broken off the boulder every single day. Negative momentum is every decision that goes against that goal, and it compounds just as fast in the other direction. In 2018 Joey was told he could not graduate on time. He hid from it for most of a year, and the hiding was the negative momentum. Then three people who loved him told him to rip the bandage off, and he finished the last six credits online while working here. The diploma came in the mail. The confidence that came with it is what he is talking about on this recording.
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What is in the episode
- 01:10 · What momentum is. Joey’s slide, and the team meeting it came from.
- 01:48 · It runs both ways. Positive momentum breaks a piece off the boulder every day. Negative momentum is every choice that points away from the goal, and it moves just as fast.
- 03:25 · Compete with yourself. Treat it like a competition, but never compare yourself to where somebody else is. They made different choices to get there.
- 04:33 · The year he couldn’t graduate. The meeting with the counselors, the night school credits that didn’t count, and the word super senior.
- 06:28 · The diploma in the mail. Three people told him to just finish. He did it badly at first, managing his time terribly, then he did it. What a piece of paper did for his confidence.
- 08:27 · You do what you say you’re going to do. The mindset I had given him and the moment it took hold, with the Will Smith treadmill line: I’m either going to outwork you or I’m going to die on this thing.
Why I let this one stand as his
Astrid, who is on nearly every one of these morning shows, wrote in that what was helping her momentum was setting goals and then setting mini goals to get there, which she got from the book. That is exactly it. The goal is the boulder. The mini goals are the pieces you break off. And the thing that gets you back on the boulder after a bad year is not a better attitude. It is one small promise to yourself, kept today. Joey’s is a diploma. Yours might be a class you keep telling people you’re going to take.
Full transcript
2,315 words, transcribed from the recording on this side of the desk. Names corrected. Nothing else changed, so it reads the way we talk.
Read the whole conversation
This is Mornings with Matt, the Dearing Acting Studio Podcast, where we discuss the connection between life and acting. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Mornings with Matt. I am Joey, subbing in here for Matt this morning. Hopefully, the last of a couple of mornings, we're trying to set up a video call for him so he can video into the show. I know he misses it very much, but let's get into the topic for today.
I'm very, very excited about it, and it is momentum. Okay, so I got a little slide for you I prepared, so here we go. I'm going to pull it up on the computer, and boom. Okay, here it is. What is momentum? Okay, seems like a pretty straightforward question, but I got a cool story for this. So when we transferred our focus and made it focused on virtual and in-person and trying to build both programs and keep them both going, we had a team meeting and we talked, and one of the things that Matt told Brian and I was, hey, let's focus on momentum.
And we got deep into what this means, right? So momentum is something where you can have positive momentum and you can have negative momentum. So you have to be careful because it can go either way like most things in life. So positive momentum is keeping a mindset of something, some goal in your head at all times and pushing forward to that thing, breaking off a piece of ice on the boulder every single time you get out there, you get going, right?
Negative momentum takes you backwards. So that is making decisions that go against your goals, what you want to do, what your end game is, right? So you have to be cautious of what kind of momentum you are giving yourself. And it goes deep. I mean, you guys know I love talking football on this show, but we were watching the Cardinals game yesterday and Matt and I were on like a telephone call and just sort of talking through the plays as they went on.
And we talked about at the end of the second half when they didn't get the score and they could have kicked the field goal, all that, it was a terrible loss to watch. But that idea of momentum is so present in all of life, but especially in sports, in football, and in anything you play where there is a competition going on. And so that's one of the things I think we can do for ourselves is, hey, let me, let me go at this like a competition, let me compete, but don't compete with somebody else, compete with yourself.
And Matt talks about that a lot, the idea of you can compete with yourself and you should, but you shouldn't compare yourself to other people based on where they are because those are different choices, different ways to get there. So that's our first note here. I'm going to see if there's any comments up in here. Reply to those really quick. Oh, no. The, uh, the comments or the YouTube played in the background.
Oh, Astrid says, good morning. Good morning, Astrid. Astrid is always on the show. So excited to have her. Oh, wow. I totally botched that with the capitalization. But yeah, so that's what we're going to get into today. Um, I would love to hear from you guys, from you, Astrid, anybody else who's watching, what times in your life you've felt momentum one way or the other and how important you've seen that go.
Because, um, for me, I'll tell a story. So there was, um, 2018, I was supposed to graduate high school, right? I was at Shadow Mountain. I had transferred there from Wickenburg, did my last two years at Shadow Mountain. Absolutely loved the school overall. Loved the teachers, the people I met. Like, it was just, it was a wonderful experience. Um, and I felt like I sort of came out of my shell a little bit there, where I was able to branch out into theater and things that I really enjoyed more.
Um, and so I would never trade that for anything. But at the end of 2018, um, my counselors, the principal, my parents, we all had a meeting. They talked and they were like, there's just not a way to, to get you graduated by 2018. And that was a hard blow for me. Um, I had been doing night school to try to make up credits on top of regular school, just sort of moving along.
And it turned out those credits that I did at night school didn't, didn't really help that much. So, um, so it was something where I was just, it was very clear I was going to have to continue past my senior year and be, uh, what they call a super senior, which is not a fun term by the way. Um, and so it was this harsh blow and I sort of took a hiatus.
I, I pretended like it didn't happen. Um, it cut deep. And so during that time, I spent a lot of time with family and I store started to feel that negative momentum backwards. Right. Cause everybody was trying to encourage me. They were trying to tell me like, it's okay. You've been through a lot, you know, you can do it. But that little thing in my brain was like, I mean, you, you, you put your best foot forward, you tried and, and you didn't get through.
And so then there was a fear that was wrapped around finishing school, finishing to get my diploma. And so it wasn't until about, um, halfway through 2019 where my uncle and my dad and Matt, they all pulled me aside and they were like, dude, just, just, just do it. Just rip the bandaid, uh, sign up for this online school, see how you like it. You have six credits left or less, like just finish it.
Say you did it. Like, it'll feel really good. And I took their word for it. I wasn't super happy about it, but I, I knew it was something that I should do. Um, so I did it and it was really, really hard. I, I, at first I was working here on top of that and, um, and it was really nice, but I was terrible at managing my time.
So I wasn't putting enough time to school. I was putting a ton of hours, even wasted hours here, um, procrastinating. And, and that was super good to me about, Hey, like keep the goal forward. Keep your eyes focused on where you want to be, not where you are now. And so come, uh, about four months ago now, I got my diploma in the mail and I had graduated and that created the positive momentum.
Um, there was a level of confidence that I had no idea I was going to gain from that experience because, you know, finishing late isn't exactly like always an accomplishment, but it was for me. And, uh, it's, uh, it's all about perspective, all about the way you look at it. So once I started to see it in that lens, it became something that I was super proud of.
And while to a lot of people, even to myself, honestly, it, it can be a meaningless piece of paper, it's just like, Hey, you did this thing. Um, it instilled a level of confidence and a mindset that Matt had talked to me about, which was the mindset of you say you're going to do what you do. So if I say I'm going to do it, if I say I'm going to graduate, if I say I'm going to finish this class, if I say I'm going to learn a new script, if I say I'm going to do a new editing technique, then I'm going to do that thing no matter what.
Kind of like he talks about with the Will Smith, um, mentality about the treadmill. I'm going to get off this treadmill after you, or I'm going to die. And that's it. Like, I'm either going to outrun you on this treadmill, I'm going to outwork you, or I'm going to die. And so that sort of mindset came through to me in that moment. And it's something where I felt both sides of this momentum thing.
And yet, um, on the other side of it coming out with positive momentum. And I have used that in so many different ways when it comes to confidence and, um, being secure in who I am. So I'm going to take it over. I see some comments in here. My dad says, morning, bud. Morning, pops. Thanks for hopping on the mornings with Matt show. Appreciate it. Um, Astrid said, I've been feeling some momentum right now.
What's helping is setting goals and then setting mini goals to get there. Got that from acting is my day job. It's a great book. You know, since you said that, I kind of just have to. Time now for Brian Sweeney's Shameless Plugs. Shameless Plugs. I don't know what I did. Oh, it was right here. I was like, I had a book. I had a book. Shameless Plugs.
Acting is my day job. Read this book. It's amazing. Seven strategies to market and make money as an actor. We talked about it a lot on this show, especially Brian Sweeney. We've missed him a ton, but he does endorse this book highly. And so do I. There's a lot of really, really good knowledge, whether you're an actor or not in this book. So highly recommend it. Check it out.
Acting is my day job. And then Astrid had a second comment that I will read now. Astrid says, it's been really rewarding to accomplish my goals, and it has helped me be more of a light for others. Wow, that's powerful. That's really powerful, Astrid. So 100% true. I can say from a staff perspective, from somebody who's here 90% of the time, you are absolutely a light to others and a light to everybody in our studio.
And your work ethic is inspiring. You're on this show almost every morning, pretty much every morning, you and Ben and Caspian. And why? Well, it's because you want to get better. You know, you want to find these little knowledge nuggets. You know, some shows are better than others. Some days we're off. Some days we're super on. Some days of class, you walk in and you just feel off.
And choosing to go in and do class anyway is a choice, and it's strong to be able to do that and say that. So absolutely, I would agree with that. And that 100% creates positive momentum. Training in general, coming into the studio, doing your classes, I'll be honest with you, it can feel redundant if you lose your sight of the goal. And what's the goal? The goal is, I have this dream to be an actor, or I have this dream, I want to get rid of my head voice, you know, the negativity in my head, self-consciousness.
I want to be able to stand in front of the crowd, all these things, you know, going to class, doing the training, that is super important to get to where you want to go. And that goes back to this whole idea of momentum. So to create positive momentum for yourself, what do you do? Well, and I could be totally wrong on this, but in my opinion, you start by creating a goal.
A goal for the day. A goal for the week. A goal for the month. A goal for the year. And then you look at those, you make sure they all align, and you say, okay, what do I need to do to get here? What are the choices that I have to make to get to where I want to be? And then you just execute. You lay it out for yourself, and you do it.
And it can be little things a day. It can be big things a day. It depends on what your day looks like. If you go to work, and you work 12 hours a day, and then you come home, and you cook, and you clean, or do whatever, then 5 or 10 minutes is a win for you to spend on your acting. You do what you do with the time that you are allowed.
So if you have 3 hours, work on it for 3 hours. If you have 10 minutes, work on it for 10 minutes. But working on it daily is a habit, and it's something that will benefit you in the long term. So that's what I got for you on Momentum today. Very thankful for all of you. Can't wait to have Matt and Brian back in the studio. Classes start back up again today, so we are super excited for that to end December on a high note.
In our script classes, we are going to work on comedic monologues, stand-up comedy, and continue pushing forward in the sketches. And then for our improv, we're still working on the improvised play. So lots of fun things to look forward to. I'm very excited. Thankful to be able to do this show every morning, and excited to have my crew back with me. So thanks, everybody, for hopping on.
This has been Mornings with Matt. Please like, subscribe, follow us at Dearing Acting Studio to keep up with the latest content.
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