Welcome to Filling Buckets Friday where every Friday I give you a testimony explaining my own efforts to filling my highest priorities - what I like to call “buckets”. One of my highest priorities is improving my mental capacity and perspective by reading. My goal this year is to read a book per week. Actually my goal every year is to read a book per week. The first year I started this goal I only finished 33 books. The second year I continued this goal I maxed out at 45 books. I hope you see the progression towards the magic number of 52, but I haven't reached it yet. We will definitely see if 2020 is THE year. On that note, I am currently reading a book written by Michael Caine. The book is called “Blowing the Bloody Doors Off”. The premise of the title was from a lesson he learned while acting. A great actor does not perform to blow the entire car up (figuratively). Instead, the goal is to blow the doors off. What that means is a great performance shouldn’t be too grandiose but just enough. I haven't finished the book yet, but so far it has been pretty interesting. A big part of that is because I can hear his voice narrating the words. He has that thick British accent I remember from his role in the Batman series as Alfred. He was also in Inception, the Kingsman series, and the list goes on. In this particular part of the book, he explains a bit of advice from the only director who has ever fired him. This director fired Michael very early in his career because of a movie scene where he was to portray a drunk character. The director thought that Michael was too much of a sober person trying to be more drunk. What he wanted was a drunk trying to be more normal. This advice has stuck with me ever since I first put eyes on it, and I’m sharing it with you because it’s applicable in all areas of life. Imagine that you are the actor whose responsibility is to convince the audience that you are drunk. Your strategy might be to walk around in zig-zags and talk with slurred speech so that no one can make out what you’re saying. Maybe you'll play a rude belligerent alcoholic that drinks more vodka than water. Rather than go that route, the advice is to be uncontrollably drunk attempting to walk a straight line, mustering up a complete sentence, or searching desperately for something to drink (the thirst gets real when you’re drunk). Think of a guilty drunk driver trying to pass a sobriety test with Mr. Police Officer when pulled over. I’m sure most of us have been drunk before (hopefully not dealing with the sobriety test). When the right amount of shots hit you (for me, it’s just one), the rest of the night is dedicated to convincing everyone at the bar or party that you’re “good”. Then you lose your shit in the bushes or right before you hit the toilet, if you even get that far. Here’s why this advice hit me so hard. Instead of acting like a drunk alcoholic, let’s play the role of someone happy. So the question becomes, do we act as ourselves trying to be happy, or should we be happy acting more of ourselves? The answer should be obvious, but in reality most of us have it wrong. We think that in order to be happy we should follow in the footsteps of other people who are and how they came to be. By doing that, we develop habits that are not effective for us, misplace our attention, and adopt other people's vision of happiness. No wonder why it’s so much easier to experience disappointment with all of these bad habits we can’t kick. We should live our days as more of ourselves learning how to speak more clearly and openly, shaking off the bad habits, pushing away the negative influences, and correcting the vision that isn’t ours. The director’s advice was just to act more like yourself and you’ll be better off. Have a great day.