Everyone can learn from the Emotions Triangle. The depth of which we work is this incredible thing. The point of the triangle is to identify your own emotions which are at the bottom of the triangle. Most actors work as creatives that only work with ideas, and not emotions. Studying the emotions triangle will help to identify when you are working at depth. Being aware of this increases your abilities in acting, creative endeavors and performing arts.
From Top to Bottom: The order is Others Thoughts, Others Ideas, Your Thoughts, Your Ideas, Your Inclinations, Your Feelings, Your Resonating Feelings, Your Emotions, Your Deep Emotions.
Why this Matters:
I have seen so many actors struggle in acting. When they have asked me, my direct advise after studying them usually, not always, gets them into focus and past their obstacles. Most Actors do not know the depth of where their emotions are able to get them.
If you activate a feeling in your acting, it is not deep enough to be able to stay active in you when you start your acting scene. This topic, is the single most important situation. If you are able to get your emotion activated, and you are able to, get the emotion you can really make a difference.
Others Thoughts:
Many actors attempt to do emotional preparation based off of others peoples thoughts. The first thing to realize is that others thoughts are not personal to you. Even if the thought is shocking or causing a reaction in you, others thoughts are the least effective way to stimulate your own emotions.
Others Ideas:
Ideas are much more durable than thoughts. As thoughts will form more personalized ideas, sometimes we forget that others ideas do not stimulate you as much as your own. This connects when we give our power over to another, instead of staying within our own instincts. Others ideas can be great to work on with transparency. Work to be sure that you don’t accidently internalize another’s idea as your own. Others ideas are not as powerful to work with emotional preparation as your own ideas.
Your Thoughts:
You have thoughts that can be worked with. As you work with your thoughts for emotional preparation you will get better and better at doing it. Another person’s idea might be more stimulating to work on than your own thoughts, but don’t cheat yourself by thinking in ways of judging yourself.
Your Ideas:
Your Ideas are more developed than your thoughts. Learn to trust that your ideas you have ruminated with longer so they affect you deeper than your thoughts. Working with your ideas is part of what makes you more creative and closer to your own authentic personality.
Your Inclinations
Your inclinations rest between your own ideas and your own thoughts. It is true you may have a similar idea as someone else. However, learning the lesson of knowing when an idea is created in you is the lesson of learning your own authenticity. Your inclinations are not Emotions. Your inclinations will interexchange with feelings. Feelings will spurt in and out of your ideas, which is natural.
Your Feelings
Your feelings are evidence that you are receiving in your acting. This is critical. You, I and your neighbor next door all need to know how to tell the difference between your feelings of instincts and how they differ from emotion.
Feelings are often connected to instincts that will not receive your own responses, unless you remain open and receiving. This is where you start to get your own acting and creative engines working in acting.
Your Resonating Feelings
When you resonate feelings, you start to get in the direction that you have something worth while going on inside of yourself. Just because your feelings are resonating, this doesn’t mean that you are accepting what is going on inside of yourself. This is the stage that you gain the ability to recognize your own instinct and feelings.
When your instincts and feelings work together your feelings start to resonate. When your feelings resonate your only job is to simply, accept your own talent. Your talent has been activated at this stage, only when you receive and acknowledge both your instincts and feelings.
This is the stage where the rubber meets the road. At this stage reality is activated, and in a pending state of, if you accept and acknowledge it. This is also the step where your logic is no longer needed after the mere acceptance and acknowledgement at this stage.
Your Emotions
Your emotions, are personally activated, get settled in you available to inform and influence your reality. This is the stage where reality is fully activated. It is highly likely that during any interactions in your acting scenes, that an previous activated emotion will revisit you within the acting scene.
Deep Emotions
Learn from the video lesson of layering emotions that I have done. Depth of emotion is not so deep that you cannot respond to others. Depth of emotion will affect how you interact with another actor including possibilities of impediments as you respond. If you emotion is blocking you, you will not be impeded, you are blocked. So balance the depth with knowing that difference.
Summary of the Emotion’s Triangle
Acting is both being and doing. You, just as well as I, need to do both in order to be an affective actor. We will never be authentic unless we have both doing and being during our interactions.
Copyright 2025 Simon Blake