Second-night blues

There's a famous story about acting duo Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt from the 1920s or 30s.

They were trying out a new play in Boston. Lunt got a great laugh from the audience one night when, during a loud and chaotic diner scene, he gestured to the waitress and dryly asked, "May I have a cup of tea?"

In subsequent performances in New York, the laughs didn't come. Lunt was discouraged. He asked Fontanne what he was doing wrong. "My dear," she said, "you're asking for the laugh. You used to ask for a cup of tea."

Every actor knows this story. I remember, on many occasions, experiencing what we called the "Second-Night Blues":

An opening-night performance would go exceptionally well. We had energy. We got laughs, tears, and cheers. Then we'd show up on night two and look for the same to happen again. But it didn't.

Because we stopped doing all the great things we had practiced (the things that got us results on night one) and started actively anticipating the results. We stopped asking for the tea.

I think the same thing happens to us all the time in real life.

In a moment, we find our confidence, our bliss, our sense of peace. We think, "Finally, I've got it!"

And then, in subsequent moments, we try to recreate the feeling. And the feeling stops.

That's because we're trying to recreate the feeling instead of reliving the process that birthed the feeling in the first place:

• When we made a social connection

• When we engaged with a project

• When we spent time actively learning

• When we took up a cause

• When we helped another person

• When we discovered a new idea

• When we took responsibility for our own well-being

• When we slowed down

• When we sped up

• When we got off the couch

• When we got out from behind the desk

• When we stopped griping

• When we did something for ourself

Ask for the tea.