CNBC: Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman’s ‘superpower’ and how you can get it too
Nicole Kidman has five Oscar nominations to her name, including one win. But the acclaimed actor says she would never have reached the top of her profession were it not for a healthy dose of resilience.
In an interview with the Radio Times Podcast, Kidman says her height made it challenging to break into acting.
“I say I’m 5′ 10 ½”, but I’m 5′ 11″,” she said in the interview, adding that it was hard to be taller than many of her classmates in school. “I was teased. I was called ‘Storky’. They’d always be like ‘How’s the air up there?’”
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.When it came to acting, some people told her to not even bother.
“I was told ‘You won’t have a career, you’re too tall,‘” she said. “I remember auditioning for Annie. I had to talk my way through the door because they were measuring you before you went in. I was mortified, I was over the mark.”
And while she didn’t land the Annie role, it didn’t phase her. “I experienced a lot of (rejection),” she said.
In fact, Kidman says she took the lessons she learned from those rejections and passed them on to her children.
“I tell my daughters ‘None of it matters. What does matter is how you allow other people to either say yes or no to you and whether you accept that,’” she said. “That inner resilience as a human being, that’s the superpower really, above all superpowers.”
Of course, it can be difficult to develop resilience, but there are steps you can take to become a more resilient person.
Performance coach Steve Magness says that even a simple grammatical shift can boost your resilience.
When faced with a difficult task or challenge, ditch first-person pronouns (such as “I” and “we”) in favor of second or third-person pronouns.
That means instead of thinking something like “I can get through this workout”, you should replace it with “You can get through this workout.”
“When we create psychological distance, our view of the world broadens,” Magness said. “We transform into that friend giving advice, not blinded by our connection to the issue.”
