Lesson 07 · 1:10
The Switch
Marilyn Monroe could walk down a street unnoticed, then switch her presence on and draw a crowd.
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Lesson 07 · 1:10
The Switch
Marilyn Monroe could walk down a street unnoticed, then switch her presence on and draw a crowd. It was a skill she built. You learn the three behaviours behind it, and what it cost her.
The switch
Nothing changed that a camera could have shown
Susan Strasberg described walking through Manhattan beside her while nobody recognised her. Then Marilyn grinned and asked, “Do you want to see me be her?” Strasberg wrote that she made some inner adjustment and turned something on. Within minutes a crowd had gathered around her.
Eli Wallach and Richard Avedon each described the same switch in their own words. Three witnesses agree, and that is why we can use it. It is not one friend's flattering story.
She learned it. She was not born with it. She already had a contract, and she kept going to classes. She played Cordelia to Michael Chekhov’s Lear. On the set of Niagara, when her career was taking off, she was reading a difficult book about physical habits.
What to do
Treat presence as something you do, not something that happens to you
It was the same face, the same coat and the same street, so the difference was something she did. Your relaxed self already exists when you are with old friends. You have simply never written down what it does with your shoulders, your pace and your eyes.
Strasberg recorded this episode, and Wallach and Avedon confirm it in their own words. It is history, not evidence that the method works. It shows that her presence was deliberate and repeatable. It does not show that copying it will work for you.
Do this todayWrite down three physical things that are true of you when you are most comfortable: your posture, your pace, and where you look.
Step 1
Stop outside the door
The switch she used in the street happened inside her, before anything could be seen. When you hurry through a doorway, you are hiding during your own arrival.
Clinical research has a name for this. Rushing through the moment you fear is a safety behaviour. It lowers the fear now and keeps it alive for next time.
What to do
Take one breath before you go in
Stop outside the door. Drop your shoulders, lift your eyes, and walk in more slowly than your nerves want. The pause is not for other people. It is the moment when you decide where to point your attention.
In the standard model of social anxiety, rushing through the moment you fear is a safety behaviour. It lowers the fear now and keeps it alive for next time. It also turns your attention onto yourself at the moment it should be on the room.
Do this todayBefore you enter the next room tonight, stop outside the door for one breath.
Step 2
Hold eye contact until you know the colour of their eyes
When you are anxious, you look away too early, and it seems as if you are not really there. A comfortable length of eye contact is longer than your fear tells you, and shorter than you think.
It has been measured. Nearly 500 people were tested, and on average they were comfortable with about 3.3 seconds of eye contact.
What to do
Notice the colour, then hold one second more
In your next three conversations, hold eye contact until you have noticed the colour of the other person's eyes. Then hold it for one second more. Noticing the colour gives you a task. That is the point: it puts your attention on them, not on how you are coming across.
Nearly 500 people were tested. On average they were comfortable with about 3.3 seconds of eye contact. That is longer than an anxious glance and much shorter than a stare.
Limits of the study: The study used filmed faces on screens, not live conversation.
Do this todayIn three conversations today, notice the colour of the other person's eyes before you look away.
Step 3
Act while you still feel afraid
She was sick with nerves before scenes for her whole career, and she often could not work without a coach beside the camera. She filmed them anyway.
This is also the instruction with the best evidence in this topic. Exposure teaches your nervous system when it proves your fear wrong. Waiting to feel calm first mostly teaches you to wait.
What to do
Do not wait until you feel ready
Do one social thing today while you still feel afraid: say hello, ask the question, or make the invitation. You do not need to feel ready before you act. Feeling ready comes afterwards, if it comes at all.
Exposure works best when it proves your fear wrong. When you act while you are afraid and the disaster does not come, your nervous system learns. When you wait to feel calm first, you mostly learn to wait.
Do this todayDo one social thing today, before the fear has gone.
Important
She never had a safe way to switch it off
The witnesses who described the switch also described the collapse afterwards. In 1957 Avedon watched her perform “Marilyn Monroe” for an evening. Then he watched it switch off and leave her in a corner with nothing.
She built it as a mask to hide behind, and that version destroyed her. She was underpaid for years, given the same kind of role again and again, and never safe to stop performing. She died on the night of 4–5 August 1962, aged thirty-six.
So this lesson has a second half, and it matters. If you can only switch your presence on, it is not a skill. It is a debt. Practise being unnoticed as carefully as you practise being noticed. Go somewhere nobody knows you and be ordinary on purpose, and remember that you can switch it on again tomorrow.
Your note
Private to you, always
That was step one
Step two is one small exercise that you do in real life tonight. Step three takes ninety seconds: you note how it went. A free account saves your progress.
Start free practiceSource note
Where this comes from
The Manhattan episode comes from Susan Strasberg's Marilyn and Me (1992). Eve Arnold (1987) and Richard Avedon give accounts that support it. Her own notes and poems were published as Fragments (2010). The three techniques are exercises 01, 03 and 05 of Topic 10, and they carry the same evidence as they do there: Clark and Wells on safety behaviours, Binetti and colleagues on eye contact, and Craske and colleagues on how exposure works. We claim nothing about her inner life beyond what witnesses recorded.
Step two
Do tonight’s exercise
The video was step one. Step two is one small exercise that you do in real life. A free account saves your progress, and you do not need a card.
Start free practiceRead the exercises first →Practise it
Tonight's exercise is waiting.
It is free, and it takes a few minutes. The 10 exercises behind this video are Gold.
Go to TonightSee the ten →Chapters
Source note
Where this comes from
The Manhattan episode comes from Susan Strasberg's Marilyn and Me (1992). Eve Arnold (1987) and Richard Avedon give accounts that support it. Her own notes and poems were published as Fragments (2010). The three techniques are exercises 01, 03 and 05 of Topic 10, and they carry the same evidence as they do there: Clark and Wells on safety behaviours, Binetti and colleagues on eye contact, and Craske and colleagues on how exposure works. We claim nothing about her inner life beyond what witnesses recorded.