Friends! Welcome to my first success story blog post. This conversation was had over FaceTime with my beautiful friend, Rachel Farr. Rachel and I met on a contract last year. We bonded over our love for hiking, working out, crystals, and our similar “just do it” attitudes. We talked for an hour about a lot of juicy stuff. In an effort to keep blog posts on the shorter side - because let’s be real, the 160 character twitter limit has impacted all of our attention spans - I’ve broken up our conversation into four separate posts which will be published on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday this week. I hope you enjoy it!
Rachel started by asking me to talk about You Are Here and what my intentions are for it. I told her how pleased I was with the response I got from just one post. Seriously, you guys are awesome! The outpouring of love I received via text and facebook message only solidified how important it is for all of us to recognize, appreciate, and even celebrate where we are right now on our own unique journeys.
“I feel like we’re afraid to talk about it,” Rachel said regarding the vulnerable topic of self-journeys. “We’re always so worried about the image we’re portraying so if we talk about it then we’re admitting that we’re in a place that everybody’s in.”
To take it even one step further I think a lot of us get caught up in feeling like we should be in a “more impressive” place than we are right now and so with that comes feelings of inadequacy, failure, and doubt. Or maybe you’re really proud of where you are right now but you’re scared of being perceived as someone who brags a lot, is full of themselves, is self centered. My hope is that I can take away some of that stigma so that we all can be truly proud to be where we are and have the freedom to humbly celebrate that with those around us.
We started sharing how it feels to be where we are in our respective careers. Rachel brought up the point that most “success” in our industry, and I’m using the term success here in the traditional sense, actually has nothing to do with talent at all.
Becky: I was thinking back to when I was a freshman in college and I knew one person in a Broadway show…and I felt like they were so far ahead of me…and now I’m looking through shows on my today tix app and I’m like ‘oh I know someone in almost every single show,’ you know? Peers of mine, people I went to school with…have worked with, people that are my age, that are part of my generation are in these shows and suddenly it doesn’t feel so far away. It feels like something that any of us are capable of because yes, my friends are talented and wonderful but they’re not five years ahead of any of us in skill.
Rachel: No, not at all. And I feel like the rehearsal room is such an equalizer. If you walked into a rehearsal and you didn’t look up everybody’s resume and you didn’t look up everybody’s shit, you just looked around the room and thought ‘how do I feel in this room,’ I’ve never learned that the Broadway people are out dancing me or out singing me.
Becky: But we all do that! We all get the cast list and start looking up people and comparing ourselves to people and thinking ‘oh my god they’ve done this, this and this,’ you know? We all do it and it’s so toxic!
Rachel: Yeah, but that’s also kind of disheartening that it’s not a talent thing because a lot of times it’s just a thing of right place, right moment, knew this person, knew that person, and that’s sometimes stuff that nobody has control over so at that point there’s nothing you can do…
Becky: It can be disheartening but there can also be something freeing in that…we spend all this money on classes and coaching and what not and at the end of the day that isn’t necessarily the thing that gets you the job. So, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna not take those classes anymore because it’s not worth the money or are you gonna take those classes with the intention of I just wanna get better for me…
Rachel: Right, and because I enjoy it…
Becky: And it’s fun, and it feels good!
I encourage you all (and believe me I’m including myself in this) to constantly remind yourselves that talent has very little to do with finding “success.” Hopefully this knowledge liberates us all in our training so that we can become less end product oriented and more process oriented. As my favorite online yoga teacher, Adriene Mishler, always says, “find what feels good.” For me taking dance classes, voice lessons, and acting classes feels really good so I’m going to keep doing that. I want to know what feels good for you. Do you ever find yourself stuck in an end product oriented mindset? How do you bring yourself out of it? Please, please share with me your thoughts and feelings on this. I wish to inspire conversation and that means it’s a two way street.
That’s all for today. But check back in tomorrow for our conversation on finding joy in unemployment!