So often we wait for the climate and conditions in life to be perfect before we feel safe enough to step forward, trust, and be our authentic selves. What we don't realize is that in order to create the ideal climate we are waiting for, we must be authentic first.
Be your authentic self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, or before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you're supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a social mask on to please everyone else. Give yourself permission to be your authentic self.
Trust...trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself.
Great people do things before they're ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you're afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that - that is what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that's really special and if you're not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself.
Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything.
I feel a particular sense of responsibility when you're taking something from the magazine directly and putting it in video. You can't be too flat. You need to have personality. You can't just scream out to the viewer. You need to have a fresh take on something or have a new look or have an interesting style, or be so raw that it resonates and is authentic. I think authentic is a good word. It's overused, I know, but I think it comes across in the video medium. If you can make a video authentic, it comes across.
If you are going to do something, you have to do it for yourself, and that's what I try to do. I try to be authentic and try to be original, so that's what I try to be. A lot of people try to build big brands but have received bad advice, and they don't try to be authentic and real with themselves.
LOVE LETTERS TO YOURSELF This is taken from a love letter (a gentle reminder) I wrote to myself recently. Live in your joy today. Be authentic. Love yourself. First. Love others from your own abundance. Life Changes. Circumstances change. Sometimes you try to fit your old way of being into new circumstances rather than becoming new yourself. Embrace transformation as an opportunity. And keep on writing love letters to yourself.
Get yourself out. Be brave. Don't leave before you're ready, because you should know that you tried everything. So there's a conviction and a confidence when you step away from something that may or may not be conducive to your life. I think if you run away too quickly, you're going to have that "Oh God, did I try everything?" feeling. Try everything. Make it work. Do everything you can. If it's not working, then know when the signal is and move on. Change. Try something different.
People want to see something authentic. If it's too polished and highly produced, people might not trust it as much. If it's grainy, if it's coming from a webcam, if it's someone standing there and talking their mind or sharing their thoughts, people trust it much more.
The process of building trust is an interesting one, but it begins with yourself, with what I call self trust, and with your own credibility, your own trustworthiness. If you think about it, it's hard to establish trust with others if you can't trust yourself.
What is meant to be, will always find its way. And when your down and feeling alone, just wanna run away, trust yourself and don't give up. You know you better than anyone else.
In terms of my life, I guess I want to share whatever I've learned really, which is basically one thing: know yourself, look for yourself, know what to look for, cherish it, be honest, be authentic, even if it hurts your feelings. That's not bad.
I have to listen to my body - and it's telling me not to run long distances. So how do you train for a race when you know you won't have the same result as before? And should you even join if you know you can't run the whole race? Absolutely - just run-walk it.
I think there are two sides of the coin. On one hand, it can be challenging to access different parts of yourself, and you kind of have to put yourself back into reality when you're done with the job. But I think it's also really cool to have the ability to try on being different people and to explore some parts of yourself because you get to know yourself better. You get to know parts of yourself that you haven't met before. I think that's something that I've been learning more recently.
I tried not to listen very much to the critics. I know that whenever you do something, you must have a lot of critics, or it means that you haven't done anything. I never really bothered much and I don't care.