Are you looking at your dreams and wondering if you will get there?
It’s halfway through the year, how is it going?
Do you sometimes feel if this ONE thing was different, everything would change?
Maybe it’s getting an agent
Finding a publisher
Selling out your next concert
I know I went through this many times in my career, and there was also those things I wish would change in ME.
I had an overactive inner critic.
I would doubt myself when I needed to deliver my best performance.
I would beat myself up when auditions didn’t go well.
Have you ever experienced this?
I was getting caught up in these habits, HOW I reacted, WHAT I was saying to myself, and WHAT I believed. And it felt like a crazy merry-go-round.
In my heart, I didn’t know how to get off.
Until life gave me a crash course, and the whole machinery fell apart.
And I finally found the tools to help me go Full Time.
That’s what I want to give you today.
What if the answer is simpler than you think?
Last month my family and I went to the Cape May Birding Festival. For those who are new here, I am an avid bird watcher and huge nature lover. I wave that flag high:)
The first event we went to was on an early Friday morning, to Cook’s Beach. As we approached the sand, I saw many birders with their binoculars up to view the amazing red knots running back and forth in the surf and then looked down and caught my breath.
All around my feet, close to the incoming waves, were tons of horseshoe crabs. This was a nesting site for them, and I had never seen so many in my life.
I was mesmerized by their slow and methodical movements, and the patterns they were making in the sand, as they burrowed in to lay their eggs.
One of the guides told me the horseshoe crab will molt 16 times BEFORE it is able to reproduce, meaning these crabs had been through a LOT.
16 molts.
16 changes.
And then bearing new life.
When my machinery fell apart in the face of my divorce, the largest thing I learned was,
Change is constant.
I learned about impermanence and started to see how so much of my life I believed was FIXED, meaning it I doubted myself in the most important moments, I would ALWAYS doubt myself in important moments.
Have you ever felt this?
If I got cut at the final callback of a Broadway show, I would ALWAYS get cut at the final callback.
And yet, here I was, witness to everything changing ALL at once.
My marriage I had thought was permanent
My career I had thought was permanent
And in this, I began to experience deep change.
I began to take risks in my performance
I began to share my vulnerability
I began to release my perfectionism
I began to ask for help
I began to forgive myself and be far kinder in the face of disappointment
I began to empathize with others’ pain
I began to meditate…
The list goes on and on.
I was molting.
Releasing layer after layer of these aspects of myself I thought were permanent.
Turns out, they weren’t.
And when the molting was complete, I was able to birth a new life.
One where I was Full Time.
One where I was deeply fulfilled by my work and confident in my voice.
One where I met you.
As Artists we are changing all the time.
In every moment you are becoming.
Think of some of the great masters, like Picasso.
His early works look NOTHING like his later works.
Why? Because he was changing, his voice and his expression.
We can fight natural evolution, or we can let go and allow our growth to take place.
And this applies not just to your art, but most of all to YOU.
To your being.
After all, as Artists, we are merely expressing our being.
What if your inner critic can transform into your biggest fan?
What if your self doubt can be released?
What if these parts of yourself you think are holding you back are actually pointing to what will allow you to go Full Time?
If change is constant, then what is possible for you?
Allow the molting to occur, so you can birth the work you are meant to do.
See you on the beach.