As it turned out, I got two parts in Neil Simon’s play, Plaza Suite. I remember thinking, ‘Okay, but now I have to learn how to act.’ I asked one of my new fellow cast mates if there were any good acting classes in town. They kindly pointed me in the right direction.
The Plan
What happened next was a snowball effect of acting classes, an agent, booking a national commercial and billboard, plays and movies. This all went down in little ‘ole Columbus, Ohio, in about two years. Who would have thought?? Certainly not me.
And, the more involved I got, the more I realized two things:
- I wanted to act all of the time
- If I wanted to have this as a career, I needed more education
I had 8 years of marketing and advertising experience, but not real, sound acting training. Most of the people who had made it big in acting had serious theatrical training, and I wanted to be serious.
Ready, Set…Go
I settled on a school in Chicago. Time to move, again. But it didn’t matter. I was going to go live my dreams! I was going to go act, full time, 40 hours/week, for two years. It was the most fulfilling experience I’ve had to date, and opened me up in ways I had never deemed possible. It was all, and totally for me, no one else. I sucked up as much knowledge as I could possibly carry.
Road Trip!
Come graduation time, I came out with an agent and an ego the size of Texas. What I thought? I would be busy auditioning and working. This turned out to be true, because I was willing to work for free. So, I worked a LOT. And got a lot of experience.
But, I realized fairly quickly, that people would encourage me to work for free forever. As a result, I had exhausted myself. I decided that I had enough experience to move forward and that I was only going to work as a paid actor from this point forward.
After all, I did want it to be a career. You can’t have a career, unless you are making money. I needed to focus my resources and efforts on gigs that were going to get me money. Plus, I was starting to resent the work. I couldn’t let that happen. I really enjoyed acting, and I didn’t want to spoil it.
Course Correction
Although, I was getting paid, I wasn’t booking as much work. Mostly because I was competing in a small pond with a lot of big fish. I was working very hard to get auditions and to be seen, but not making much impact in this bigger market of Chicago.
Although dealing with these marketing issues has honed my entrepreneurial skills, working and thinking only about myself all day long, and getting my next gig, was feeling empty. The process of acting was amazing, but I didn’t feel like I was contributing to the world-at-large in any major way. And that was becoming increasingly important to me.
I started looking for something that would be more fulfilling on a soul level. I wanted a career where I could use my natural talents, help people, make enough money to live well on, and truly enjoy myself all at the same time. And keep acting!
I stumbled on coaching as I was looking for entrepreneurial assistance. As soon as I found out exactly what coaching was, I new that was to be my new career. I simply had to educate myself, again. And thus my time at ICA began.
An Idea Is Born
In going through the process of building a coaching model for school, I remembered something that my father used to teach students about breaking down a goal. The idea of comparing a goal to a trip, and plotting it on a map. Since I was young, my father taught workshops to students about following your passions as your career. He even taught my class once. That turned out to be informative, and embarrassing. But, I won’t forget what he taught me. Here’s the gist:
Important To Remember
One of the most important things to come out of this process for me was the ability to see how far you’ve come toward your goal. It is super easy to forget how much progress you’ve actually made when you are going after a really big dream. In using the map, you can actually SEE how far you many milestones you’ve hit. Thus you can more easily appreciate your accomplishments, instead of letting them get swept under the rug in the pursuit of the next milestone.
When I realized that I could put all of it together – the coaching principles I had learned, my idea of Living Awesome, and my dad’s idea of the map – I knew I had a powerful tool for my coaching clients. Even further, I realized I had been using the idea the whole time during the pursuit of my own dreams, as I’ve shown.
Conclusion
Fortunately for me, I’ve been hearing about these ideas since I was little. Coaching school has simply reinforced them. These ideas, you can clearly see, have helped me make possible what seemed utterly impossible.
Let’s review the major ideas presented in this case study, so that others may learn from them as well.
1. Declare your Awesome
- Decide you want to take a journey in the first place
- Determine where you are
i. Why this Awesome?
ii. What does it look/feel like to succeed?
iii. How do you know when you get there?
2. Create a plan
i. Which route to take?
ii. When to get started?
iii. What are you packing in your suitcase (strengths)
iv. What will you decide to leave behind that no longer serves you (weaknesses)?
v. What structures will you put in place to support yourself?
3. Ready, set…go
i. Are you enjoying the trip?
ii. Constant monitoring of whether or not you feel you are on the right path
iii. Course-correcting for new information, wants and needs is appropriate and encouraged
I believe that you are here in this particular life with a set of dreams in your heart. We’ve all got them, and each one of ours is slightly different. I also believe that each one of us is put on this Earth, to make that particular dream come true – the one that lights you up inside. Why the hell else do you think it’s in that mind of yours?
Up till now, it has practically been the stuff of legends, and the lucky few, to make real dreams and passions come true. But we are entering a time, when that possibility is now open to all those who choose to step on the path. Can it feel scary, big and overwhelming? Yes. But, I’ve designed a process to lessen those roadblocks and get you on the road to your Awesome.
Let’s get started!