OPERATION B.A.B.E.

“2016 will be the most wonderful year….”

I said to myself on December 31st, 2015.

I felt it in my bones. The realization of dreams! And indeed I had immersed myself in ‘the work’ to make that happen. And then there was this sense, that something amazing was on the horizon. I wasn’t alone in this feeling (locker room chat). But then the first death hit: Bowie. 10 days in. And it was like a warning shot, fired into the rafters. People recoiled, backs tensed already on edge from Paris, ISIS. How could someone seemingly immortal have left us so unexpectedly. This void appeared. And what filled it was not light... What emerged pressed it’s bleak, heat filled fingers into our hearts and held us down in a shared despair. Heavy. Confounding. And everything else seemed to follow suit. No success, no greatness, and continued anguish manifesting in different news bites that contained immeasurable grief. IT hung there, over the collective.

2016 is the worst year ever.

No! I held my belief stedfast. Even as a loved one got sick. And another mass shooting. As the stories of #itsnotokay flooded over me, the collective cries of women rattling my bones.

And as I walked on the streets of my hometown on a stunning day, my trip heavy with hospital visits, the scorching sun a reminder of the sh*t storm of climate change still to come, my career in a lull… as I looked from the homeless teen on the corner to a brand new Nordstroms bursting with shoppers, to my twitter feed bemoaning the hateful racist words now commonplace, I stopped, my chest filled with this indescribable force and cried out YES —

It IS the most wonderful year.

BECAUSE of the grief, death, disease, displacement, mayhem, vitriol, abuse, and hatred. Because of this god awful election.

2016 is shocking us out of our numbness, our complacency, our entitlements. It’s shaking us to take responsibility. To be present, be grateful as f*ck that we are breathing and cognizant to even have these thoughts.

The diffused lights, the trick mirrors and the filters? They’re gone. The parents protecting us from the brutal truths of adult life? They’re dead. We are seeing ourselves for what really are — not the manufactured image, the facade, the white washed version the media fed us for so long (like a pill that dazed you enough to ignore the sickness that infects you) — but the flawed, struggling, still evolving species that is a threat to its very own existence.

This is a collective reckoning. Baptismal by fire, the stage of the Heroes Journey where all is lost, dark night of soul. Oh yes, we’re all here together. The bandaid has been ripped off. The wound is ugly and red for all to see.

— So what now? What do we do?

We are a nifty little species. Capable of transformation, of ‘what ifs’. We can envision something that doesn’t exist and then take action — brave innovative action — to bring it from thought to reality. (How miraculous is that?)

Brilliant, courageous souls have done that to get us to the here and now. But we can no longer rely on these singular heroes. We can’t lounge lazily in the world they have built. No matter how formidable they might be. It’s time we all stepped up to the plate, as there are monsters amongst us that only the collective can fight. No one is going to save us except ourselves. Whether there is a God or not, the intelligence you are imbued with, channeled from the greater all knowing universe, is what you are equipped with. No safety net. Except each other.

So you can either stick your head in the stand or you take action. Not just for the collective good, for your own good.

Life is short and brutal and beautiful and it can end today.

So this is the time for you to reevaluate EVERYTHING.

Think of those we have lost this year, the artists. What did they teach us? The power of a unique soul. Beauty and compassion in the face of adversity and evil, the power of a voice, of the true authentic self. Their void reminds us… There’s no longer a reason to keep our voice and our creativity silent. How well has waiting for the establishment worked out for you? Playing by the rules? How’s it going holding your tongue so that you don’t ruffle those feathers? Yeah, that’s what I thought. The idea of the powers that be, ‘the system’ — it’s crumbling, a flimsy infrastructure where people peddle fear and scarcity to maintain the illusion.

This is the year when get to chose. Who we are. What we are.

This year is prodding you to tell the truth, your truth. The ‘what do you have to lose’ muse is multiplying. That your voice can unleash thousands of others. So not only are you standing up for humanity, you are standing up for yourself, making your claim on how you chose to live as an equal yet unique human being in this society. The status quo, the ‘it just is what it is’, is being kicked out the vernacular, something to only reference in a college history paper. We’re ripping off the bandaid to show the wound, exposing it to the air so it can have a chance to heal.

2016 is the Best Year Ever. We get to decide what we become.

And the first decision you need to make is to VOTE. For an intelligent, experienced (and flawed like the rest of us) fellow human being.

THIS. VIDEO. KENZO WORLD by Spike Jonze.

Confidence. There is a lot of buzz around this word. You need ‘confidence’ to succeed. “Confidence matters as much as competence”. Research shows that women have less of it than men. Mindy Kaling talks about ‘earning’ it in her memoir. There is a book called The Confidence Code. Forbes, Fast Company, Life Hacker, and every self help site in the known universe explores and exploits the word — it’s the golden ticket to success — a psychological mind set that will give you a leg up over the competition in this ever shifting job landscape. (A brutal version of it got a certain billionaire his place in the political spotlight.)

So if it’s just mind over matter (‘you say something enough times with confidence and people will believe it’), why is confidence so hard to have? (And why do so many people, women especially, have the opposite experience called the imposter syndrome?)

An actor’s journey…

I’ve been thinking a lot about it as I’ve been back on the audition track both in LA and Vancouver. It’s tough out there. Making a living as an actor is an uphill battle. Getting auditions are more difficult than ever. And when you do, you better kill it — because you are up against names, picture perfect models, social media stars, friends of the director. So from where does one then pull this confidence? From talent and experience? From the quality of the work we bring in? Yes, that would seem to be the case. You have confidence that you will deliver the very best work showing your deep talent and passion.

But reality rarely serves this theory. For example, the part is a supporting role, meant to serve the main character with little to sink your actor teeth into. And your work? You barely had enough time to digest the 6 pages let alone work and coach it to camera-ready brilliance. Or on the flip side, the part is so awesome that your rational brain tells you that you would have to deliver an Academy Award quality performance to beat all the names and established actors you’re up against (not to mention meet the Hollywood standard of celebrity age-defying looks). So that confidence inner pep talk you muster — that you’re super talented so it’s going to go great, that you’ll own it, that they would be lucky to have you — is empty and fake, false blustery bravado that doesn’t produce the magic result you were looking for. (And I’m sure these examples apply to a plethora of careers, anything where you are putting your work forward for judgment). But you hear it, all the time, about that guy who walked into the room, completely confident, out of no where, killed it and got the job. So what was THAT? A genetic lottery ticket?

The thing is never about the thing…

In the irony of all ironies I was reading a TV pilot about Hollywood, when out of the blue, this unicorn question was answered. The script said (and I paraphrase): To get a seat at the table, it’s about having complete and utter confidence in who you are.

IT WAS LIKE A 1000W LIGHT BULB EXPLODED IN MY BRAIN. Such a simple idea, right? And maybe you already know this (and if so, you’re awesome and you can stop reading this post). But I realized that I’ve been looking at confidence all wrong. Confidence, to me, has always been about what I am about to do, not about who I am. It has been this psychological state tied to perfection, to achievement, to success through performing at my highest state. But this idea of confidence stemming from who I am, as a human being, as an artist, as a woman, as a HUMAN BEING — WHICH IN AND OF ITSELF MEANS FLAWED AND FALLIBLE — this idea turned everything on its head.

Digging in(side)…

I took a lot inside and alot of things suddenly became very clear.

For one, I realized that I had a problematic inner narrative playing: That unless I was perfect — which meant in an audition that I was off-book word perfect, emotionally connected, in the moment, having a surprising authentic experience as the character — that I wouldn’t be good enough to book it. This high standard was killing me — my confidence was intrinsically tied to this idea of perfection. If I found that I had ‘lost’ a line in the middle of an audition, an alarm bell would go off in my head: “abort abort, perfection fail, all is lost.” And then those lovely times when I did check off all those perfection boxes and I would leave fully elated, the reality of most often not booking (because of things beyond my control) would take its silent toll.

So it was time to take stock if I was going to look at confidence differently: If I’m going to be utterly confident in who I am, then Who Am I? I’ve lived enough, gone through enough self-exploration (and acting classes) to know this. I’m a big dreamer, deep thinker, punctuality challenged, emotional and intelligent woman who can cry as easily as she can fight. I am a chameleon, quick to bore, easy to inspire, a frustrated perfectionist who is overwhelmed with the beauty of existence, and shy to show affection. I am dreamer who questions everything, a procrastinator who loves the human connection and dares to unite science and entertainment. I am a human being that is exquisitely grateful to be alive and awed by the universe. Theses are all things that I know that I am. Imperfect, multi-dimensional, real. The good, the bad, the flawed, the soft, the sharp.

So what if I took stock of all those things that I know that I am — both the good and the flawed — and loved them into one cohesive messy thing: my confidence core. The essence of me as an individual human being on this planet, as unique as my DNA. Where, I can own that little pocket of spacetime that I occupy. I will be as dense and present, creating gravity, pulling matter and energy towards me. What if I didn’t try to hide my weaknesses? Because that might be fucking compelling.

Female perfectionism and the interwebz…

Tara Sophia Mohr, (creator of the Playing Big course), speaks to the good girl /good student syndrome, how girls are prone to better grades because of their tendencies for rule following and diligence. I know I was. I was top in my class because I studied the hardest and delivered what I knew the teachers wanted. There was a brilliant guy in my English class who would constantly ask ‘why’, and challenge the teachers. I couldn’t fathom why he would do that. Be the perfect student and everything else falls in place. But the real world has no such formula or guarantee. It has no guidelines, syllabus or teachers to please with an award or a college acceptance letter at the end of the year.

But as much as life is not a high school test to ace, the cruel teen politics of the cafeteria has digitally mutated and followed us into adult life — Social Media. Let’s be honest, for most of us, our self-confidence is affected by every site that we dare to digitally implement ourselves into. It’s a two dimensional filtered and photoshopped world governed by likes, comments and followers. More than we would like to admit, our sense of self has become defined by the screen, by our feeds, by digital comparisons to our friends and colleagues. (For us actors and models, jobs can be based on social media numbers) There is always a digital persona that is ‘better’ than ours — Happier, sexier, more famous. These digital communities are set up to encourage neighbor envy. Being confident in who you are and what you have is not encouraged because the online consumerist ecosystem only works if you are coveting someone’s else’ life. Our confidence is constantly tested by every post, either in how the e-community judges our media through their likes and comments or by what theirs makes us feel in comparison.

So it’s easy to see how our ideas of success through confidence are wrapped up in external achievements, perceived image and perfectionism. Thus it makes this idea that embracing yourself, flaws and all, is more potent and powerful than this perfect idealized version of yourself, revolutionary.

Do the (messy) work…

But here’s the thing Mindy Kaling made me realize. You have to work hard to earn that inner confidence of self. All those descriptives that I listed? It took me more than a decade to unearth them. The meme of ‘I’m fabulous and just woke up like this’ is bullshit. “The truth is that I have never met a highly confident successful person who isn’t a workaholic.” Those are Mindy’s words and she speaks the truth. Going against the grain, against expectations, treading out into unknown waters with only a burning desire in your heart and only your gut telling your brain to trust it. And from there working, exploring, challenging, never taken rejection as a reason to stop and settle. Sound familiar? I have written thousands of pages of script pages, gone on hundreds of auditions, logged mind bending numbers of hours in class, gone through emotional gauntlets to prod the deepest recesses of my psyche, studied every crazy subject of science, locked myself in my office until all hours of the night because I’ve had ‘an idea’. There is nothing pretty or perfect about that work — and there are no school awards at the end of it. Just a deeper sense of self along my chosen journey with tiny victories along the way.

It’s messy, tough and dirty.

And so should our confidence be. Because it’s part and parcel with our all-nighters and our tears and our frustrations, vulnerabilities and our car that doubles as a catering truck and a changing room. This confidence that I’m talking about may be also known as authenticity or self esteem, but it’s also something that is greater than the sum of all those parts.

It’s our core. It’s our truth, our essence. It’s our raison d’etre…

Our reason to be.

Next steps…

So how has this affected my own work as an actor in the audition process? I have stopped fixating about what I am ‘going to do’ in the audition room, but instead embraced what I am bringing in — the work I’ve done and who I am. I no longer need the marriage between the two to be perfect, I want it to be meaningful and real, embracing the things I would have considered ‘mistakes’ before. And the oddest thing? I no longer feel the extreme high or low after an audition. Just that I went in there and got to do something that I love: bring a character to life. Into messy real life.

You are eating a frozen dinner, Indian — tikka masala chicken, with basmati rice. You heat it up in a white and blue bowl you bought from Pottery Sonoma, a decent size, used for cereal, back when you used to eat it. You add spinach and broccoli to offset the preservatives — you nuke it — then you eat at your desk while working, surfing, hand mindlessly shoving fork fulls into your mouth.

Hot, kinda of spicy. Tasty enough for a frozen meal.

Until you stop. And stare down. What are you doing? What is this? A bowl. Made of what and how? Ceramic and I don’t know. Where? In Thailand, at least the bottom of the bowl tells you so. It contains, rice… from where? Did it come from a paddy? That would be weird. How did it get to you, the broccoli, the spinach, the sauce, what is it made of, by what people, what machines? The chicken, where was it, whose farm, how old, did it know anything? (The chicken not the farm). How did it all get put together, who made the packaging and then delivered it to Trader Foods? Was it on one of those trains you see along the 10 freeway? And now the Kate Lauren fork in your hand (a wedding gift, at least you remember that) manufactured where, made of what elements, is delivering this mosaic of foods into your mouth. As you look down. Then at your desk. The paper, the computers, the reading glasses, the pen. The composite particle board. Made of what by whom from where?

How is it we only ever see the result? The process of creation so illusive, even invisible? Did it even happen? Shouldn’t everything have an origin story? (We all love those.) So who came up with the Mont Blanc pen that gave it such value that my parents saw fit to give it to me on my graduation. So I make certain it never leaves my desk, never venturing into my purse for fear of loss (it has too much meaning now I fear). The candle, the crystal, the magazines I touch, the clothes I wear, I am a tapestry of this earth. Yet, I so easily disregard this earthly cornucopia for the next thing. What article and thought to process? What Protein bar to aimlessly chew and then toss its printed colorful wrapper that came from who knows where. Where did I come from? What have I put out there that people consume but never assume to think of. That I am anything but what I am right now. To be used. To be cast. Away. Like an actor trapped in a net. That’s never a good sign.

I can imagine a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ago, a nano second on the universe’s clock, that everything I had around me I had found. I had made, I had fought for. It had history inherent in it. Imprinted on it. This is the bowl that I carved that will allow me to eat my food with greater ease. That will allow me to stir up the various foods that I have caught or grown or traded for. I will stare into this bowl as I eat. Marvel at its shape and function. I will notice the four different foods in my bowl that I am eating and identify each of them with a name, not just the collective ‘meal’. The idea of goods from another place, made by invisible people delivered to your door would have seemed like a fairytale. Would they disappear as easily as they appeared?

Will we?

If we continue acquiring and consuming as opposed to identifying and valuing what will help us to thrive (let alone survive), will we not disappear? As possessions becomes lumped in with each other, the more we acquire the less we notice, and the less each piece resonates. It gets lost in the vibrating monotonous hum. It keeps filling up the room until there is no room left, for us. Books squished up against the side of a bookshelf trying to breath. Stop. Give breath to what you have. Give attention to each thing you use, to each thing you consume. Pay attention.

And then perhaps the little things will finally be seen. And the big things, those things that aren’t new Teslas or houses or promotions, but family and love and conservation -- the health of you and of the planet can be recognized.

There is a small child in your house. She has ragged clothes on, made of burlap, speaks only the tongue of her Anglo Saxon brood circa 1652. She stares around your house like it is God’s Heaven. Her eyes brighten at the smooth tight walls, the warm splinterless floor. The white soft sleeping place, the long covered padded bench with a back that sits in front of a shiny flat slab that holds pictures and real life and voices. A box the size of a room that is like winter but holds more food that she has ever seen. See your life and all that you have through her eyes. And realize that she probably knows happiness as you do. Feels the same amount of joy in seeing her mother as your child does you. The same contentment after a good meal. But she knows far pain more than you do, and of the world far less. Her world is but the village she arrived into. Nothing that touches her has touched a place far away. Except perhaps the wind. See your world through her eyes.

Because unless we do, we will disappear as quickly as we appeared. The Amazappos return policy: Free shipping, free returns. It could be as if we never existed.