“Your level of success will be in proportion to the level of failure you have learned from. Be willing to fail.” – Randy Gage
Failure. It’s not a word we like to hear. The mere mention of failure, and I slightly recoil.
Nobody wants to fail; we all want to succeed. But those who risk much will gain much.
You’ve heard all the sayings… Go big or go home. No pain no gain. The list goes on. What if we decided to lose our inhibitions and dared to fail? What if we left our comfort zone and did something that scared us?
When I was younger I used to be afraid to pick up the phone and make a call to an adult. I always wanted my mom to do it. Then later on in college I was incredibly nervous to even have a mock interview my dad set up for me with a business friend of his so that I could get practice. Now I’ve moved halfway across the country just to pursue a career in which I am constantly interviewing. Oh, the irony.
My job is to audition. I’d say I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone quite a bit, but of course there’s always room for growth.
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
I have been taking a yoga class for almost a year now with an amazing instructor, Elise. (Check out her website here and create your own yoga “playlist!”) There are so many things I love about her and her class: her positive attitude, the inspiring quotes she shares, but most of all that she is constantly encouraging us to fall.
In yoga it’s not until you fall a few times that you can actually execute a pose. And so it is with life. How will we ever progress if we never leave our comfort zone?
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Joseph Chilton Pearce
As actors we want to do the scene the “right” way. We don’t want to make the “wrong” choice. Well, I have learned that this mindset is a huge mistake. I study with Lesly Kahn, and her trademark quote is “Dare to suck.”
Mediocre acting is boring. You won’t get a callback with a 90% performance. You’ve got to give it your all.
As with acting, so with life: Make big choices. Commit 100%. Hang out in your comfort zone and you might give an okay performance. Dare to suck and you might end up with greatness.
