The “Biz” is not for the faint of heart. Neither is life. It never turns out as you planned and things are never quite as you expect.
In Hollywood, everyone (even the most “successful” superstar) will tell you that you get way more nos than yeses, way more disappointments than celebrations. Some “nos” are easily brushed off, especially when you’ve been around the block a few times. You expect it, but other “rejections” are truly disappointments. Yet, others still, hit you like a ton of bricks and, every now and then, a “no” is so significant, so big and so painful that you begin to feel as if your world is literally falling apart.
What do you do then? Crawl under a blanket and hide for awhile? Pick a show on Netflix to binge watch for days on end? Maybe. But, at some point, you do have to come out of hiding and logout of Netflix or close down the computer and stop scrolling mindlessly through Facebook.
You have to get up and get going so that you can put your world back together again and, it’s likely, that you’ll have to do it all by yourself.
But, here’s the sneaky secret about putting your world back together after it’s fallen apart…
…you get to move the pieces around; you can even change the number of pieces, type of pieces, shape of the pieces. You can leave some of the old ones out and pick some new ones.
You don’t have to build your world in the same way that it was before. In fact, it’s likely to be much better if you don’t. You may even realize that the world that fell apart before wasn’t really yours — it was someone else’s world full of someone else’s expectations.
Now, you get to embrace the possibility of creating your world anew — and you get to discover that you have the strength to do that. You are strong enough to build an entire world. It’s pretty mind blowing, actually.
So, go for it — lay down some tar and make some new roads. Create a world this time that gives you more possibilities than you ever imagined and that gives you abilities too, namely the ability to say yes to yourself.
The true secret is that the world is actually what you make it. This is true for life in general, but seems especially true in the film and television industry where it is all really just a grand allusion and “success” (in the typical sense) is often short and fleeting.
So, don’t get caught up in someone else’s definition of success. Instead, live life on your own terms. Quantify success for yourself — for the life you want to live and then build your world.