Inspiration in Chaos

Chaos: Evansville, Indiana 1987

Have you ever felt hopeless? I mean absolute despair. The feeling of hopelessness makes you numb. When your set point is despair, there is nothing outside of yourself, and there is no one other than you. There is no imagining, and there is no beauty. There is no communion, and there is no fun. There is anxiety.  The crack/cocaine epidemic that swept through the ghettos of African American communities in the 1980s ruined the lives of many families, and my family was not an exception. From the age of seven to the age of ten years old, my brothers and I travelled back and forth from homeless shelters to the floors and couches of friends and family members.

One night, as I was lying on some trash bags on the floor of a family member’s living room. I was looking up at the ceiling, feeling scared, unwanted, and unloved. There was glass breaking, and a woman was screaming, as a man chased her around punching and slapping her. As I lie in that room, looking up at the ceiling I prayed to God. “Dear God, please save us and help us. I miss Mama and Daddy, and I am so sad. Please! I do not want to be like this when I grow up. I do not want to live like this. Please, God, help me take care of  my brothers. Help me to get out of this!” I think I was 7 years old. It was a sweltering hot summer. Just before I fell asleep, a great calm and peace overcame me. Stillness, silence, and inspiration. I knew at that moment; I would be all right. I found some comfort and solace in this burning desire for something better, and I cried myself to sleep.

Fortunately, I was able to participate in some performing arts classes in public schools in America.  The performing arts provided a sanctuary of relief from the stresses that I experienced growing up in that environment.  My brothers and I were eventually placed in foster care, and my amazing foster mom was helpful in encouraging my involvement in the performing arts.  The skills that I learned served as a stimulus for my academic growth and emotional confidence.  Later in my teen years, my pre-professional career allowed me the opportunity to study classical techniques in music, theatre, and dance at Boston Conservatory and ballet companies in America. The performing arts awarded me the fortunate experience to travel and perform professionally around the world.

Anything is Possible: Maui, Hawaii, 2004

When I was twenty-four years old, I left the Boston Conservatory to work as a performer singing and dancing on a cruise ship. I felt alive. It was my first professional job after training in musical theatre.  I was so grateful someone was paying me to do what I loved. It was an incredible time in my life, and I felt strong, healthy, immortal, and invincible.  The itinerary schedule meant we docked in Maui, Hawaii for a few days before sailing to other Hawaiian Islands. One morning, a few friends and I decided to drive to a place called Rainbow Beach. While we were there, I was standing waist-deep in the water. As I glanced out over the horizon, I saw a humpback whale dive out of the water and into the air. It is an image that has never left me, captured in my mind and heart forever. What I appreciate about that moment is that everyone on that beach stood there in amazement and in awe. We collectively gasped and held our breath together as this majestic and massive creature hovered above the water for what seemed like an eternity. Then we exhaled together as the whale splashed back into the water again. I thought to myself, “How did I get here?”

My mind flashed back to when I was 6 years old crying out that I wanted and needed a change.  I knew in that moment on the beach that if I could make it there from the ghettos of Evansville, Indiana, to this inspiring moment on the beach in Maui, anything was possible. I thought, “Wow. We truly are the creators of our lives.”  You see;  my life had not been perfect up to that point, and I was still an arrogant, lost, insecure, kid full of self-doubt, fear, and pain from my past.  I wondered…if my desire and hope for a brighter future could get me to this experience, even with all that I still loathed in myself, then how much more could I achieve and experience in my personal and professional life?

Have you hit a stumbling block in your performance career?  Perhaps you’ve just graduated college, and you’ve received your first audition rejection.  If you’re like most of us, that will only be the first of many calls from your agent to tell you that they’ve gone with someone else for the job you’d hoped for.  Maybe you’ve gone down a completely different professional path and you’re looking to change over to a performing arts career.  Maybe you’re a performer who is not getting auditions, and you are thinking about quitting the business completely and retraining in some other career.  If you’re sure you want to quit, will you wonder what you might have achieved if you’d kept at it? Quitters never win, and winners never quit.

Inspiration in Chaos

As I write these words, we’re just coming out of a pandemic that swept across the globe.  We were required to socially isolate.  Income was eliminated, and many of us lost loved ones.  You have every right to feel anxiety in all this chaos.    The world is at war, and there are rumours of more disease.

My own personal struggles gave birth to my calling as a performer.  The resilience I've developed from adversity has helped me to achieve my dreams of travelling and performing around as a performer in theatre, television, and film.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” - Maya Angelou

You can live your dream.  You can make meaning from your challenges to overcome your fear and self-doubt to grow as a person and achieve your dreams as a performer.  If you dream it, then you can live it, and achieve it.  You can  walk in your true purpose and calling.  I know that life is difficult, and I wish I could take a wand and wipe the fear, self-doubt, and unbelief away.  However, I know that would not be in your best interest, because the best lessons are learned from living through difficult experiences. Experiencing and understanding these emotions is part of the spiritual growth needed for self-mastery, and mastery is what is needed for you to become the artisan that you wish to be.  Finding meaning in your pain and attaching purpose to your struggle can help you grow into someone who can achieve your goal in creating the life you desire as a performer.

As Voltaire so eloquently spoke, “Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them.  The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.” During these uncertain times of trial, trouble, and tribulation, it is in creating meaning that will help you to overcome.  If you cannot find meaning, then you must make meaning.  Inspiration is a whisper from the burning desire deep within you.  You can take the necessary steps to transmute that desire into a calling and a purpose.  Then you can serve that calling and purpose with all that you are.  When you do that you will begin to see your life unfold for you in beautiful ways.

Most people give up.  Never give up!  It took me 20 years from the time that I decided I wanted to have a professional career as a performer until I performed a leading role in the West End, and that was as an understudy.  It was another 5 years of working as an ensemble member, swing, understudy, and cover before I earned a leading role in a West End musical.

All through out this time I hoped for something more.  I had a burning desire, and that obsession was enough to help me to keep pushing through the failures and mistakes along the way.  It took that time for me to become the person and performer I saw in my imagination.

Maybe you’re in a show right now, and you are on the road to what some consider success. However, something doesn’t feel right, and you don’t feel successful.  For many years, the success that people attached to my behaviour  was actually a dysfunctional response to the traumatic experiences that I overcame earlier in life.  I was overcompensating; seeking the approval and recognition of others; and acting out in perfectionism. I didn’t feel good about myself.  I thought that reaching my goals as a performer would make me happy.  WRONG!!!  I was unhappy and anxious, and I acted out in opposition to my core values; committing behaviours such as not showing up for my final exams; getting drunk on the job; getting fired, or not showing up to a performance.  Yeah, I know.  I was a mess.

You see, I was an over achiever who was responding to adversity in a way that was seen as successful to the people around me, but I did not feel successful or see myself as a success.  My mindset was all wrong; and I felt powerless to change my behaviour.  I’d reach a certain level of success and then I would crash and burn by self sabotaging and making excuses.

I changed my mindset and began to learn about myself and in discovering and learning about my limiting beliefs, I made a decision that I would not leave this earth with out doing everything in my power to try and live out the grandest version of the greatest vision life has for me.  I began to apply the principles from my personal development to my professional life.  I began to study Napolean Hill,  Jack Canfield, Stephen Covey, Bob Proctor, Les Brown, Louise Nichols, Louise Hay,  Marianne Williamson, Esther and Jerry Hicks, and others.

I met some amazing people who asked me questions like, “Do you know that you're in control of your thoughts?  Do you know that I can't make you feel a certain way unless you believe and take on what I’m saying as your own truth?   Do you know that every emotion that you have you can control; and it's only because the thought that you have about a situation that causes that emotion?

I started to read books; practice visualisation, meditation, mindfulness and I began to become aware of my thoughts.  This awareness of how I was thinking, feeling, and acting, showed me who I was and how my limiting beliefs were sabotaging my life. I started to change my life.

I’m here to tell you that it is possible to reach your goals as a performer.  If you want to perform a leading role in a Broadway or West End production, you can do it.  If you want that television, film, commercial gig; you can have it, for wherever there is a desire or an idea in your imagination, the possibility exists in this physical realm.  The question is… WILL YOU GO FOR IT?  Will you do all that it takes to reach your goals.  Will you take that seed of desire and do all that is necessary for your dream to become a reality?

You have the ability to take control of your mindset and use your mental power and will to overcome any situation or circumstance that you’re in, and that's not dependent upon the talent that you have.  It is the ability you have to use inspiration, motivation, perspiration, and persistence to achieve your goals.