“Do one thing every day that scares you”- Eleanor Roosevelt

Over the last few months I have definitely lived up to this quote. I have appeared topless on stage, portrayed a character with a South Yorkshire dialect (my first dialect), submitted myself to one of the top agencies in Vancouver, enrolled in one of the top scene study classes in the city and taken on a large amount of responsibility in my new job as an assistant-editor.

I want to say that it’s getting easier with every risk, but it’s not. It’s just that every subsequent thing that I do is a little bit scarier to me. What makes these things so scary is that they make me extremely vulnerable.

I have been referring to Brené Brown’s TED talk about vulnerability a lot lately, but it’s top of mind.

I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that in order to achieve my goals, it’s sort of unavoidable that I take risks (even though I resisted this important ingredient for awhile). One of the biggest risks that I am currently learning to take has to do with connection.

How do you know that you’re taking a risk? Maybe your palms get sweaty, maybe your heart starts to beat really quickly, maybe you fumble over your words, maybe you lock yourself up in your apartment (like Brené Brown did after her TED talk). It’s scary to put yourself out there and risk failure, embarrassment, ridicule and rejection. All of the above happen to me… especially the word fumbling. When I’m really nervous I seem to lose hold of my identity, my mind goes really quiet and fuzzy, and it feels like my IQ drops to below average.

When I was feeling especially vulnerable on stage, the only thing that I could do was trust. Trust that I’d done the work. Trust in myself, trust in the audience, trust in my scene partner. Trust and remember that everyone is vulnerable, and everyone is afraid, and in a way we’re all in this together.

I see this more than ever when I log into Facebook and see the dreams of my friends materializing.

My friend Becky speaks about teaching art in a Junior High with so much passion that I can’t help but explode into a goofy grin of admiration whenever I read her posts.

I scroll further down and I read about the adventures of my friends as they pursue careers in music, makeup, dance, directing, writing, acting, politics, biology, science, cooking, comedy, art… I mean the amount of passion that consumes my Facebook wall is ridiculously awesome most days. The amount of risk and vulnerability that I’m surrounded by is so inspiring that it pushes me everyday to be better and to do better everyday.

So, I guess I want to wrap up this post by encouraging you to do something that scares you tomorrow, and then share it! Let’s start using social media for something useful. Not to feed fear and avoid our dreams, but to inspire one another to log off and get to work.

Which is exactly what I’m going to do right now.