Tiny Buddha

Tag: quitting

  • How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career

    How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career

    “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown

    The embarrassment you feel upon realizing you don’t actually have what it takes to make a success of yourself. The shame of knowing you spent years training to do one thing and then you bailed right at the finish line. The fear of what to tell people when they ask you what you’re up to.

    Of course, you don’t tell anyone how you feel, as you’re too embarrassed to admit you even have these feelings, so you just bury it all away.

    I know these feelings all too well, as I’ve been through them all. It took me years to finally face up to what I actually felt and deal with it. As a coach once told me, “Buried emotions never die.”

    I knew I always wanted to be in the arts. I loved dance and drama, and I wanted to be an actor. I could feel it so strongly that I never even considered a different career.

    I started dance classes at the young age of six, and at eleven years old I went to a performing arts school. So my training began.

    After school I went to a reputable college where I did a further three years of training. I was sixteen years old and was told to lose weight and wear heels and make-up. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this wasn’t the healthiest thing to tell a teenager.

    After three exhausting years I graduated. All the training, the hard work, the sacrifice had led up to this moment. I was going to get an agent, start working in theater, and move into TV and film.

    But that didn’t happen.

    Instead of going full steam into my career, I froze. The last term of college crushed me.

    The last term all led up to our final show. The show ran for a few weeks in different locations around the city, and it was meant to be an opportunity for us performers to show off our talent. Everyone was meant to invite agents in the hopes of getting signed.

    However, I didn’t invite anyone. I was so ashamed of my performance. I felt I had been cast in utterly the wrong role, and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t make it work, and no one seemed to care.

    I remember wishing I would fall down the stairs of the tube station so I would break my leg and not have to perform; I was so humiliated.

    Rather than leaving college confident and excited, I left with my confidence at rock bottom.

    I never did anything with my training. All those years, all those dreams, all those aspirations, but when push came to shove, I didn’t do anything with it.

    For years I told myself that the last term was so tough that it broke me, and that is why I never continued after college. I blamed everyone else.

    It took me years to admit that it was actually my decision to quit. It took me even longer to understand why that was. I realize now I was scared.

    In fact, I was petrified that I wasn’t as talented as I thought I was. I knew if I put myself out there and tried to make a career out of it and failed, I would have proof that I wasn’t talented.

    If I blamed everyone else and quit before I got started then, in my head, I could always be amazing and could have always potentially had a career in the arts.

    Emotions are so complex, though, that it took me a long time to dig deep enough to find this truth.

    Thus, I found myself aged eighteen years old, with no formal education, and all I had ever wanted to do was perform, so what now? I was totally lost.

    I just froze. I didn’t get an agent; I didn’t go to auditions. I just quit.

    I had spent my entire life working toward this moment, and at the final hurdle I fell. It really shook me up; I felt like an utter failure and was humiliated.

    I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I stayed in contact with no one from college, except two friends.

    I remember walking down Oxford High Street and seeing two of my former classmates. I jumped into a shop to hide from them because I was afraid they would ask what I had been up to.

    All I could think was, “What would I tell them?” They were probably off in West End Shows, and what was I doing? I was a failure. Of course, this was before social media, so no one knew what I was or was not doing.

    Eventually I decided I would take some time out and go to Thailand. I ended up spending a year there. I became a diving instructor, and I met the man that would become my husband.

    Once back home, I got a job in recruitment and my career went from strength to strength. I thought I had moved on and was happy with my life.

    Yet whenever I would meet someone who asked about my education or what I did at school, I would panic. “What do I tell them? How do I explain that I trained, but never turned it into a career?” They would know my dirty secret, that I was an untalented failure.

    I would lie and make up stories as to why I decided to change careers after my education.

    I couldn’t understand why I still cared so much about this. Why did I feel I had to lie?  Although life was great, deep down I felt that something was missing. It sometimes felt like there was a dark mass in the pit of my stomach.

    I had a session with my coach about this feeling, and what came up? The arts, my love for dancing, my failed career, my shame, my embarrassment. I remember breaking down in tears. I was so angry that twenty years later I still hadn’t moved on.

    I was so angry that this was still such a big thing in my life. That it was still there with me. I just wanted it to go away. It felt pathetic that it still had such a huge hold over me; what was wrong with me? I just kept saying, “This is so ridiculous, why can’t I just let it go?”

    But remember what I said earlier? Buried emotions never die. They never leave you; they’re just festering

    I was so confused by it all, I didn’t understand why it still had such a hold on me. Why I felt so embarrassed and full of shame. My coach helped me unpack it all.

    The lies I had told myself had become so much a part of me; I had to work hard to pick it all apart to find the truth.

    After so many years, I was finally able to face up to what had happened. I was just a scared teenager. I was so scared of failure and rejection that I found a way to protect myself by making up a lie and quitting.

    I needed to make peace with this, and I needed to accept responsibility. I found this hard to do, as I didn’t like this version of me. It was much easier to blame everyone else than to see it was my fear that stopped me.

    I needed to forgive myself.

    I stopped telling myself lies and admitted that when I graduated, I was petrified of failure, so I quit before I could fail. I realized I still had a love for the arts and I needed to find an outlet in my life.

    It was hard work and took many sessions to really dig into the truth, but once I did, I was finally able to talk about the arts and my past without shame or embarrassment. I could finally move on.

    I did a lot of work re-connecting with teenage Alice. Writing letters to her, forgiving her, and showing her compassion. I also did a lot of work on acknowledging what I had achieved and who I had become.

    I know I’m not alone in what I felt and what I went through. I wish I could have started this healing process a long time ago because as much work as I have done, I know there is still more to do.

    For anyone who is experiencing what I did, know that you’re not alone and you’re not silly for feeling the way you do. Also know, you can change it.

    I learned so many things in the process.

    You can’t just ignore what you feel.

    At the time I was so confused by what I felt. Instead of trying to understand what was happening, I just buried everything.

    Eventually I had to look my shame and embarrassment in the eye and understand what they were telling me about myself. What was the message?

    There is always a message behind your feelings and emotions; you just need to be brave enough to hear them. I found journaling really helped with this.

    It takes time.

    If, like me, you have already spent years ignoring what you felt, that also means you’ve likely spent years telling yourself lies. What you are feeling is complex, and it will take time to work through it. Don’t expect an overnight change.

    Things still come up now that I have to work through. Human beings are extremely complex, and it takes time to break through all our barriers.

    Share what you’re feeling because you won’t be alone.

    I remember telling my old manager about how I felt. He had the same background as me, and he said, “Alice, I felt exactly the same way.” He told me he moved cities just to get away from people he knew.

    Just hearing that made me know I wasn’t insane. It was amazing to hear he understood.

    We hear it all the time, but sharing what you’re going through really does help. So share your story.

    Stop punishing yourself and have fun.

    For anyone reading this who can relate, you have likely boxed away something you loved. It’s time to take it out of the box and allow yourself to have fun again. You don’t need to keep punishing yourself.

    I didn’t allow myself to dance for years. It was too painful. However, my body was screaming out for it. I realized it wouldn’t be a career, but that didn’t mean I had to cut it out of my life completely. I could still enjoy it.

    —

    It’s been a long journey for me. Mainly because when I quit twenty years ago, I had a rush of feelings and emotions, and I didn’t know how to deal with them, so I pushed them away and lied to myself. It took a long time to undo all the stories I had told myself.

    You don’t need to be embarrassed or feel ashamed, but also know it’s okay if you do feel this way. Just don’t hide from these feelings. Understand them, embrace them, and make peace with them. That way you can allow yourself to move on.

  • The Joy and Power of Realizing I Am More Than My Job

    The Joy and Power of Realizing I Am More Than My Job

    “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” ~Brené Brown

    “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    “It’s so nice to meet you. What do you do?”

    These are the questions we are asked our entire life. When we’re children, everyone always asks about the future. They excitedly ask, “What will you do?” The subtext of this questions is:

    “How will you be productive in society? How will you contribute?”

    Being asked those questions all the time as children turned us into the adults that ask them. We are in the same cycle and do not seem to know to ask instead, “Who are you?”

    For a long time, my focus and self-identity was tied up in what I did. I would tell people, “I am a filmmaker.” When I was young, I knew I wanted to make films. I loved to tell stories. “I want to be a movie director!”

    When I grew up and actually got jobs in Hollywood, I realized that most people are not movie directors. Most people are not even filmmakers. They work in film. It takes many people to make one, but only a handful of people get any recognition or able to consider themselves filmmakers.

    “What do you do?” people would ask. I would struggle to figure out how to explain that I was a production assistant who worked on films. I was basically a glorified secretary, a personal assistant. But I was not a filmmaker.

    I worked on other filmmaker’s films. I personally had not made any art or films for over six years. I was so busy and tired of trying to work in the industry I wanted to work in that I forgot about myself.

    When I could no longer define myself as a filmmaker, I became disillusioned. If I wasn’t one, then what was I? People always got excited when I said I worked on movies. Their eyes would light up, and they would pester me with questions about the famous people I knew or inside secrets.

    They never wanted to know how much sleep I missed or how many friends and family events I sacrificed for the bragging rights of Hollywood. They didn’t want to know what excited me about life or who I was. They only wanted to know “what I did.”

    This discontentment grew. I became angrier and angrier at the film industry as a whole. I felt used. Worthless. The world was nothing but egos and money. I would never be them unless I sold myself and played their game.

    I wasn’t willing to play the game, find the back doors, penny pinch, or be downright cruel. I was beginning to see that the industry was soulless. The art and stories were being dictated by companies that wanted to earn as much as possible.

    The stories were not chosen for their value and need in the world, but by which would make the most money. They profited on these stories and off the handwork and sacrifices of the below-the-line workers that were seen as disposable.

    Celebrities made millions, and I made minimum wage, but I didn’t have the luxury of a free jet ride back home and an apartment for my girlfriend. I was reprimanded for refusing to work on a Saturday after only five hours off.

    Slowly, I began to question if this was who I was. If this “works in the film industry” was really. me. And I felt guilty! I felt like I was being ungrateful. I was working on big movies! How could I not be happy? I had “made it.”

    I could only go up from here. I could get to be the next Stephen Spielberg, the next Tarantino, the next Lucas? Then I worked for one of these types of famous guys. He was just a human. He wasn’t the god I held him up to be. He was flawed.

    Sure, he got the adrenaline rush of making art, but at my expense. I was lucky to have my name in the credits. I wasn’t part of the golden ones, the actors and producers who were the “real” movie.

    If I didn’t want to play the “Hollywood” game I could go independent. But I felt guilty that I called myself a filmmaker when I hadn’t made a film in years! I didn’t even have any desire to even come up with one.

    I had friends who were making films on the weekends. They dedicated every free second to it. All I did was sleep. Then drag myself for dinner or a date and pretend I had a social life before I had to be back at work. I felt guilty and afraid that if left the industry I would be seen as a failure.

    I was afraid that I would be seen as weak or people would think that I couldn’t hack it. The more angst I felt, the more I turned to my unhelpful habit of Googling advice.  There is nothing helpful about hours of reddit and self-help blogs. They are all contradictory.

    This Googling, however, led to some articles with actual facts. This is when I started to read about Americans’ tendency to identify with our jobs. Our self-worth and identity are wrapped up in what we do.

    We say things like, “I am a lawyer.” “I am a physicist.” “I am a teacher.” We don’t say, “I practice law.” “I study physics. “I teach.” We put the emphasis on the job and not the I.

    I started the long, tedious process of separating myself, the me, from the filmmaker and the woman who worked in film. I realized that I was uncomfortable calling myself a filmmaker because I wasn’t one.

    I struggled to define my title to other because I didn’t really believe that it was who I was. I am a woman who enjoys movies and stories. More importantly, I am energized by stories.

    Filmmaking was just a job. The intense zealotry aspect of the film industry had always sat wrong with me. Now I know why. I am not a job. I am more than the work I do.

    Through this process I came to slowly accept that I wasn’t happy with the work I was doing. There was a disconnect between it and the way I saw myself in life. I needed to walk away for a bit and allow myself to heal from the harm I and the toxic industry had infected upon my soul.

    It is not just the film industry that is toxic. American work culture is. We have created an environment where work has to be our passion. Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” I disagree. Work is work.

    You might enjoy it, but as long as you are giving your time for money you are participating in a business transaction, and it is work. Just accept it as work and accept that you can be a whole person outside of your job. Your job is only a small sliver of the much larger person.

    Our work culture throws around the phrase “We are like a family.” It is encouraged and suggested that your team members and colleagues are family. They aren’t.

    You can get along with them, be friends with them, but by labeling them as family there is a pressure to feel loyal and not let them down. Our alliances are manipulated to be given first and foremost to work. Any time spend doing something for yourself or your actual family is seen as selfish.

    A year after my last film job I still struggle to see myself outside these identities. I am now enrolled in grad school and I want to label myself as a student. But I am not. I am Dia. I study mythology.

    Sometimes I am a storyteller, but that title does not and cannot encompass the whole and vastness that I am as a person.

    Identifying ourselves by our work is like trying to fill a mug with the ocean. At some point the ocean will overpower the mug, and we will be left wet and feeling bad about ourselves.

    The next time you are at a party, after the pandemic, and you meet someone new, maybe don’t ask, “What do you do?” Instead ask, “Who are you?” Create the space to meet the real, whole person; the person who is vast, deep, and full of wonder for the world.

  • Why Quitting Is Sometimes the Right Thing to Do

    Why Quitting Is Sometimes the Right Thing to Do

    “Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

    We often think of quitting as failure. We commend people for carrying on when times get rough. The heroes in our action movies don’t just give up when things get difficult. When was the last time you saw Steven Seagal walk away from a fight?

    As the saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Society expects us to fight back and battle on.

    But sometimes, quitting is most definitely the right thing to do.

    Sometimes, it’s the best option. A lot of people assume that it’s the easy thing to do—that only defeatists and good-for-nothin’ drop outs would even consider such a “cop-out.” This is not the case.

    I learned this myself when I finally made that looming decision to drop out of college. There it is: “drop out.” Even the words sound negative, as if I’ve fallen away from society, failing to meet my expectations. But I don’t see my decision as a negative thing at all, and it wasn’t the easy thing to do.

    I had been at college for a year and two months; I had great friends, and everything was happily laid out for me.

    Nothing was too demanding, especially considering I had only nine contact hours a week. People told me where I had to be and when. This must all sound fairly straight-forward and easy going.

    Why, then, would I decide to give it all up and leave?

    As idyllic as this lifestyle sounds (and probably was), I simply felt no drive to live it. I had no desire to follow these laid out plans, and this was making me extremely unhappy. Going to college was, in hindsight, a bad decision for me.

    I rushed into the decision rather than taking a break to find myself in the world. (more…)