What does it mean to be successful?
Does it mean getting to the top of your chosen profession? Does it mean making a lot of money? Is success having a family, raising healthy children into successful adults? Does it mean feeling fulfilled? Is it just being a good person?
Everyone strives for success. Sometimes, I'm not sure I would recognize success if it came to me. Lately, I have been challenging myself to become more aware of my successes. So much of the time I focus on my failures. If you were to read my journal, much of it would be about what I didn't do well that day. I write incessantly about gaining weight, not having discipline with watching what I'm eating, not exercising that day, not feeling very motivated, spending way too much money, drinking too much, spending too much time in front of the tv, and the list goes on and on and on. It's so easy to focus on those things that I want to change about myself. I become obsessed about it.
It's much more difficult to focus on the successes. Too many times, I don't take the time to recognize them or I just brush them off. Many times when someone gives me a compliment, I will lose eye contact and act like it's no big deal rather than simply saying, 'thank you for the compliment'. A perfect example of this was last year when I was honored with an award from the Illinois Theatre Association for outstanding contributions. My first reaction when I was told about this award was 'why in the world would they be giving me an award'? People would come up and congratulate me and again I would brush it off. I would say, 'thanks' but then feel the need to explain that I wasn't sure why I was getting it and it must have something to do with me volunteering my time to sit on that committee that helped to re-write the theater learning standards. I would say this as if I was saying, 'I think they made a mistake' .
I finally caught myself doing this one time and thought to myself; "First off, they don't care why I was getting the award. They are just happy for me and want to congratulate me. Second, why am I downplaying my accomplishments? I spent four years on the ITA Board of Directors. During that time I organized four conferences working alongside the American Alliance for Theater in Education. I volunteered time to run workshops at various events and sat on various committees to further ITA's mission even after I left the board. AND, as I mentioned before, I sat on a committee with six other educators for a year and a half and re-wrote the learning standards in theater for grades K-12 in the state of Illinois and those standards were passed by the State Board of Education! That is a really big accomplishment!"
I realize that failure comes with success. I remember back in the 90's that Michael Jordan commercial where he talks about all the times he's failed. He ends that commercial by saying something like, 'I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed." I remember loving that commercial as a kid. To me, it meant that no matter how many times you fall you have to keep trying. Get back up in the saddle. Learn from your mistakes.
The failure I have felt as an adult is the failure of feeling like I'm not trying. I'm not living up to being the best I can be. I'm afraid I won't succeed so I just talk myself out of even trying. I think that's where this entire mid-life crisis is stemming from. There is this constant second guessing myself and feeling like I'm just doing the same thing day in and day out.
The fact is that I am trying. I have been trying to lose weight now for probably ten years. Have I succeeded? Sometimes, yes. Many times, no. It doesn't mean that I have stopped trying. I'm in a constant battle with it. I beat myself up over my career, but I have accomplished a lot in my career. I was the Artistic Director and now the Executive Director of a non-profit theater company. I have had to teach myself pretty much everything about being an Executive Director from scratch. I had no training in running a non-profit. Now, I have to write grants, come up with budgets for the organization, oversee sales and marketing efforts, organize fundraising events, recruit and manage a board of directors, assist with audits, and develop strategic plans for the organization. I didn't know how to do any of this before taking it on. I still have a lot to learn, but I've come a very long way.
I have now been teaching acting classes for sixteen years. When I started teaching, I had a background in theater, but I had never taught it. Again, I had to learn by being thrown into the fire and just doing it. I have taught every age group from 5 years old to 75 years old. I have had to learn about different learning styles, what is developmentally appropriate, and how disabilities factor into learning. I have had to develop classroom management skills and continue to be challenged figuring out how to reach each individual student.
I need to be able to remind myself of this, especially during those times where I tell myself that I don't have a lot of marketable skills to offer. The truth is, I have actually accomplished a lot. I just have gotten to a place where now I have risen to the top in these particular jobs that I have. There isn't a lot of room to grow. I need new challenges. That doesn't mean that I have found all of the answers with my current jobs. I most definitely have not. But the challenges I face now in these jobs are no longer exciting challenges for me. They are more frustrating challenges. They are challenges where I feel like I'm fighting against a system which does not value the arts or education, and that is daunting and exhausting.
My previous blog post I know sounded kind of down because I had lost some momentum. I reminded myself though in that blog post that I have already had several small successes this year. Writing has been one of those success. I think it's healthy to continue to seek change and try to better oneself, but in the process, it's important to remember the successes you've had along the way and recognize it when it appears.
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