Surrender Your To Do

As a girl who lives by her to do list... I find the idea of surrender extremely uncomfortable.

How am I supposed to trust that the work I am doing, the work I am putting out into the world, the people I am meeting and connecting with - that it will all lead to the kinds of roles I want to play, and stories I want to tell?

I am not good with things I can't control.

This week I'm sharing about how I am rethinking the idea of surrender. So it doesn't reflect a lack of agency, but rather an amplification of my creative spark.

Come check out the Hot Mess series on TikTok, and watch as I lose my mind - and find it again - writing, producing, and acting in a show!

#CreatingIsHealing🦋

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hi my friends. I am sitting here trying to figure out if I can properly translate this idea that I have, that I wanna talk to you guys about today. And realizing that kinda what I talked about last episode, which was the , um, artist work of translating some inside into the outside. So here goes, I've been thinking a lot about surrender, which if you know anything about me is pretty much the thing I suck at the most. I may have a little bit of control issues. Um, no, truly, like I love a plan. I love a four step , 10 step, a five-year plan, and like a 10 step action plan, right? I like knowing that if I do A, B, C, it will lead to X, y, z. I am so jealous of people who have traditional jobs like, I don't know, being a doctor or a lawyer or something where there's a very delineated way of climbing the ranks of proving yourself and then being able to reach a higher level of success, which is also probably why I'd be incredibly bored doing that because I think, I think we are drawn towards the things that we need to learn. And I think we are drawn towards the things that we find hard. 'cause there's something there to teach us. And I think that's why I love art so much, because being an artist is so, so much of a rollercoaster and so much of, you know, they have this saying for actors that you're only as good as your last film. So if your last film was a huge success, everybody wants to work with you. If your last film was a flop, nobody wants to work with you. And I think something similar applies to music, I'm sure, to being a visual artist, having the art gallery showing, right? There's this constant need to create the next big hit. And what's hard about that is they're , as much as they're trying to algorithm their way into a big hit, nobody actually knows what the hell the next big hit's gonna be . And so there's no actual formula for success, which is why it's the most maddening and the most fascinating of things to pursue. And, and when I think about being an actor, and I think about, again, I like a to-do list. I like a thing that I'm going to do every day that I'm gonna know is getting me closer to my goal. And one of the things that I find most curious and hard and interesting is what is that checklist? If the goal is to attract or be right for the next acting role, that is a really good fit for me. Yes, there are auditions, yes, there are meeting people, there are all these things that you can do, but it's this fascinating thing where again, there's no ex , it's not, the auditions sort of come outta the blue. They often land in your inbox months apart when you haven't heard from your agent in a while and you've been doing other things entirely. There's this really out of left field since to how opportunities come your way. And I would imagine this is true even of like writing a book. You know, I think you write a book and you submit and submit and submit 'em . I get a whole bunch of denials and maybe you're going out and meeting people and then you, you meet the friend of a cousin, of an agent who then takes a chance on you. Like there's so much of it about it that's ineffable. There's so much about it that cannot be properly explained. You look at anyone's career trajectory, who is an artist, there are all these things that happened that everyone's career is incredibly different. Everyone's trajectory is incredibly different. And again, there's not like a whole ton of like, you go to this school, you get this degree, you apply for this job, you figure this out, and I have a brain that likes Excel spreadsheets. I have a brain that wants to know what the system is. I have a brain that wants to know, tell me what to do today. That is my checklist. That is my to-do list. I crush my to-do list, and I know I'm one step closer to the thing that really matters to me. And so I've been thinking about what it is to put surrender on my to-do list, which is such an oxymoron, but very me , um, because I like things that I can do. And I feel like, well, if surrender's on my list, then I can check it off for the day. But what I mean by surrender is staying open to the next opportunity that is coming for you. I think what I've always found hard about surrender is this feeling of inaction, this feeling that I don't control anything, that I don't know where I'm headed, that I'm just free falling into a world of people making films and TV shows and putting on plays. And I might not want to be a part of that. Like I love c s I , I respect the f out of what it's done, but I don't really wanna tell the story of someone getting murdered every week. It's just not great juju for me. Um, and I know that. And so I think those are incredible roles, but I wouldn't necessarily want to be attracting that role, right? And so I've always kind of felt this sense of how do you know that the opportunities that are coming for you are the ones that are gonna align with who you wanna be and also match with the kind of career you're trying to shape for yourself? And I don't think anyone has an answer, which is again, part of the psychological warfare of being an artist. But I had this idea for a project , um, which I'm still , uh, nibbling on, but got a little sidelined with my shoulder having some issues these past , uh, <laugh> almost two months now. And, and I got stuck on this idea. If, if I create for myself when I perform for myself, then how will I know if it's getting to the right people, how will I know that it's going to land me the next role? How do I get it just in front of the right people? How do I even know who? And there's a strike going on. So no one is actually actively auditioning or developing, but people are definitely writing scripts thinking about their next project, hoping that when the strike ends, they get to go back to work, right? So no one's actively looking, but everyone's always thinking about creative next projects. So who's got the script or the film that maybe just premiered at , uh, Toronto Film Festival or is going to Sundance , um, or was in Sundance earlier this year and their next project would be a really great fit for me, but I don't even know who they are yet, who is like doing, like, I love when I watch shows on Netflix and I am just awed by how brilliant and and yummy and perfect and so exciting for me as an audience to discover that that show exists. And I didn't even know who the showrunner was before that show happened. So I like to think about like, how do you even find the people who have yet to spark the idea of the thing that you wanna be a part of and how do you show them that you would wanna be a part of that and you would be really right for that, right? That's the math equation my brain is always trying to , um, put together. And I, again, control, feel a lot of anxiety about just throwing the net wide and which I think is what probably is the best idea and the best advice, right? Is put a whole bunch of stuff out there all the time consistently so people can discover you. And I think what's always been hard for me about that is control and feeling like, well, if everybody sees everything, then I don't know what I am attracting. And I don't know if it's gonna be a c s i , God bless them kind of role. Uh , which honestly, I could have so much fun with if it was like a one off . I just don't know that I wanna do seven years of that. But again, great show , um, or if it's gonna be like a , an indie , uh, God , I'm thinking of Taylor Sheridan wrote , um, river, it's gonna drive me crazy now, this really great film. Um, and nobody quite knew who he was and he blew up and made , um, the Paramount Show Yellowstone, which has been this huge, huge hit, if you haven't heard about it. Anyway, wind River is this phenomenal, phenomenal film that was like a tiny film that did all of these , um, film festival circuits and the gems that you don't know exist, right? That you don't even know that people are writing and, and creating. Um, and, and so what I've been thinking about is this idea that surrender is not just like being a, my visuals are so weird, a dead fish. Like not just being like a floppy, you have no agency, you have no life. You are just kind of like waiting for something to pick you up, which I think is what I've always associated with surrender. And instead, I've been thinking a lot, and I'm gonna get woo with you guys about energy and about how our thoughts are energy. We know this, we know that we as humans, our electrical currents, we know that our thoughts transmit. We've no idea how, but there has been research showing that people , um, who pray and meditate and send good thoughts toward plants, the plants thrive, and people who send hateful thoughts toward plants, the plants Chile up and get sick. We know that our thoughts have power. We know that our thoughts transmit maybe not in words, we certainly don't know how, but we know that, that that we're all antennas and we're all receiving and sending all the time. And one way to look at it that's more maybe tangible is, again, dating is such a great microcosm of way of looking at life. But let's say you're on a date and you're really feeling yourself and you're feeling really just enchanted with life and you're feeling cute and you're feeling whatever, you're gonna lean into the person and you're gonna be curious about them, and you're gonna be charming because you feel good about yourself, you feel good about who you are, and you're genuinely cur curious and you feel really safe. And , um, there's that space to fully bloom into who you are. And you can be very , uh, excited, right? Versus if you're feeling, if you're thoughts about yourself are that you're not enough, that maybe this isn't the right time, that you don't know what to say, that um, maybe you know, what you're gonna say is stupid. Your whole body will sort of close up. You're gonna stop making eye contact. You're gonna, you're gonna be, you're gonna be , um, looking to them for permission. You're gonna be hesitant about what you say, you're gonna be quiet, you're gonna eat your own words, right? You're just gonna swallow into yourself. And that is a very concrete way in which our thoughts about ourself translate into the actions that we take, into the ways that we show up and relate to other humans. So same about your book or your piece of , um, fine art or your sculpture or your acting. If you feel incredibly good and like it adds value to the world and it's important for people to see and it brings delight and entertainment, you're gonna be excited talking about the work that you do. And you're gonna wanna meet other directors and writers and talk about what they think is important in the world and what kind of stories they wanna tell, right? Versus if, which I do a lot of , um, you're questioning what is the meaning of acting and does it make any sense? And the world is on fire and we should really worry about that. And you're just gonna keep pulling into yourself and into yourself and into yourself until it gets really hard to meet someone from a clear place where your brain is clear and you're not just sort of nattering at yourself about all the ways in which this might be a bad idea and you're able to see them and then make something great together. And so I think a lot about, and a lot of the work that I do is cleaning up those narratives that I hold, right? I, I am fascinated by the fact that I can watch hours of Netflix and feel like it is teaching me about how to human. It is teaching me about relationships and life and heartbreak and loss and love and friendships and growing up and be so grateful for the amount of television and theater and music and art that is in my life that sustains me and walks the path of being a human with me. And somehow still turn it on myself and say, well, my stuff isn't good enough. I don't know the value of what I'm doing. I should definitely have a more concrete job where I can show you exactly what the value of this is that I do. That's a dichotomy that I live with. So I'm always kind of exploring it and curious. But what I'm aware is that it does this thing where I can talk about some things with confidence and ease and joy and charm because I'm excited about them and other things, especially acting that matter to me. I tend to get very closed off and doubtful and curious and judgy , and I don't know if I'm enough and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And so if we think about that transmitting, we think about that as the place where I have control, where I have agency to do work since I like a checklist and a to-do list, which is why a lot of my checklists are about doing journaling and figuring out my daily practices to get clear about those narratives that aren't serving me. Those thoughts that I have that I repeat to myself that just make me play small and get curious enough about them, about why they're important to me, why I hold onto them, how they keep me safe, how they think they are protecting me, or how they believe they're protecting me, and how to have a different relationship to them so that I can feel incredibly safe and also do the thing that matters to me. So that's part one of the like surrender, being an inside job and having agency within your surrender. And the other part of it was that in everything that we do, and this is hard for me, but it's like one of those things where like, I know it when I see it from a bird's eye view, but when I'm inside of it doing it myself, I'm like, really? But I think we know this to be true. Like this project that I was working on had to do with choosing different , um, excerpts from novels and using them as character studies and then recording them as one minute , like Instagram, like a characters almost like a monologue and putting them on Instagram. And of course I got in my head about, you know, why and who will see this and what does it matter and am I good enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But also the larger question was, what will this lead to? Again, I have a 10 year plan brain that wants to know how do I reverse engineer meeting the person who's gonna make the film that I'm most excited about, who's gonna make the TV show that I really wanna be a part of? And I have a really hard time trusting that if I just keep showing up with my own ideas about what's important, with my own curiosity about the world, with my own take on how to bring a character to life that will eventually align with the people who are doing similar exciting stuff. And so it occurred to me as I was looking for different pieces of writing, how even the act of choosing those pieces of writing was revealing something about the kind of stories that I wanna tell. And that means that my antenna is transmitting from that place of these are the stories that really light me up. These are the characters that most light me up and when my antenna is lit up with that is what I'm transmitting. That is where I'm excited, that's where I feel my most true self, my most alive. Again, it's woo , but we resonate. It's the high vibes thing, right? If I am feeling good at that energy, someone else who also feels good at that energy is gonna be attracted. We don't know how, but we know this to be true. Um, and so the work becomes further and further looking into yourself and getting more and more solid in, where do you feel that spark? What excites you about that role? What excites you about creating that character? Is it an accent? Is it a physicality? Is it the location? Is it the costume? Is it, you know, playing with age or a backstory? Is it the language itself? All of these things are different for different people and whatever it is that lights you up. And this is what's interesting too, because when I'm in my flip side where I'm looking outside in and trying to figure out what will someone else see in this performance, how will they judge it? How will they, how will I know if they think it's good enough is really what it comes down to? Then I give out my agency and I'm actually not in a place of surrender. I'm in a place of trying to anticipate the judgment so I can solve for the judgment by controlling what I anticipate someone else will think, right? When, when you say it like that, it's completely insane and completely impossible. But that's what the control brain does. It's it's deepest, deepest desire is to keep us safe. And its deepest belief is that if it can control everybody else out there and all of their thoughts and all of their actions, I will be safe. We sadly can't do any of that. I can't even know what other people think. Um, I can, might maybe know what they say, I can maybe know what they write. Um, but even that can be rife with subtext. I don't know why they do what they do. And I certainly will make myself crazy. I have enough thoughts of my own guys, <laugh> . I definitely don't wanna be trying to figure out someone else's thoughts, but that's what my brain spends its time doing, trying to figure out how will this performance matter enough to the person I most wanna impress and what do I need to this person that I don't even know, by the way? How , what do I need to do in order to make sure that they see it and are impressed by it and take x, y , z action of like offering me a role, right? That's where my brain is going, seven steps ahead of me. And it takes away this ability to say to myself, why this? Why am I excited by this? I don't need to know why, but just how do I follow that excitement? How do I follow that spark? How do I follow that? I'm feeling it kind of thing that you want on a first date, right? How do I, how do I follow that? And then trust that if what I'm putting out into the world comes from that genuine, this was exciting to me because of this topic, because of this relationship that explored, because of this language, because of this. Like, I like period pieces. You know, I wanna wear a costume and I wanna be in the 18 hundreds or this whole thing like , uh, p b s masterpiece, I'm always like, I wanna be in the corset with the horses <laugh> old school movies. Um , that was a dream like back in, in acting school. So like if you know what you're lit up by, it doesn't mean that all those things are gonna come to you, but you're gonna get closer and closer at finding those people because you are coming from that place of this is what excites me and this is what I resonate at. And when I resonate and when I have s real clarity over what I resonate and what lights me up, this is super woo . But that energy conversation gets louder, right? Those thoughts are louder, they broadcast further, yes, in a sense of like you put 'em on Instagram, they actually broadcast further. But in terms of how you move in the world in terms of how you reach out by email or dmm someone in terms of how you show up for yourself every day , you have permission to be most excited by what excites you and the more you can lean into staying true to that, but also falling in love with the being true to that. And I think that is the hardest part. I think again, the world is hard. Capitalism is hard, but also humans are all scared of being vulnerable. And the way that we protect our vulnerability is by judging ourselves so harshly before anyone else can judge us. And it makes it really hard to fall in love with your true deepest desire to express your true artist because all we wanna do is judge it first to keep it safe rather than share it and maybe not be understood, maybe have our heart broken , maybe not get the role we were really excited about. And those things are really hard to do. And so I think we proactively make ourselves wrong in the things that we want most because that's so much safer. And I'm not saying this is intentional. I'm just trying to figure out like where my brain is turning against itself in the belief that all our brains are always trying to keep us safe. It is their absolute golden rule. It is their only, only purpose for being is to keep us safe. And from that premise, anything that I think even if it sounds really hateful or wrong, is actually always trying to keep me safe. Which is a really opens up so much curiosity to look at how you were thinking and why you were thinking. And so from the surrender to to-do list, right, it changes from, so the non surrender to-do list is let me make a list of 10 people I wanna impress and let me figure out how to get in front of those 10 people and let me figure out exactly what outfit and what cute hair and what I should say and what I should do so that they will like me. Um, which honestly might work for some people and might work for a short time. But the truth is, the more you do that, the more further away you get from your inherent self. And all we want as artists is to be our most inherent self, right? The thing that is most resonating, touching, moving to us is to see someone in their full humanity. So the more that we are putting on masks for other people, for them to like us, the further from our own humanity we get distanced, the less we have to share, the less spark we have, the less interesting, the less far we can go. Um, and so the flip side, the surrender is following the spark, which sounds so much more fun and so much easier and somehow is harder because it's more vulnerable. Because all the questions of what if someone doesn't like it? What if it's the wrong thing? What if the person I most wanna impressed turns out not to be impressed? What if they say no? You know, it's all the dating dilemma of how do you show your true self and hope that person likes you and what do you do if they don't? And the answer is always you lick your wounds and you love yourself harder. But I don't think we get taught that so much. I think we get really good at, let me figure out a cuter dress. Let me figure out how to lose more weight. Let me figure out how to make more money. Let me figure out how to be more impressive and more secure in all these external things so that they can't help but choose me, which makes sense. But ultimately leaves you really empty. And the hardest thing is if you got all the money and the thinness and the pretty clothes and they still don't choose you, you kind of got nothing left 'cause you haven't been working on loving yourself even more. I have no idea how this episode turned into like a dating 1 0 1 thing. Um, but I do absolutely think so much about how dating is art and art is life, dating is life like, it's all just about vulnerability and being true to yourself and being able to stay true to yourself even when the world , um, might not be getting it or liking it. So I don't know how to end this episode, you guys , um, other than I'm still in this conversation with myself. And so I hope you'll be also about if the word isn't surrender, if the idea isn't surrender, what is the thing that allows you that gives you permission to fall deeper into, To follow, to fall deeper into the rabbit hole of like, where is your truest desire and what sparks you and what are you most excited to say in the world? And then how do you keep giving yourself more and more permission to say that? And how do you trust more and more that as long as you are able to say that more clearly and more loudly, not shouting, just with clarity and with focus and standing in that that's how people can see you clearly and know what you stand for and then they can come find you. That's what I'm gonna try to practice as I move forward the rest of this year. Um, I hope that made some amount of sense to you guys. As always. I'm often still working on things when I come here to talk. And I love being in this journey with you about what it means to live authentically, what it means to live as a human, what it means to want desperately to stay safe and need to stay safe for own mental health. We all need to be safe for own physical health. We all need to be safe. And also in order to be known and loved, we also need to be seen and we need to be able to reveal our true selves. And that's always gonna be a dynamic and attention of being human, of being an artist, of being in community. And I'm here for it. I don't got a whole lot of answers, but I I'm certainly always looking for new ways of tackling the age old problems of what it is , um, to be human and to have something to say about it. Be well , my friends, I .