It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything…
The past year and a half I decided to reprioritize my life, giving “entertainment” only a piece of my time pie. I have been grinding for years and years in the entertainment business, and don’t get me wrong, I love this business and can’t imagine life without it… but I had been given a once in a lifetime opportunity that I really couldn’t turn down.
My best friend, Angelia Trinidad, who founded the company Passion Planner, decided that she was going to go on sabbatical and wanted to shoot a documentary in the Philippines. She asked me to be her assistant as she traveled the world, to help her with logistics and make sure everything run smoothly. It’s actually quite ironic that for years I had been writing IN MY Passion Planner that “I want(ed) to get paid to travel the world.” And here I was, being presented with the opportunity to GET PAID to travel the world WITH my best friend. It sounded like a dream offer. However, I did know that that meant I would be out of town a lot, away from Los Angeles, and away from opportunity.
It’s funny how hostage you can feel to LA when you’re an actor. You fear leaving for that slight chance that you’d miss that one big audition that’d take your career to the next level. You worry that your reps will drop you and you’ll come back having to start at the bottom again. And to be honest, it is kind of true. When you lose momentum in this business, YOU DO have to start all over again, reinvent yourself, and get back on the grind. It is hard. It is scary. But on the flip side… sometimes you’ve just got to take opportunities as they are given to you, because you never know if you’ll get them again and waiting on the business is no guarantee.
My philosophy is to do what makes me happy everyday, so that when I look back, I can say I led a happy life. I weighed my options and decided that even though I was coming off arguably my BEST year in acting that I’d ever had, it would be worth partially “leaving” the business to take this opportunity with Angel. As I continue to get older and realize that soon enough I’ll find myself settling down and starting a family, I won’t be able to get up and go wherever, whenever, like I do now. So this was the time and the opportunity and I was going to take it.
It’s really important to me that I am growing in all aspects of life. That I am becoming the best, most well-rounded human being that I can be. I know that people say if you want to be SUCCESSFUL you need to FOCUS. But have you ever stopped to really think about what YOU believe “success” is?
Typically, people associate “success” to a person’s accomplishments, financial wealth, title and status. For me, success is: being happy and being free… getting to do what I want, when I want, where I want, with whom I want. For me, that means doing ALL the things in life that make me happy: acting, traveling, speaking, mentoring, volunteering, spending time with the people I love, playing, etc. So it’s not about me focusing on one thing… because that wouldn’t make me happy… SUCCESS would be having time to do everything I love.
I’m really glad that I figured out what “success” means to me and am not mindlessly striving to achieve other people’s definition of it. Before I knew what it meant to me, I stressed about not living up to societal standards, when those standards didn’t even bring me happiness. All I did was shift my mindset and I realized that I’m living just fine. I don’t need to be like everyone else, or anyone else. I am just living how I choose to live my life and that’s the perfect way to live it. I feel more successful than I’ve ever felt.
I challenge you to take a look at your life… take account of how you are spending your time. What are you focusing on? It is helping drive you towards your definition of success?