At 17, I left home to study theatre at New York University. I had been placed in the Stella Adler Conservatory, which I knew would be a perfect fit for me, after training in a variety of different acting methods as a teenager. I loved being on stage and shifting myself — from lovestruck teenager to nerdy secretary to misguided villain. There was so much to explore and so many stories to tell.
During my junior year, I learned a lesson in an acting class that I’ve returned to numerous times over the years:
The whole capacity of what it means to be human is within you.
Obviously, that doesn’t mean you’ve experienced everything. But in a training program for a profession where the goal is to tell stories in the most truthful way possible (even when it’s not truthful about you personally), you have to access something within yourself that transcends your personal life experiences.
Even more profound, it means you hold the contradictions of the universe.
We’re not all good or all evil.
We’re not all light or all dark.
We’re not all kindness or all vengeance.
We’re always both. What emerges is determined by the situations we’re in and the choices we make.
When you can access that wholeness with you, you can play any role with a truth that transcends your personal history.
But here’s what I find to be even more awesome now that I’m a business owner: Because you’re both, you don’t have to play into any stereotype.
You don’t have to be the enlightened healer who is all goodness. You don’t have to be the perfectly polished entrepreneur who’s always in control. You don’t have to be the super creative who only thinks about art, color, and design and forgets about the rest of life.
You already are everything, so you only need to be yourself.
You can hold the contradiction.
You can embody it because that’s where the truth is.
I had a call with a potential client a few weeks ago, someone who I had met at an event a few years ago. She works with her clients in a space that’s both spiritual and practical. I mentioned to her that one of the things I love so much about her — and why I genuinely trust her — is the way she’s both deeply grounded and simultaneously all glitter and unicorns. It feels so much more honest than shutting out a part of herself to feed the marketing stereotype.
I probably most often see it in business and marketing because that’s where my focus is. But the problem goes deeper.
The dualities and dichotomies we’ve been raised with in the West have led to dangerous black-or-white thinking.
You’re either one of us or one of them.
You’re either good or bad. (And apparently, that person is either good or bad too.)
We label.
There’s a constant push to classify and niche and reduce.
There are a lot of “or”s to choose from, when we need to own the “and”s (even when that seems odd or counterintuitive).
Consider this your reminder.
You are a human being.
Even though you are a collection of cells, which is a collection of particles, you cannot be reduced. You are the tiniest of all components and the sum of the whole.
You transcend the whole with properties that emerge from what is the whole and its parts.
Simply by being yourself and giving yourself permission to break the old stereotypes.
"We’re always both. What emerges is determined by the situations we’re in and the choices we make." I loved this sentence, it reminded me to remember that when I stay slow and connected to myself I make choices that allow really beautiful things to emerge in my life. ❤️
I loved reading every word. Thank you for this!