A woman I used to know, Cynthia,\u00a0was in the business of helping celebrities prepare to be on camera. They were\u00a0accustomed to performing in front of thousands of people, they had reached
excellence in their craft, but unscripted appearances and interviews on talk\u00a0shows were really hard for some of them. My friend would meet with them, set up\u00a0a mock camera, they\u2019d sit down facing each other and she would ask probing questions\u00a0about their careers and their private lives so they could learn to manage\u00a0conversations that made them uncomfortable. She advised them how to dress, how
to sit, and how to appear relaxed when they were stressed out. How to smile\u00a0when they were afraid. She showed them what to do with their hands, what to do\u00a0with their legs and how to laugh at themselves.<\/p>\n
Cynthia was in London in the early\u00a0summer of 1997, when she got a call from Princess Diana\u2019s assistant. He told\u00a0her that the princess wanted some help with her public appearances and he\u00a0wondered if Cynthia could meet with her that afternoon. She was breathless, it
was an extraordinary opportunity, but she was intimidated. What would she say\u00a0to her? What if she did a bad job and Diana was disappointed? She decided she\u00a0needed some time to prepare. \u201cI can\u2019t do it today,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019m flying home\u00a0to Los Angeles. But I\u2019ll be back in London next month and we can set something\u00a0up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Diana was killed in a car crash two\u00a0weeks later and Cynthia regrets her decision to this day. The irony was that\u00a0she was being challenged by the very things she was teaching her clients how to
handle and she couldn’t rise to the occasion. She learned the hard way not to\u00a0let fear stop her from saying yes and I expect that made her better at her\u00a0work.<\/p>\n
I faced the same kind of fear when I\u00a0was asked to show a writing sample to Diana Ross who wanted to write her\u00a0memoir. She interviewed other writers and when she chose me, I was proud and ecstatic.\u00a0I was about to work with someone who was more than a celebrity. She was an\u00a0icon. But when two large Fed Ex boxes arrived at my house the next morning\u00a0filled with write-ups, articles and reviews that I had to put in some kind of\u00a0order, I took a look at the boxes, made my way down the staircase, went into my\u00a0bedroom and got into bed. In a flash, my ecstasy had morphed into hardcore reality.\u00a0The celebration was over. Now I had to write the damned book with the shortest\u00a0deadline you could imagine and I would have to work in three different states\u00a0to do it. \u201cWow, I\u2019m writing for Diana Ross,\u201d had turned into, \u201cOh no, I\u2019m\u00a0writing for Diana Ross.\u201d<\/p>\n
At that point, I had only written\u00a0one book and edited another but I never considered not doing the icon\u2019s memoir.\u00a0I went back upstairs to my office, opened the boxes, took out all the\u00a0materials, spread them out on the floor and created my own filing system, using
colored pencils to organize the singer\u2019s life into highlights and
relationships. I went on plane rides, conducted in-person interviews in three\u00a0homes, transcribed tapes and organized the transcriptions into chronological\u00a0order. I got to really know the legend of stage and screen. I got to know her personal\u00a0chef and her chauffer, I interviewed her husband and I got to know her family. My\u00a0book made the NY Times bestseller list and publishers hired hired me for
other ghostwriting jobs. The singer\u2019s agent called on me to work with his famed\u00a0clients: Olympic athletes, news anchors, award winning composers and movie\u00a0stars. I had created a successful career for myself with numerous bestsellers, something\u00a0that never would have happened if I had turned down the original offer and let\u00a0fear win.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Showing up despite your insecurities or\u00a0your fear of mediocrity takes a lot of courage and requires realistic\u00a0expectations. You\u2019re not going to pick up a guitar for the first time and play like Eric Clapton. You\u2019re not going to your first ballet class and perform a pirouette like Misty Copeland. You won\u2019t sing like Barbra Streisand or act like Meryl Streep. The ladder to excellence is tall, you have to climb up rung by rung, and whether or not you make it to the top, the reward is putting your fears in the background and enjoying the ride.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned most of my life lessons,\u00a0not by professional training but simply showing up and doing what was in front\u00a0of me, no matter how scared I was. I was inspired by painter, Georgia O Keefe,\u00a0who said, \u201cI\u2019ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I\u2019ve
never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.\u201d That resonated\u00a0with me and gave me courage at the beginning of each project when I felt\u00a0frightened and overwhelmed. With every job, I kept getting better and better\u00a0and eventually, I learned to trust myself and I managed to have fun along the\u00a0way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A woman I used to know, Cynthia,\u00a0was in the business of helping celebrities prepare to be on camera. They were\u00a0accustomed to performing in front of thousands of people, they had reachedexcellence in their craft, but unscripted appearances and interviews on talk\u00a0shows were really hard for some of them. My friend would meet with them, set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2406,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405\/revisions\/2406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}