A woman I used to know,\u00a0Cynthia, was in the business of helping celebrities prepare to be on camera.\u00a0They were accustomed to performing in front of thousands of people, they had\u00a0reached excellence in their craft, but unscripted appearances and interviews on\u00a0talk shows were really hard for some of them. My friend would meet with them,\u00a0set up a mock camera, they\u2019d sit down facing each other and she would ask probing\u00a0questions about 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 summer of\u00a01997, when she got a call from Princess Diana\u2019s assistant. He told her that the
princess wanted some help with her public appearances and he wondered if\u00a0Cynthia could meet with her that afternoon. She came highly recommended. Cynthia\u00a0was breathless, it was an \u00a0extraordinary opportunity, but she was also intimidated.\u00a0What would she say to her? What if she did a bad job and Diana was\u00a0disappointed? She decided she wasn\u2019t up to the task. Not yet anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t do it today,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019m flying\u00a0home to Los Angeles. But I\u2019ll be back in London next month and we can setsomething up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A week later, Diana was killed in a tragic car\u00a0crash and Cynthia regrets her decision. The irony was that she was being
challenged by the very things she was teaching her clients how to handle and\u00a0she couldn’t rise to the occasion. She had let her fear take over.<\/p>\n
I faced the same kind of fear when I was hired to\u00a0write a memoir for rock and roller Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane fame. She\u00a0was more than a celebrity. She was an icon. I swallowed my fear and I got ready\u00a0to go. 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 made my way downstairs, went into my bedroom and climbed into bed. \u201cWow!\u00a0I get to write a book for Grace Slick\u201d quickly became, \u201cOh no. I have to write
a book for Grace Slick.\u201d The celebration was over. My ecstasy had morphed into hardcore\u00a0reality And yet, I never considered not doing it. After an hour or so of wallowing\u00a0and winging and feeling sorry for myself, I went back upstairs to my office,\u00a0opened the boxes, took out all the materials, spread them out on the floor and began\u00a0to create my own filing system, organizing the singer\u2019s life into highlights\u00a0and relationships.<\/p>\n
The first time I visited Grace\u2019s house, she told\u00a0me, \u201cI don\u2019t remember what went on in my life. I was drunk for most of it.\u201d If\u00a0she had said that to intimidate me, it worked. But I carried on. I visited her\u00a0once a week to interview her. Obstacles came and got me at every turn. She\u00a0fired and rehired me for no apparent reason. She went on an alcohol fueled\u00a0bender and we missed a week of work. But little by little, her memory was\u00a0sparked and she told me some of the most amazing stories I\u2019d ever heard.<\/p>\n
I really got to know her. How she spoke and how\u00a0she looked at the world. The book made the bestseller list right away and I was
proud of it. If I had quit anywhere along the line, the experiences I had and\u00a0the things I learned would have been non-existent. Publishers began to call and\u00a0hire me for other books and after having worked with the rock and roll diva, I\u00a0felt like I could write for anyone. Olympic athletes, news anchors, award\u00a0winning composers and movie stars.<\/p>\n
Showing up despite your insecurities or your fear of mediocrity\u00a0takes a lot of courage and requires realistic expectations. You have no idea\u00a0what will happen. I\u2019ve learned important lessons along the way from each and\u00a0every person for whom I wrote a memoir. How to be unapologetically myself. How\u00a0to listen well. How to evaluate someone, not by the rumor mill but rather from\u00a0my direct experience. How to read body language and how to hand in there when\u00a0the going went rough. And it always did.<\/p>\n
Wherever your creativity leads you, remember to show up and be
patient with yourself. 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\u2019re not going to 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, not by\u00a0professional training but by showing up and doing what was in front of me, no\u00a0matter how I felt about it. I was inspired by painter, Georgia O\u2019 Keefe, who\u00a0said, \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<\/p>\n
That resonated with me and gave me courage at\u00a0the beginning of each project when I felt frightened and overwhelmed. Fear was\u00a0a constant visitor and I made a lot of mistakes but with every job, I kept feeling\u00a0better and better and eventually, I learned to trust myself and know that\u00a0nothing would stop me. That if I showed up, I could do what I needed to do.<\/p>\n
“I learned that courage was not\u00a0the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not\u00a0feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – – – Nelson Mandela\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A woman I used to know,\u00a0Cynthia, was in the business of helping celebrities prepare to be on camera.\u00a0They were accustomed to performing in front of thousands of people, they had\u00a0reached excellence in their craft, but unscripted appearances and interviews on\u00a0talk shows were really hard for some of them. My friend would meet with them,\u00a0set up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"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-2756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756","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=2756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2757,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions\/2757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}