How Do You Show Up?

Before you can answer how you show up, you need to first decide that you’re even going to show up. For anything that means anything to you, for anything that’s important to you, or that you make a priority in your life — whether it’s your friends and family, a goal you want to achieve, a dream you want to fulfill, or becoming your best self — first and foremost, it takes showing up. Period. Consistently. No matter what the hardship.

Even when life happens and shit happens, and it’s really hard, show up. Because at the end of the day, 99.9% of the time it comes down to your choice of whether you do or don’t; regardless of how hard it may be. So first, just choose to show up. Every single time.

Then, think about how you show up. When I show up, I choose to show up looking my best and dressed the part every single time. Why? Because sometimes, just dressing the part and looking my best actually drives being my best, feeling my best, and becoming the part. I learned this important lesson in my previous life as an actress.

In acting, when you work on a role and work on becoming a character, there are two basic methodologies: 1) working from the inside out; and 2) working from the outside in. For me personally, the first methodology worked better for me as an actress; I always worked from the inside out when playing a role and getting into character.

First, I got into the head and psychology of the character — how she thinks and what she thinks; and I got into the emotional intelligence and make-up of the character — what she feels, how she feels, and why she feels what she feels. Then, once I had the internal make-up of the character down, that naturally and organically fed into and drove the external make-up and the physicality of the character — how she walks, how she talks, how she holds herself, and how she dresses.

There are plenty of actors that prefer the second methodology — working from the outside in. They first figure out how the character dresses, how they walk and talk, and that in turn feeds and drives the internal components, psyche and emotional make-up of their character — how they think and feel and behave.

In life, as people, I think we need to use both methodologies. We need to work on our internal make-up of course, but we can use working on our external selves — and how we show up — as a tool to drive the internal. When I need to show up for something on a day that I’m not feeling my best, for example, when I’m feeling discouraged, exhausted or weak, or I’m just having a really shitty day, when I dress a certain way, and put myself together to look the part I want to portray and become, then I actually do become that part. I work from the outside in, and it works! When I show up dressed the part, I actually start to behave and become the part.

So, not only do I choose to show up every time consistently, no matter how hard it may be. I also choose to show up dressed the part, looking the part, and then feeling the part — and that’s how I show up.

#SeizeYourPassion!

P.S. I write these blogs based on my weekly live stream chats. You can watch the live stream that inspired this blog post, and all my other live streams right here.