Ep #19: Show up as Your Main Character Self Every Day

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Hello my confident performers and welcome to episode 19 of The Confident Performer. We are talking about main character energy today. I want to take this moment and honor our beautiful main character energies and all of you who choose to show up for yourself and your life, not only on stage but off stage. Off stage showing up as a main character, you can catch a lot of flak.

And so, I want to talk about what that actually looks like in society and what us performers as main character energy vibes can bring. And how we can potentially still find a way to be ourselves in rooms where it is very apparent that other people around us are very uncomfortable because we are just being ourselves.

So greenlight.com gives a definition of what main character energy is. It’s the confidence, charisma and self-assuredness that is often associated with mean characters in a story or a movie. And I want you to think about it, we all have that vision and version of what a main character energy is all about. I think about Madonna. I think about Lady Gaga, Tina Fey, Oprah, Mindy Kaling, Shonda Rhimes, Beyoncé.

Those women, strong, beautiful, in my opinion, sometimes alpha energy women come into a room. You would know if any one of those women were in the room that you were in. You would know by the energy that they send out and what that energy does to the vibration of a room. It absolutely raises the vibration. It absolutely disrupts the vibration in a room most of the time. That’s why they’re selling out stadiums. That’s why they’re selling out arenas. That’s why anybody who says the word Oprah, anybody knows that.

That’s why when you have women who are writing the shape of culture and the culture begins to gradually shift because of certain things that they put out in the world. When you look at that, that is the impressive work of mean character energy. And I want to talk about what happens in the disruption where people are not comfortable with people being main characters in their story.

I want to talk about what we do as main characters when we walk in and we are being our vibrant, beautiful, fun self and someone says, “It’s too much.” Someone says, “It’s honestly annoying.” Someone says, “You need to learn how to read a room.” What do you do when you are just being yourself? I want to give this space, this comfort zone for my main characters. I’d actually love to start a conversation with some main characters and have this open dialog where the people in my life that are main characters, I’m all about it. I am not a person who thinks there is not enough room for both of us.

I am like, “The more the merrier.” I am all about collaboration for creation. I am all about operating from a place of true abundance, not a conversation or an outspoken phrase of abundance. True abundance, you do not hesitate to collaborate. Your brain says, “You know what? I’m all about this. What you bring is something far different and far needed for this side of this room.” What you need and what you bring to any type of social setting is going to be different for everyone. It’s the same reason I say I do not believe imperfect.

Someone can say, “You’re too much.” I can say, “Maybe a little more.” Someone can say, “Over the top.” I could say, “I don’t know. Maybe I want to see a little bit. What can you do? What more can you do?” So when you are that performer, what is that beautiful balance that you get to carry on over in your regular life? Because we all know putting on a show, the whole time is not what we’re in for. It’s not what we’re here for.

Mind you, we have all been around the artist that is on all the time. Most of the time they’re run down, they’re depleted, they’re exhausted. But if you are being authentic and you are finding that beautiful balance in life, that 50/50 of that energy flows, energy goes. And I love to look at it, when you think about that movie, Inside Out, when you need that joy and you need that sadness.

That bright, happy life perspective is so necessary to walk into, but it’s also imperative that you tap into those realistic feelings, those true feelings, those activated feelings so that you can take ownership of your experience. And so that you can realize, you know what? There is going to be some need for this give and take of happy and sad in order for me to show up as my authentic self in my life. And not just be a bright shiny version of myself that doesn’t experience hard times because we as main characters will absolutely continue to experience that on stage and off stage.

I want to read some inspirational quotes, so hopefully you can take this moment. You can think of this as a pep talk and you can say, “Listen, I see you. I hear you. I feel you. I understand when people say it’s too much.” I want you to know it’s too much for them. I want you to know that sometimes it’s not enough. I want you to know that deciding to be true to yourself and not put a lid on who you are is so important.

And I’m not talking about going into rooms and being a hot wreck and knocking tables over or yelling at the waiter or flipping off the valet or doing anything ridiculous, nonsensical. I’m talking about real life. You just show up and your confidence and your self-assuredness ends up being a mirror for somebody else and they don’t have that same thing. You can instantly make them feel uncomfortable just by your presence, just by how comfortable you choose to walk in a room, how much you choose to participate can make someone feel uncomfortable.

And I want to tell you my beautiful, confident, brilliant performers, that is not your problem. It has nothing to do with you. I want you to tap into the glory that you are. And I want you to tap into the truest journey of work that it took to get where you are. I had so much work poured into my journey of becoming. And when you think of the art of becoming, I want you to think of the journey along the way of becoming confident, the journey along the way of becoming self-assured and being true to what you want to do and how you want to show up in your life, deciding that your dreams are worth it.

That journey creates a strength in you that is incomparable. You cannot truly even explain it sometimes. It’s something that happened while you were becoming the thing, confident, beautiful, strong, content. I look so much today at content, the word ‘content’ as the new happy where you can find that space of true peace and gratitude. And not again, not phony, put on, false, no bad days, none of that. I’m talking about that was a crappy day. That was a crappy experience. That moment I wish never happened.

When you talk about the real life things in your life and you don’t shine on and you then just imagine that you show up as the beautiful human version of yourself as the main character in your story. That’s what I’m talking about. I want to read some of these quotes. So, Eleanor Roosevelt says, “A woman is like a teabag. You can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

And each one of us has potentially felt that sometimes, especially my performers, who stand on stage and go into rooms and face criticisms and put themselves out there. I remember being on American Idol and people would say, “What are you going to do if Simon says anything mean to you?” Well, Simon did say mean things to me. Simon was very funny and he was very cheeky with me and he did great, great blurbs for publicity.

One of my favorite stories Simon did, I say for me, was he told me that I look like Jay Leno. Now, is there some truth in that? Maybe, I actually think so. I thought about it for a minute, looked at some pictures and thought, I can see that. So in all of that, again, I could have absolutely taken it as a giant criticism. I didn’t. I laughed. I publicly laughed. I personally laughed. I thought about it. And then when I walked down the hall, I thought, how funny this is. And I looked at him and said, “Do you really think I look like Jay Leno?” And he said, “No. But call me when he puts you on his show.” And I thought to myself, how funny is that.

And I think of the life, the game, all the things. The very next day on your goodbye just recently voted off the Idol journey you’re going to start and you’re going to sing on The Tonight Show. Jay Leno wrote a skit. And you’re going to pretend to be his daughter. You’re going to talk about singing at Thanksgiving and doing all that kind of stuff. And you’re going to sing a song with the band. And I was the first Idol to be on The Tonight Show, who had not been the winner and that was a really, really cool honor. And I was a big Tonight Show fan so it was actually really cool.

And it was the same year, I think Selma Blair was promoting Legally Blonde. And it was just so fun to just kind of think about that moment and just the exchange of, okay, this is just all part of my life in the industry and a game that I got to be a part of at that time. So I think of that funny memory, but I think about that truest, people are going to say things to you. People are going to criticize you. Some people are going to do it as a joke. Some people are going to think it’s funny for them. Some people are going to do it because they’re just completely uncomfortable.

But my beautiful main characters, I want you to know that you can handle every single bit of it. I love the fact that Tom Brady said yes to doing The Roast on Netflix. I know it’s a huge, huge game. They were there promoting tons of their people, tons of their comedians. Some of them are my favorite, being on there and I think Kevin Hart is absolutely hilarious. I think he did an amazing job.

But when you look at a roast and what a roast is, it’s people putting your characteristics on blast. Whether that is how you look. Whether that’s how you show up in a room. Whether that’s how your voice sounds. Whether that is who you married, who you divorced, all of it, they do it on full blast. So, when you go through life and you are a main character and you are conditioned to respond with, you can acknowledge or you can ignore. There is a challenging dichotomy when you are trying to maintain true healthy relationships.

Those relationships that are important to you, if you get potential feedback from others, “Hey, your energy has a tendency to come off like this”, and you truly care about that relationship, I implore you to think about it. Think about what that actually means. Think about if you choose and you wish to adjust. There are times and I tell you, my man, I love him so much, he is a dear heart. There are times he is so used to trying to blend in with the wallpaper that me not blending in with the wallpaper actually makes him very uncomfortable.

I will walk into a room and I can sit at a table and some of the things that I say if I talk about my life, some people can say, “Oh, okay braggy.” Or they will say something to him like, “Oh, okay, well, that’s kind of a real bitch thing to say.” And sometimes I don’t even think twice about how that is. I’m just sharing a story or a conversation or a part of my own life and I’m not overthinking how to be in a situation. Because I am forced to show up for myself and be on blast almost all the time when I’m working with people, when I’m on stage, when I’m coaching people into confidence, when I’m coaching people to be the best versions of themselves.

So, there is that, what I like to call the occupational hazard of being a performer, of being a motivator, of being a performance coach. You are going to have people’s opinions at some point or another. And that is the most important thing to recognize. I love Madonna’s quote where she says, “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.” Lucille Ball, “I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than the things I haven’t done.”

And that’s when I say, I’m never ever sitting in a space or a room or trying to take it all up because I just want to take up the full room of space. Sometimes when I witness that people are uncomfortable, I overshare. I witness that, hey, there’s a lot of people in this room and they’re not trying to actively participate in conversation. They’re trying to actively participate by observation. I end up talking extra. I end up filling in gaps sometimes, but sometimes that is not always welcomed.

So, for my performers it is humongous that you understand, I need you to walk into your excellence. Stay in your palpable greatness, even if it becomes uncomfortable for somebody else, that trigger, that activation, that’s their work, absolutely 100% their work. When you think of any other energy, that powerful, assertive, ambitious, intelligent, dominant energy, we refer to that energy as that alpha female energy. Any of that energy is sometimes off-putting to so many people.

And would I advise you, “Hey, listen to me. I need you to go into a room and there’s a bunch of people in here that aren’t very confident. They aren’t very secure. They haven’t tried to live their dreams. And they’re staying in their place for fear of lack of options or fear of what if they get embarrassed. And so what I’m going to need you to do is I’m going to need you to adjust how you are as a human person. I need you to play small in this room of people who have decided that being small is what they want to focus on. Being small is something that is safer for them because they don’t want to run into their feelings.”

Would I ever advise any of my people, any of my performers, to do that? The answer is no. I will never tell my people that. I will never encourage that angle. I do not recommend it, especially if you are going to make a life in the industry. It is imperative that you step into what is hard, that you push yourself outside of the comfort zone, that you push yourself into that thrival instinct. Especially when you’re sitting in a room of people who are focused on primitive survival instincts.

There was a really cool article done in Psychology Today by Dr. Jim Taylor, I believe. I’m actually going to pull it up really quick. So, he did this really, really cool article talking about that thriving, thrival instinct or survival instinct, and why evolution prevents you from becoming your best self. On the limitations that we actually sit in, in society because of the concept of what evolution does in our primitive responses and what that actually looks like in today’s society and social settings.

So, I’m going to take a little kind of paragraph from here, he says that, “Evolution has provided us with set emotions that help us survive, whether that’s unpleasant emotions such as fear, frustration, anger or pleasant ones, including love, hope and surprise. Evolution has instilled in us another set of emotions that fuel our desire to thrive. Inspiration, excitement, pride, satisfaction, admiration, even curiosity and even boredom. These are the emotions we feel when we attempt to thrive in our lives, and they encourage us to continue to engage in thrival experiences.”

Now, thinking of those thrival experiences, I want you to think about what that is and what that looks like. As a performer, we try to focus on thriving. We try to focus on that stand out. So, I want you to know that only once humans were able to survive by meeting their basic needs, did the thrival instinct gain prominence.

Dr. Taylor says, “It is probably no surprise then, that in the last 50 years as life in the developed world has become more stable, safe and comfortable, in other words, simply surviving is no longer a significant concern for most of us. That thrival instinct has actually even been able to take precedence. As the thrival instinct has come to the fore for many of us, the desire to do more than merely survive has strengthened, and not surprisingly, the personal growth industry has naturally tapped into that growing need and flourished as we have sought ways to thrive.”

My beautiful performers, we are stepping into this place of actively thriving while observers sit by and judge, it is all part of it. In this world I advise you to focus on your focus, treat people with love, and be present in the moment. I got a really wonderful comment from a woman at a retreat and she said to me, “I can feel how genuine you are in your energy.” And I thought, that’s a very nice thing to say.

And I said, “I just make a point to be present in any room that I’m in. I make a point to understand the human parts of everyone. And I make a point to make sure that if I have any moment or opportunity provided to shed a light or share any type of encouragement with someone that I can see and I believe in, I want to tell them.” And so I want that for every single person that shows up for themselves, every single person that decides to say, “You know what? I have had criticisms. People give me a hard time. People feel uncomfortable in rooms that I’m in because they think my light is shining too bright.”

I want you to shine on, shine forward, be your big, bold, bright, brilliant, beautiful self, walk into all of it. And when I say walk into all of it, walk into the criticism just as easy as the praise, walk through. The only way out is through. Continue to focus on the work that you do. Continue to focus on yourself. Most importantly, take care of yourself and be well.

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Thank you for listening to today’s episode of The Confident Performer. If you want to learn more about living your truth and showing up as your most authentic, beautiful self, visit www.amyadamscoaching.com. See you next week!