Crush the Limiting Beliefs
One limiting belief that she struggled with was fear of failure. “I never grew up thinking of failure as a good thing,” she says. “I’ve realized through my podcast and my personal development work, that this came from my dad always wanting me to be the best. I was a star athlete when I was younger and I had to be the best on the team, always.”
While her father never blatantly said I won’t love you if you’re not the best, she felt “if I failed or if I struck out then I was the worst and I wasn’t good enough.”
Stephanie realizes she also wasn’t taking chances. “You have to fail in order to
get to where you want to go. And I wasn’t doing that because I was worried that I wasn’t enough if I did fail.”
She also struggled with insecurity about herself. Stephanie had difficulty in acting class because she was afraid to have other people watch her. “I was afraid to look bad. That was such a deep-seated fear of mine. I was networking, but it was very half-assed. Basically, I showed up, even though I was fearful.”
Although Stephanie didn’t put in a 100 percent effort, just the act of showing up was significant. “Part of the reason why my podcast is called Show Up to Go Up is because even if you show up at a half version of yourself, it’s still going to get you further than not showing up at all.”
Just Show Up
It wasn’t until she started taking risks and giving her all on auditions that she started booking parts. She has since learned that the right way to approach acting is to be true to herself. “Because you have something that’s special and what you bring to a character and a role is what is really going to set it apart and make you shine,” she explains.
Even if you don’t know how you’re going to do something, showing up and having the courage to do it, and trusting that you’ll figure it out and gain confidence as you go, is a big accomplishment, she says. “When I moved to LA, I didn’t know anybody. I only knew my friend, but you know, she knew a couple people and then we knew some people that knew some people. And so eventually we were able to create our own little network in LA as well.”
When Stephanie arrived in LA, she also found she kept comparing herself to others. “I would look at someone and I would just immediately be like, that person has that advantage. They’re so much more talented. They’re better than me with every single thing. I was already setting myself up for failure in that way.”
A great way to approach that issue, she says, is to pretend you have blinders on. “Be like a horse, a Budweiser horse, just look forward and do me.”
Invest in Yourself
Stephanie says she wouldn’t be where she is today if she didn’t continually invest in herself. “If you do invest in yourself, just imagine where you’ll go,” she muses. “I like having coaches that can help guide you and that believe in you, especially in the beginning. These coaches and mentors that I had, I borrowed my belief in myself from them. The first time that I ever heard ‘I am enough,’ it came from one of my mentors.”
When starting out on a career path, Stephanie says
having a mentor, who is on your side and knows the path, is incredibly helpful because they can guide you and believe in you.
For anyone who is struggling with any sort of doubts, Stephanie says it’s important to know that your voice matters. “Yes, there might be things that you want to do that are already out in the world, but they haven’t been done by you.”
“You have a unique perspective that only you can share with the world,” Stephanie says. “I want to encourage you to just go for it, knowing that it’ll get easier as you do it. When you challenge yourself, you grow, you gain confidence. It just starts with taking that first little bit of action.”
Be Unstoppable!
– Tori
