And the real reason you might feel like past you was WAY more courageous and resourceful than you are today.
One of the gifts of working closely with clients for as many years as I have is that you start to notice patterns. Things that when one or two people struggle with them, may seem to be related to their own personal challenges, but when person after person struggles with the same thing, you take note.
Often these patterns emerge slowly over time, but every once in a while, I'm hit with a full-blown "ah ha" moment. Which is exactly what happened this morning.
You're probably familiar with the term "Beginner's Luck" at this point. In case you're not, here's the official definition...
When I launched my YouTube channel on January 1st, 2018, I did so under the Channel name "Beginner's Luck". The content was designed for aspiring actors and performers and the name was in part inspired by the fact that I landed my first "main stage" professional musical theatre gig supposedly out of the blue, in a way that may have made it look like beginner's luck. (I know there were more than a few people in my vicinity who wrote it off as just that! 😐)
And while it was certainly more than just luck that led me to land that role, there was a lot about the journey to that point that felt almost effortless.
My preparation for the first audition involved…
- Blasting the soundtrack to Dreamgirls the Musical in the car any time I needed to drive anywhere.
- Choosing 2 of my favourite songs to audition with and belting them each day, also mostly in the car.
- Selecting my current favourite outfit from my wardrobe and deciding that would be my audition outfit.
- Doing my hair, makeup and (cringe) spray tan exactly the way I would for any other special occasion, not once questioning whether it was "appropriate" for the audition.
Despite insane amounts of nerves on the day of my first audition and a painfully screechy first attempt at my song, I sailed through 7 months of auditions to get the offer (one of 4 females to receive one of the 800 or so that auditioned!)
Fast forward 15 or so years to today and there's something I've been noticing with a lot of the clients I've been working with recently: So many of them achieved something pretty major and "against the odds" in their adult lives.
For instance, building creative businesses really quickly that allowed them to quit the day jobs that were making them miserable. Doing major career pivots and quickly finding themselves in leadership roles despite being far less experienced than the people they're leading. And a list of other things that would blow their younger selves minds.
I actually made another leap myself when I decided to leave what I'd thought was my dream career in the performing arts and decided to become a freelance copywriter.
One second I was a total noob working at an ad agency getting paid 45k AUD a year, 2 years later I had my first 6 figure year with 90% of that revenue coming from copywriting and the rest from some acting gigs. I was free! (Or so I thought...)
The term beginner's luck was created because there often seems to be some sort of force that jumps in to help when someone first embarks on something new. Some call it luck, others, divine guidance, magnetism, etc etc.
Now this is all well and good, but this pattern spotting thing I mentioned has led me to question whether that's the whole story. Because, at least for me and my clients, the journey doesn't end there.
I mean, think back to your own accomplishments. Was there ever a time when the thing you worked so long and hard for finally became a reality, and for awhile, felt amazing... but eventually became something you outgrew?
Where you found yourself standing at the top of one mountain peak (something that used to feel as tall as Everest), take a breath, and as you take in the sights, notice a much larger peak in the distance that seems to be calling to you…?
It's this next journey that I've noticed becomes far more interesting than the previous. Because this one seems to be free of beginner's luck.
In fact, it somehow seems more treacherous and impossible than anything you've attempted before, despite the evidence you now have as to your ability to climb a mountain.
But is it really that you've run out of beginner's luck… or is there something more sinister at play?
That first professional musical theatre gig I landed was also the very first time I'd auditioned for a professional musical.
I was as green as it gets. No idea what lay ahead of me. No idea what - or who - I was up against. And I stayed that way until the final round of auditions and met the finalists.
But by then, it didn't matter that I was surrounded by my "competition".
I'd spent 7 months visualising the finish line.
I literally ran on the treadmill every day listening to "Who Loves You?" (the finale of the musical) and got goosebumps as I saw myself performing that number on stage.
As far as I was concerned, I was going to get in. I'd decided this was my show. I saw no other reality for myself.
Fast forward 18 months to when I was auditioning for my next show.
I decided that I had to get into this one. Not because it was "my" show like the previous one... but because it felt like a matter of life or death that I get in.
I'd handed in my notice to the current show and was going to be jobless if I didn't get in.
But in the preparation for these auditions, instead of just visualising a successful outcome, you know what I did?
I watched the bootleg of the Broadway show over and over, trying to figure out what the casting team would be looking for.
I spoke to cast-mates who were also auditioning and let it shake my confidence when they'd say things like, "Oh, I thought you'd be auditioning for X role, not Y role......." 🙄 Oh, past Kat, you easy target, you…
I spent hundreds of dollars on an audition outfit (complete with the exact shoes the character wore) that had to be JUST so.
I died my hair so I'd look more like the role I was desperate to land (something I did as a teenager when in amateur theatre which didn't work then either).
Now, I got into the show by a hair but did NOT get the role I was hoping for. Or any role, other than understudy. And I turned what could have been a fun audition experience into the Hunger Games.
Smash cut to the next auditions for another show I decided I not only needed to get into, but also needed to get the lead role in.
My preparation looked similar to the last set of auditions… only even more obsessive.
This musical happened to have had an MTV reality show made about it, documenting the journey of bunch of girls all fighting to replace the Broadway lead. So I of course watched it twice through and started trying to engineer my audition strategy from my appearance to my audition material.
Despite having spent a small fortune getting professional help to prepare my songs, this time my nerves were off the charts.
I looked the part. I sang... ok. But it was the conversation with the casting director afterwards (the same one who cast me in the previous 2 shows) that shattered my reality.
Her: "I'm just wondering what happened to that girl we discovered in Brisbane those years ago... all that raw, sparkly energy. We're not seeing it in there."
Me: Basically speechless, immediately feeling defensive because in my head I was like "That girl was a hot mess and I've been working to improve her!!"
Now, at this point you might be wondering where the hell I'm going with all of this and what it has to do with beginner's luck. Don't worry, we're getting there now. Starting with realisation 1.
Is it possible that what I thought was beginner's luck was actually something else completely?
I'd spun a whole story in my head about how lucky I was to get into my first show, but what that casting director revealed to me is that I was chosen VERY intentionally for that show. Because I walked into that room and blew their socks off, showing them exactly what they were looking for.
Wrapped up with all of those nerves and the neon sign above my head that said "I'm so green!" was pure, unfiltered magnetism. I walked in that day as nothing but myself, because I didn't know there was any other option.
And in every audition that followed, I worked my butt off to try and polish all of that raw, noobie awkwardness out of me... in the process, shoving down what made me unique and magnetic.
HYPOTHESIS #1
What if beginner's luck is actually the absence of over-thinking, over-filtering and being overly self-conscious, therefore giving us more access to our true power?
But I also mentioned all of the clients I've been observing lately.
...At this point should also admit that I'm someone else I've been observing. Because I'm currently in the process of climbing a new peak (probably peak #4 at this point) and wondering why it's never felt more difficult to make progress.
We're all people who have achieved things that would blow our younger selves away. Back when we were scaling those earlier mountains, we seemed to have unlimited access to courage and determination, able to ignore the haters and stay on our path.
And now we're trying to do something new, it feels like we've regressed. We're scared. We're second guessing ourselves. We're delaying action.
So what gives? What changed?
Well for a start, we have. As humans, we’re always changing, obviously. But every time we climb to a new peak, we have to become someone new in the process. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the experience of climbing the next one is different.
That said, there are some really specific things that tend to happen to us in the process of “becoming new”. For instance...
1) Every time we achieve something meaningful, we in turn, have more to lose.
Often in getting to that peak, we develop and acquire things we didn't have before. Recognition and a reputation. Financial success and material belongings. A clearer sense of identity.
And while it's usually* completely untrue, our fear-based minds would have us believe that by embarking on our next quest, we stand to potentially lose all of that.
*Usually because sure, there's generally some risk involved in whatever we do, but we can approach that journey in whatever way we want, mitigating much of the risk. But what we know from psychology is that our egos feel most comfortable in the familiar, regardless of whether it makes us happy or not, because familiar (from our ego’s perspective) = safe.
So those stories spinning around our head about how this next quest is highly dangerous and could lead to blowing up our lives in the process? They're all just so you don't mess with what currently exists.
2) The longer we're on this planet, the more exposure we have to toxic messaging designed to manipulate us.
This is what I hypothesise is the strongest source of what keeps us stuck/safe and not throwing ourselves into our next quest.
We are surrounded by and drowning in messaging spurted from "experts" who all have a vested interest in getting us to believe that we don't have what it takes to get from A to B. Vested because they have something to sell us that will supposedly help.
Open up your Instagram feed, your podcast app, YouTube and you're immediately hit with obvious and (more dangerously) not so obvious attempts to brainwash you into thinking that taking the next step without external support is dangerous. Life-threateningly so.
This is exactly what happened to me following my big leap into freelance copywriting.
I had zero clue what I was doing when I quit my job in an ad agency and committed to full-time self-employment. Yet I found myself booked out as a copywriter within 12 months of taking the leap.
A few years later as I was feeling called towards online course creation, however, I wasn't so prepared to dive in the deep end.
I decided that my first attempt at an online course wasn't good enough and that I needed professional help, so I signed up for Amy Porterfield's Digital Course Academy for $1300 USD (ish)—the most I'd ever invested in anything like this and money I didn't have. The multi-month payment plan nearly wiped me out.
But I followed her every word, launched my course and... it flopped.
What followed was NOT a comeback story about how I figured out for myself what needed to change. Nope. Instead, I spent the next 4 years going from one course to another, always convinced that I was missing something essential and wasn't capable of exceeding on my own.
And yet, look at my experience in musical theatre. The more I tried to equip myself with all the things I was "missing", the less interesting I became to casting. Which brings us to...
HYPOTHESIS #2
What if in our quest to become less "beginner like", we're giving most of our power away to external sources and therefore losing access to our inner compass, wisdom and natural magnetism—aka what beginner's luck actually was all along?
So if this is the case, how do we reclaim that power & in turn, "beginner's luck" after we've given it away?
This is where things get a little challenging. Because while we might think that going "back" to being our old selves is the solution, it's not an option. There is no going back, only forward.
But the good news is, going back isn't required. It's not even what's best. Because you are who you are today for a reason.
You might have temporarily lost access to that power, that self-belief, those traits that "got you here", but they're still in you and that's not all. You've also acquired a crap ton (yes, a technical term) of wisdom, skills, tools and more along the way.
In other words, if we can sort the lies from the truth, the you you are today is infinitely more powerful and magnetic than past you. You are an up-levelled version of yourself. You just need to connect with that self to realise it.
…And since this musing is already twice as long as I'd thought it would be when I sat down to write it, it seems like a part 2 is in order so we have the time and space to dive into the "how" properly.
For now know that even in the process of simply reading this, you've begun.
Because your subconscious is far more powerful that you realise and your spirit desperately wants you to reclaim that power. So they'll be working together to raise your awareness of your patterns and stuckness in coming days and weeks.
…And in the meantime I'll get to work on part 2 with some practical steps you'll be able to take to help them along. Sound ok? Great. >.<
Here's to reclaiming all of you. Because (IMO) every single cell in your body was placed there by design and I dunno about you, but I'm sick of letting so much of what's in me—of who I am—go to waste.
–Kat x
PS This exploration continues with part 2 here! ⤵️
Kat Elizabeth