GOOD COMMITMENTS are like endangered animals—there are many threats to their existence. You make a New Year’s resolution to work out every day and promise yourself it’ll happen. The next day you wake up bright and early, go to the gym, and feel great about your new responsible lifestyle. Look at you—you’re basically a fitness guru and will likely only eat kale from this point on. The next day you wake up early again and go to the gym, thus solidifying your future spot in the Olympics. The next day, however, you can’t seem to stop hitting the snooze button and sleep in, missing your only gym opportunity for the day. The morning after that, you wake up with a sore throat and stay in bed. Your commitment is on a battlefield, and sleep and sickness are charging toward it holding spears. Not far behind those threats are parties, laziness, Instagram, and Netflix. Your favorite TV show ending on a cliffhanger is added ammunition. What am I getting at? Committing to your decisions is extremely difficult work. And also, stop trying to make kale a thing!
Being a Bawse requires you not only to make great decisions that will help you achieve your goals but also to commit to those decisions regardless of the obstacles you will face. The two most common obstacles are usually fear and distraction. Let’s say you decide to start a daily blog. Fear will convince you that your writing isn’t good enough and, as a result, people will judge you harshly. Do you really want to fail and be made fun of? Distractions, such as parties, will convince you that your time would be better spent doing something other than working on your blog. After all, it’s an open bar and you’re cheap! What you need to remember is that when you make a commitment, there is no asterisk at the bottom stating that the decision is valid until obstacles are present. Your commitment isn’t a coupon with fine print.
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to shoot a collaboration video with Seth Rogen and James Franco as a promotion for their upcoming movie, The Interview. I was thrilled about the opportunity and flew to L.A. to make it happen, as I was living in Toronto at the time. I was determined to ace this collab, so I even flew out my videographer, Rick, just to ensure that everything went smoothly. We built an entire set, memorized our creative shot by shot, and rehearsed the workflow over and over again. This was because—plot twist—we had only forty-five minutes to shoot with the boys. The forty-five minutes included the time it would take them to walk into the building, meet us, and listen to our creative. Forty-five minutes to shoot a nine-minute skit is NOT a lot of time, especially when I need to play three different characters. Despite the enormousness of the task ahead of us, Rick and I committed to shooting the video in the allotted time and promised ourselves that nothing would get in the way of that. We were like your iPhone in the morning: charged up.
I’ll never forget when Seth and James walked into the room because it was one of the rare times in my life when I was so busy that I’d forgotten to be nervous ahead of time. I’d been so preoccupied preparing and rehearsing that I’d completely overlooked the fact that I would be starstruck. When they walked in, the feeling hit me like a brick wall and my stomach instantly tied itself into a knot. Say hello to obstacle number one: nerves. OMG, it’s Seth Rogen and James effing Franco!
I shook it off and began to confidently explain my creative to the boys as quickly as possible because I knew the clock was ticking. As I shared my jokes with them, I saw a bit of confusion on James’s face. Therein entered obstacle number two: fear. What if I’m not funny and they hate this? Am I in the wrong career? OMG, OMG! Am I ugly? I’m ugly, aren’t I? UGH, damn it. I’m Shrek.
Once again I shook it off and carried on at lightning speed. We were blowing through all our shoots as planned and I was feeling a burst of adrenaline. Things were going great until, midway through the shoot, the ten people on set began talking, louder and louder. I was in the center of the room trying to recite dialogue while in the background I could hear conversations and the sound of a camera clicking as the producers tried to capture behind-the-scenes footage. Cue obstacle number three: distractions. Aside from being distracting, all this commotion was also interfering with the sound quality of my video, and so I began to get stressed.
Guess what I did? I shook it off like a salt shaker and kept on cruising with determination. One part of the skit required me to kiss Seth Rogen while dressed as my mother, because why not. So without hesitation and with time restraints in mind, I leaned in and laid one on him, feeling proud of my confidence. Now, if you know anything about Seth, you know he openly enjoys participating in certain leisure activities that involve an altered state of mind, particularly ones that involve green leaves … rolled up … and lit on fire (yes, kids, I’m talking about spinach). After kissing Seth once, I felt a sensation I wasn’t familiar with. I had a strange taste in my mouth and a strong scent on my lips. We had to reshoot the scene three more times to capture different camera angles, and with each kiss I felt more and more strange. Welcome, obstacle number four: foreign substances. Wait, is that a pink unicorn? Eating a pizza? Under a rainbow?! WHEN DID I START FLOATING?!
Okay, I’m exaggerating. Aside from me, there were no unicorns in the room, but I swear I felt a little weird and light-headed! After an intense forty-five minutes, I’d shot my video, and the boys exited just as fast as they’d entered. I collapsed onto a sofa and instantly reflected on the shoot. I recognized that it had indeed been a challenging situation, but I was proud that I’d honored my commitment to get it done, regardless of the obstacles. I didn’t slow my pace down because of nerves, alter my jokes because of fear, forget my dialogue because of distractions, or stop kissing a man because he smelled like Snoop Dogg. As a reminder, before the shoot started, I’d said I was going to “shoot the video in forty-five minutes.” I didn’t say “I am going to shoot the video in forty-five minutes unless I get nervous or scared or distracted.” What kind of commitment would that be? A lame one. You shouldn’t make lame commitments. Leave that for the politicians.
You’ll never truly know if you can accomplish something or be great at something if you don’t commit. In other words, if you’ve ever tried 70 percent at something and failed, you didn’t give yourself a fair chance at success. You crippled yourself in your own race.
Now, at this point you should be yelling at the page, saying, “Hey, Shrek! That’s easier said than done! How do you control fear and nerves?” In response, I have two things to say: