Coffee breaks turned into projects. part 2

Because we both love coffee, but also because our conversations are (usually) enriching, I was always very tempted to find time when my colleague Eleonora would ask: “When do you have a break today?”.

These breaks inspired the idea to put our interests and skills together, because we discovered that they complete each other in many ways, and when we combined our views and processes of working with people, it opened up a very interesting approach to creating a community for passionate and ambitious women.

This is the story of how we got there!

***Part 2***

When Karen met Eleonora and had some questions…

Eleonora:

“I believe that being successful doesn’t have to be hard. And that’s crazy coming from someone in the entertainment industry. We don’t necessarily have to suffer to be successful. But this is not what we have been told, especially as women, since we are very young, that’s is going to be hard, that one in a million makes it, that we are going to have to work double the time of our fellow male colleagues.

And that’s kind of a problem because all those things, become part of our believe system, they shape us and make us who we are. We are who we are because of genetics and environment. Our experiences shape us...and this is great news!

And… we have the power to choose those experiences, get rid of those limiting beliefs and therefore become the people that we want to be.“

Karen:

“That is indeed the great news everyone should know! What have been some of your experiences?”

Eleonora:

“Since very young I have struggled with self-love. I was always very hard on myself, so much so that I got myself an eating disorder. Over the years things got so much better, but that voice in my head would keep going and going: “You’re not good enough, you’re not talented enough, you’re not thin enough”.

There is an exercise that is done during the Strasberg training. This is a kind of acting training mostly known as method acting, and there are so many misconceptions around it.

‘The private moment’ is this exercise that I am talking about. It is really simple: you need to choose an activity to do on stage, that you would immediately stop if someone would enter the room and see you. And you have to keep doing this activity over and over again, until this action becomes someone else.

It took me a long time to get it, but finally I found an activity that was very close to my need of love and acceptance. And I started doing this activity over and over again, until finally I was alone, in my childhood room in Italy, my classmates where not there anymore, I was with myself and I had this revelation: nobody can give me that love that I need, unless I give it to myself!

And I walked out of that acting studio that day knowing myself a little more, loving myself a little bit more.”

Karen:

“That’s amazing! What other things would you say acting or acting classes have taught you?”

Eleonora:

“I love acting, it is my calling, that is what I have always done. Acting helped me heal my traumas, it kept the child in me alive, it taught me again and again to experience the world with curiosity, focusing on the other person, to fall in love with what is different from me, to jump.

Acting is fundamentally playing, and that is why I think that some acting training would do good to anyone. Acting makes you take life less seriously, and all of a sudden, doing whatever you’re doing isn’t that hard anymore, isn’t a burden, or a suffering… It’s actually good fun!

Acting isn’t therapy, but it will make you face your fears, and will force you to laugh about them. Acting will make you so resilient that every rejection will make you push even more. With joy, always with joy!

Acting will make you able to kill your babies.”

Karen:

“Excuse me?!”

Eleonora:

“Kill your babies!

You may have worked for a long time on a project, a pitch, that suddenly gets killed, or simply doesn’t work anymore. You’ll be ok with scrapping it and starting again, because there’s nothing more exciting than a blank page, and once your will finally set your creative potential free, nothing will be able to contain it again.

I am proud of what I do, and I am excited to pass on what I have learned in all these years of training and working in this crazy industry. And I am excited because there is still so much to explore and to learn.”

Karen:

“Oh I see! And what kind of tools would you say a non-actor can take away from an acting class?”

Eleonora:

“ Well, it will give you the

PHYSICAL

and

VOCAL

tools to enter a room and fill it up with you amazing energy.

People will look at you and will listen to you and they won’t even know why they are so drawn to you. You will be seen and heard, you will learn how to breathe correctly and support your voice, so that you can present your ideas in their full potential.

You will learn how to ground your body, open your posture and relax, so that you are available to receive positive suggestions and to react to what is going on around you, without overthinking, without little nasty voices in your head.

Acting will make you tune into your guts, and you’ll learn to follow them right through!”

Karen:

“Can you teach me to tune into my guts now? Or do you want another coffee first?”