“Yeah sure…” When I tell my friends and family, “I’m starting a community and entertainment company that makes transmedia stories – stories that take place across comic books, podcast series, TV shows, and movies”, I’m pretty sure they are thinking, “Yeah sure”.
Of course, many of them are also hoping that I succeed and this is the story I should be telling myself. Of course, it takes time to become who we want to become, doesn’t it?
Invitation to audience to participate
As we continue on this journey together, I’d love to hear from you. What are the stories you are telling yourself and the stories you should be telling yourself?
New Intro/Recap last post – biggest takeaway
Depart
In the last post, we explored how I got over my fear and started developing my own stories – a calling I’ve had for what seems like forever. What are some fears that you have overcome and how did you overcome them? Feel free to share in the comments below or through any of our Lift Your World social media channels.
Now that I’ve overcome my fears and started developing transmedia stories and social impact experiences to go along with them, I’m excited to share what I’m learning from mentors. Of course, new fears come in once we get past old fears so I’ve got some stuff to share there as well. Hopefully, we as a community, can lift one another up and improve our worlds – our personal spheres of influence 🙂 Together we are building a community that makes it easier and more fun for others to develop and distribute their own great stories and/or do some social good!
In this post, we’ll explore some of the trials that many entrepreneurs face – especially those focusing on entertainment and/or social impact. And we’ll also explore the deep fears that we all face as we attempt to live up to our unwieldy callings.
Currently, I’m being called to develop a huge sci-fi storyworld that will contain three main storylines. Each of these three storylines will expand through a variety of media – primarily comic books, podcasts, TV shows, and movies.
Queue the good story, “Many people that hear this are hoping for my success.” Often, I think to myself that thousands of people set out to write comic books and TV shows that never get made. And then I remind myself, “I’ve been in the industry for a long time, I understand the risks, I understand how to create quality content, I understand the business side, and I have relationships with many people who I can collaborate with. So, I’ve got a lot going for me… But most of all, I’ve got grit. I know how long it takes to get stuff made and I’m 100% ready to be patient and continue making great content that supports what I’m doing while waiting for all the pieces to come together.”
That doesn’t mean my family and friends will stick with me while I am practicing the zen art of maintaining patience in the entertainment industry. My husband has already been through quite a lot living with me for the past 13 years. We are both artist types and that can be incredibly taxing on a relationship. Right now, he’s onboard with Lift Your World, so I am incredibly grateful for that 😊
Approach worst fear
My worst fear (which I experience multiple times a day) is that I’m doing all this and no one cares – that I never affect one person with my art and my efforts.
This doesn’t make tons of sense because I have dedicated my life to making Earth more like Heaven. To me that means helping people live more prosperous and fulfilling lives. With my strengths, skills, and relationships, it makes the most sense for me to create this better future by producing great content and experiences. However, demons get into my head and say “What if no one likes your shows? You’ll spend all this time, effort, and money for nothing.” On top of the mind-demons, I’ve had some rough setbacks.
I’ve already tried many paths that I thought were right and didn’t work out how I planned. When I was diagnosed with Lyme disease 3 years ago (after 3 years of struggling with my health and not knowing what was wrong) I adopted the motto “Keep moving forward”. Like Dora from Finding Nemo says in her sing-song voice, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming”, I keep myself going with powerful words.
By now, I’ve started recognizing some people in my community that like and share many of my posts. Each time this happens my heart leaps a little further into the joy of what’s happening – people are interested and engaged by my art and stories. When I focus on thoughts like this, it gives me grit. This word was made profound by Angela Duckworth’s definition and through her research. She defines grit as passion and perseverance. And her vast studies show that grit is the number one predictor of success.
So as we go on this journey together, I encourage you to get gritty with me 🙂
What projects are you excited about? Share what you’re up to below and I’ll do my best to reply and lift you up.
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Over the past two blog posts, transmedia has come up enough that I want to do a separate post on what that is and why I’m in love with it. There’s also a concept that I plan on talking about much more in future posts called entertainment-education. My next two posts will explain the concepts of transmedia entertainment and entertainment-education. I look forward to your thoughts, questions, and ideas till then 🙂
