Today is March 13 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How long will you put off what you want to do?”
Actress Monica Barbaro put off what she wanted to do for years. She began her career as a ballet dancer, ultimately giving it up to pursue acting.
She is known for portraying the character of Yael on the second season of the critically acclaimed Lifetime television series Unreal. Following her work on Unreal, she joined the cast as a lead of the new NBC legal drama Chicago Justice which joins Dick Wolf's Chicago franchise.
According to Barbaro “I had always wanted to act. I did do ballet seriously and considered being professional and all of that, and I went to Tisch and got a dance degree. I guess you could compare it to being with someone and you know it's not quite right. You love them but not enough, and you can't stop thinking about doing other things with your life. That's kind of how I was with ballet … When I went to NYU, I took as many electives as I could in acting … Once I got out [of school] I was like, ‘OK, this is my time.’ I had that realization, I can't not do this any longer.”
Author Zig Ziglar wrote “If you don’t like who you are and where you are, don't worry about it because you're not stuck either with who you are or where you are. You can grow. You can change. You can be more than you are.”
Harry Philibosian knows this better than most. Without any formal training Harry Philibosian of Philadelphia began acting professionally in local theaters at age 57. After owning a dry-cleaning store for 37 years he signed up to perform in a fund-raising theater production one night.
He was hooked. His wife Harriet said “He came off the stage after that performance and just said, ‘You can’t imagine the feeling you get when you hear the orchestra playing.’” He closed his store and acted for the next two decades acted and would eventually won awards for his performances.
Barbaro spent years being a ballet dancer only to quit and become more than who she was when she decided to pursue acting. Philibosian went from owning a dry cleaning business to acting at 57 years of age.
How long will you put off what you want to do? Do you fully understand that ‘you can be more than you are?’