Today is July 22 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you give another person the responsibility for your happiness?”
Actor Taraji P. Henson said “If you listen to people and if you allow people to project their fears onto you, you won’t live. You can’t give another human the responsibility for your happiness.”
People who navigate the chaos understand that they are responsible for their own happiness.
Henson graduated from Oxon Hill High School in Oxon Hill, Maryland, in 1988. She then attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University where she studied electrical engineering before transferring to Howard University to study drama.
To pay for college, she worked mornings as a secretary at The Pentagon and evenings as a singing-dancing waitress on a dinner-cruise ship, the Spirit of Washington.
With her one year old son in hand, she walked across the stage to receive her diploma at Howard University.
After college she set out for Hollywood and wondered if she’d made a mistake dragging her then 1-year-old far away from her family, her hometown, everything she knew and loved. In an interview Henson said “I remember when I said I was going to move out here [L.A.] and my son was like a year old at the time and I had no money. Fresh out of college with dreams and stars in my eyes. Some people thought I was crazy. My mom was like ‘You’re going to starve!’ But they are all really proud because I had a dream. In my opinion, if you’re not dreaming you’re not living.”
At 26, she found an agent and landed a number of TV roles, including ER and Felicity; then things turned around even more.
In 2001, she co-starred in director John Singleton’s Baby Boy, a drama addressing the absentee father epidemic, and in 2005, made a head-turning splash in Terrence Howard’s urban drama Hustle & Flow, which garnered her a Best Actress nomination from the Image Awards.
She also sang the film’s Oscar-winning song, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” performing it at the 2006 Academy Awards – just two weeks after her father lost a battle with cancer.
Henson realized that she was responsible for her happiness. Do you?