Why Focusing On Becoming Successful Won’t Work | Carrie-Anne Moss EP 827

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11As an actress, often you're unemployed. So I remember feeling like if I needed to know that I was enough, regardless of whether I had a job or not. So I worked hard at that. Yeah. That was an ongoing. Because it might be a year or two we don't have something, right? It can be. I mean, if you were to look at, I have every journal I've ever written in since I was 10 years old. I have journals and journals and journals from that apartment on Melrose and Suites. saying, I am enough. I am enough. I deserve success. I worked through all of that really vigorously. I would wake up in the morning and do my morning pages from the artist's way, Julia Cameron's artist's way.

0:49And I would write and get it out. And I would apply that and go into an audition. And my mom was just saying the other day, what she was so impressed with when I was younger and auditioning a lot was that I was able to do it and let it go and move on. and I remember with an audition yeah like not carrying on to it I gotta get this role I always applied to auditions that if it was meant for me then I would get it that if I did the work if I did the preparation that if it was meant for me not like I gotta get it I never had that attitude it was if it was meant for me and if it was part of my journey and if someone else got it It was part of their journey.

1:29And I trusted that completely and totally. It's a great way of looking at it. How many times did I almost get a job and feel like I wanted it and it not happened? It's down to you in the last two, right? Something so much better happened. Matrix included. Really? If I had gotten other things that I thought, no, no, just things before that, that seemed great. I couldn't have imagined the Matrix being in my, I couldn't have seen that. But it was the right time. It was meant to be in that way. And it doesn't mean that you don't show up and do the work. Success is when opportunity meets preparation.

2:04That was one of my founding thing as an actress. My acting teacher drilled that into us. You don't just show up and think it's just going to, you have to be prepared. You've got to do your work. You've got to do your homework. You've got to be growing and looking at yourself. But I want to also do all of that and like have a good life. and not be living in insecurity and panic over all of the things I can't control. And now I look back and I don't even necessarily know, but I spent years doing that. And now I'm reaping. Not being aware of it, but you were. I was aware. I was in it. But now I don't even remember who that was that ever felt that way.

2:43I feel different things now. And sometimes they'll come up and I'll go, oh, yeah, I remember that. But really, I think awareness and consciousness and having that awakening, you almost don't recognize yourself. You become new. And you can become new in a moment by changing the way you think. So I'm doing that dance all day long. And I love it. I love life in that way. I think I turned 30 on the day I screen tested. I had quite a lengthy screen testing process. But on one of the main days, I turned 30. And we wrapped it on my 31st birthday, the first matrix. So it was that entry into 30. And I did feel that I felt a freedom in turning 30.

3:24And I remember, I laugh now because 30 seems so young, but I remember feeling like the whole world opened up to me, literally on my 30th birthday. And I felt so grateful that I got to do it another day. I remember my agent at the time saying that I may screen test and I screamed. And he said, well, don't get too excited. And I said, oh no, I'm going to get really excited. and I remember in that moment thinking he won't be my agent much longer. Wow. Because I didn't like that. Don't get too excited. He was a great guy and all of that, but I remember in the moment thinking, if I don't celebrate this, what the heck am I going to celebrate?

4:02Whether or not I get this or not. This is the closest, this is like the biggest audition I've ever had in my life that I'm actually possibly screen testing for a Warner Brothers movie. I really didn't think I would get it. But I trusted that if it was meant to be, that I would get it. And that's what I... And then when I finished the screen testing process, which was many days, I had to do a fighting audition. When that whole process was done of auditioning, because then I had to audition with Keanu, and I had to do the screen test and all that. Then I waited. They had like a week to tell me. And on the Friday that they were going to tell me, they asked for another week.

4:40And from what I understood, nobody wanted me except the directors. Really? No. and I just went about my life. And by the time I got the phone call the following Friday, I pretty much thought it probably wasn't going to happen. And my team told me that I got that. I can almost remember it like it was yesterday. I think I like fell to my knees and cried and got instantly sick. I instantly got sick, like got a sore throat. No, like I think I was holding so much that I didn't even know I was holding. Wow. Wow. And, you know, called my mom, called my best friends and was in it. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

5:21It's exciting. One of the things I've been thinking a lot about, you know, I create this content for what I'm teaching here online with the Fierce Girls Collective is I teach these different ideas. And I sort of thought about the summer this summer and I thought, OK, I've got next month's done and maybe I'll do the next couple of months. It's like, I'll just really get in there. But then I thought, no, I'm living my life and sharing the process. And so I actually can't apply that model of business to what I'm doing because it would put me into here. And what I'm really trying to share is simple ways to live your life from the inside out.

5:57And so I'm doing that in order to create it. So sometimes it's hard because I have to look at my vacation schedule and my children are going this and doing that and all of that. But I was thinking about this today about some of the women that are part of the collective that I have. And we have like a comment section and how sometimes that can be so distracting. I want to take the tools that I'm sharing and that I'm living and put them into my life, not stay in my head with them. Like go out and live them. Not just the idea of that. I remember always thinking like people would be teaching something, but they wouldn't necessarily, you knew they weren't living their life that way.

6:33And it never really, I didn't ever like that if I ever caught a glimpse of that. And yet somebody told me once that you don't have to be great at something to actually teach it. Some of the best acting teachers might not be the best actors. Some of the best relationship therapists might not be able to actually have great relationships. I mean, for me, I'm not doing this to be an idea of somebody. I really want to like reach my hand out and give women who may never have access to this kind of information because of where they live or their family structure, these simple tools to elevate their lives.

7:12because I'm so darn grateful that I was led to come to this city and that because of how difficult what I do for work is, that I had to dig so deep to have a rich, beautiful life because the alternative was not acceptable to me. The alternative of being competitive in the face of envy or all that kind of thinking or not feeling good about myself or beating myself up or being full of anxiety and stress and all that stuff, that's not an option for me. I think one of the big things, myth busters, and we all know this, but it's important to remember that nobody else has got it figured out. Nobody else has got a better life.

7:58Nobody else is just because they might have the nice house and the nice car and the perfect family. Don't judge your insides by other people's outsides. is what I've lived by my whole life. I remember being a kid, we lived in an apartment in a co-op in Granville Island. My mom and I, and I went to a school where everyone was very wealthy and I commuted there for the drama and the music. And I never felt like ashamed of like where I came from. Like I always felt super proud of my apartment and my friends lived in beautiful mansions, but I never felt less than because of that. So much of the world is built to make you feel less than if you don't have the things that you can buy, which is all, as we know, manipulating us through media to buy and want and want to be into that system that we all don't want to do anymore.

8:46And I don't want my kids to do it. And I don't want my kids to feel like they have to do it. And it's like waking up to your life, waking up to the truth of the life you have right in front of you. And how can you connect better to it and deeper to it and in a way that is nourishing?

9:13Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

10:03Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

10:18Thank you.