What I Learned From Reaching Out For 105 Days
This year has been difficult for many of us, myself included. I remember how excited I was for this year. I had all these dreams and plans. At the beginning of the year, I said that I was going to travel once a month (Ha ha ha).
You can dream and plan as much as you want, but as we all know, life has other plans sometimes. I remember being on a plane in the beginning of the year and wondering: “How bad can one year be?”
Really bad, past Ariel. Really, really, really bad.
One of my acting teachers, the wonderful Jen Waldman read a book called “Reach Out” by Molly Beck and chose it as a Book Club selection for a month in 2018. I bought the book and read it. My friend Carly Valancy, who is also a part of Jen’s acting studio read it and used the practice in Molly’s book. She reached out for 100 days. I went to the Reach Out Party at my acting studio, that Carly put together to celebrate her 100th Day of Reaching Out in 2019 and told us about her Reach Out journey. It was inspiring and I knew it was a practice I would like to take part in.
I had reached out to people occasionally telling them I liked their work as an artist and even got to meet a mentor of mine, a couple of summers ago, by commenting on his Instagram telling him I loved his work and I’d love to meet with him. It wasn’t a constient practice by any means.
Flash forward to 2020, where I lost my job and all the shows I was auditioning for got canceled for the foreseeable future. As a creative person, I’m used to not knowing what I’m doing, but this year, I felt completely at a loss. How do I pivot? What do I do? How can I control the things I can control? Are my dreams gone?
My friend Carly in March 2020 started her own company called Valence & Co, running the Reach Out Party. In July 2020, I signed up for the 3rd Cohort of the Reach Out Party, that Molly ran, alongside with Carly. Every 9:27am or 7:27pm, we got all together on Zoom and set out our RO’s together.
Throughout my 100 Days of Reaching Out, here’s some of the things that happened in my life:
I reconnected with my First Year Experience teacher from my 1st college that I attended that gifted me a Medium Membership (Thank you Jamie Cohen!)
I got featured on a musician’s blog about Website Design called AuditionCafe through a friend of a friend.
I reached out to Michael Buckley of What The Buck Show fame to tell him how much I loved his videos and he responded!
It is so easy to think that we have no control over our life, which to an extent is true. We all have friends of friends and distant relatives, who want to help us. How many times have you thought: “Oh, I should reach out to them, but I don’t want to be annoying or rude.” I also want to say that I wasn’t always emailing people to get something from them.
Sometimes, I wished people happy birthday and to tell them congrats on their new job. Social Media is super helpful for this! Even though, Social Media can be really frustrating, it is a great resource to see what people are up to and to figure out who to reach out to. If you’re wondering, no, not everyone answers your emails/Direct Messages and that’s ok. People get busy or they forget. All that matters is that you keep reaching out.
With the help of the Internet/snail mail, you never know how much you can change your life by sending an email, Facebook Message, Direct Message or LinkedIn message. Reaching Out might get you a new job, friend or mentor. It can help you grow your business or make a new collaboration. It could change your life. Reaching Out to me means taking control of my own life and if you are feeling lost in your life, then, Reaching Out might just be the practice you need!
