Yara Shahidi
Appearances
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So many times, people would assume that I'm just an upbeat person. I think, for the most part, a smiley individual. But I think the anxiety and overwhelm are overshadowing the excitement of what's next. I think it's also kind of aligned with a lot of self-work of prioritizing what it means to take care of myself. I put my own needs behind everything else, even when it's not being asked of me.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So much of my path has truly been defined by honoring that random thought, honoring that feeling. I think going to school, I talked about it in that TED Talk, but going to school for me
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. Yeah, I think the podcast truly came from conversations we're having. So, I mean, the thing is, what's nice is if you know me, you know that me and mommy are very similar people, which is why our friendship but also our business relationship works. And so many times people know. I'll say Carrie Shahidi because she... So many times people... would assume that I'm just an upbeat person.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
was honoring a distraction, especially within the scope of the industry and the idea that it's really unheard of to take that amount of time out of your career to go focus on a degree that you don't need for your career, because I didn't go to study acting. I think it was... what allowed me to enjoy acting again, too, because I needed that balance. I'd always loved what we do.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But again, going from a world where it was very strategic that we lived full lives and then we'd go act now and then to suddenly being a life where it's like, oh, this is what we do for eight months. And then those couple months down are about promoting the thing that you did. There's no downtime. And then you go back into it.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, school was that necessary balance and counterpoint of here's a world where... Almost to an extreme, no one cares about what you're doing in the world. Every counselor I had was like, I really could care less about you being on television.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, the amount of people that even told me, come back later when you're not working. And I was like, hey... Six-year contract, friends, that's not happening anytime soon. It's now or never for me. But, yeah, I was in an environment where they prioritized who I was as a student.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think acting meant that school also had a balancing point because I think it's very easy to be in a cute little liberal arts environment with your books and feel like you solved the world. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. So it was also nice to have a business side to what I was doing to be like, oh, but I also get to go make things in the world. I go think about things in the world. I go make things in the world. And it was nice after being in a space of just making things in the world to go think about things.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think it's why alignment has been the word of the hour. Because even how we selected my team. So when me... And mommy and my prior manager walked in to take all of the big meetings with, you have WME, UTA, CAA, other talent agencies. I was 16 and I already knew I wanted to go to school. I'd been talking about it forever, but I knew I wanted to go to college.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, I knew I wanted to go to college because even my high school career, we chose a program that wasn't even meant for actors so that I could maintain my full AP schedule, even though I was distance learning. And so when we took those meetings, I was very clear about, hey, I plan on going to school in the next year, year and a half.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It was so telling. It was so telling because many people had the general reaction of like, oh, yeah, we had an actor trying to go to school and I sent him all the scripts that he was missing out on and he dropped out in the semester. And for me, CAA and particularly the team that I have, they were the first ones in the room immediately to be excited about it. To really want that for me.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And it's even funny to be out of school now and to think about certain team members who I love that waited patiently, as I said, no to pretty much everything. Because I was like, I'm going to complete my obligation and my commitment to seeing through Grown-ish as an actor and as a producer. But other than that, I wasn't taking on anything new.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so that was made possible because I think by the time it was released, time to go to school and make that decision, I was surrounded by people that understood and surrounded by people that were excited. But I think it did take a lot of weeding out early on of, yeah, those conversations of people that are like, yeah, why school? I mean, having
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
a career, honestly, was the most kind of privileged way to get into college because I was able to think about where my curiosities were.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I had so many friends because, like you're saying, because of the expense of it, because so many times, especially as like black and brown students, you're dealing with the reality like this may not even translate to a job offer, this Ivy League degree of mine. And so many friends have to prioritize what makes the best job offer, what makes the best resume.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Whereas coming from a place where I was like, I have my career, I was able to take, oh, I'm taking a hip hop class. I'm taking a healthcare and morality class. I'm taking this random theory class. And ultimately all of it contributed to my own growth in ways I wouldn't even be able to name when I was choosing the classes.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think for the most part, day to day, smiley individual. But I think so many of the conversations we were having, particularly while I was in school, was just hitting that kind of mental block of one, having a deep anxiety about what growing up looks like and feeling like what's happening when the anxiety and overwhelm are overshadowing the excitement of what's next.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I think those classes wouldn't have even been on my radar if I went in the traditional sense and said, all right, I got to make something of myself using this degree. Interesting. It gave me another level of freedom. And being like, what? What am I interested in?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. I think fear of failure, feeler of, hmm.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think, yeah. I think that's what makes the creative industry something that I'm always kind of... Personally having to figure out how I want to engage and how do I move with confidence? Because part of why I liked school so much is that I got direct feedback every day that I was doing well. Like it's kind of a perfectionist dream.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You know, being like in an industry where it's even above you how many no's you deal with, how imperfect it is. I get grades. I get clear feedback on what I could do better next time.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Cause and effect. I put the time in. I got a great grade. I put the time in for my thesis. Summa, summa. Great. Cute. And so I think creativity presents self-doubt for me because it's so informal in how I even self-assess. What does doing well look like?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Mm-hmm.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so many times doing well can be attached to, again, results of being like, oh, I have a show on air. Oh, I made this happen. I'm promoting this project. And for me, prompted by, you know, even my own health journey, prompted by maybe the collision of graduating, finishing the show, all these things happening at the same time, I think I've now intentionally –
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
been prioritizing what are experiences that I know I'm not going to be great at and how do I move through it? Because it's even random stuff. I was on the American Bake Off, the American version of the British Bake Off. Was it fun? It was so fun. That's cool. I love watching the show. And even though I'm only really a sous chef in the kitchen, I was like, yeah, I'll do it.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But truly my first priority was like, don't get upset at the fact that you don't bake professionally and you're not about to come off as a professional baker.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
No, because I think for me, I definitely maybe it's just being public facing. I don't necessarily know where I got it from, but I definitely have a sense of like I do things that I know I'm good at. But it was limiting in the sense that if I'm not good at it, I just am like.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Leaning into it. Because we had even done... We had created a show. It was called Yara's Day Off. And it was on Meta. And it was where I would go with guests to do their activity, their hobby. And boy, oh, boy, was that like an immersive...
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
therapeutic experience that I don't even know if I took away the biggest lessons from until like a year later because it was me making a fool of myself for 12 weeks, which I had never done, of being like... I remember one time I had a guest, Alton, and he's an incredible gymnast. I cannot do a handstand. More than that, I have no desire to do a handstand. I'm a black belt in karate.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
There are things that I like to do that I'm good at, but I say to the team, I'm like, hey, guys... I can't cartwheel. Don't want to cartwheel. I'm down to try other things out, but just FYI. They call action. They're like, yeah, we're going to teach you how to cartwheel. Wow.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I tell you, I went into the bathroom and shed a single tear because it was just such an embarrassing experience for me of being like, oh, I'm doing something. By the end of the learning session, I still couldn't cartwheel.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Mm-hmm.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think for me, that idea of not having that linear progress was really frustrating to deal with, of being like, yeah, I know you have to grow in things, but as long as I see myself growing, I'm good. It's those moments where the growth is so granular and so small that I've had to continue to move through to be like, no, you've got to wait it out.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And also simultaneously in school, reading all of these theorists and people, I was in this year-long course for my major in which you have to read everyone from like Hobbes to Marx and every social theorist in between.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You may not know how to cartwheel four times doing this. You may not know for the whole year. I still don't know. But my friends have signed me up to teach me next week.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I mean, again, a question I ask myself. I think some of it is the public-facing pressure of... knowing the stakes of failure at times, knowing we don't, I think especially the time that Black-ish came on air, you know, we're still one of the only, we were one of the only Black families on broadcast. And so it also meant you're kind of a part of this small group of
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
peep of actors that have this opportunity to be on prime time television every week for the whole world to see. And I think it just created this sense of responsibility of being like, oh, I want to be as responsible as possible. And I think, however my brain worked, I moved being responsible to being, again, as correct as possible, moving as properly as possible.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And still couldn't tell you where I got it from because not how I was raised. I was raised under like, yeah, you make mistakes, you figure it out. That's part of life. Like you can fail in as long as you feel like you learned something, even just spiritually worth it.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So I don't know.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, I don't know exactly where it came from, but I could tell you I also doubled down because people didn't believe that I was as, let's say,
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
perfect or put together as i as i presented and i think that made me double down because i also didn't like dealing with the doubt of being more perfect or to yeah i'm just i i think there is a sense of perfectionism i deal with but there's also like i kind of landed on the planet this way of being like yeah i just was never a really drinker because i just never really had the desire to it wasn't from some like i can't drink because i've never been drunk in my life right
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I mean, I know I just started drinking, but I'm like, same, because I'm just like, either it has to taste phenomenal, which most times it doesn't. And I think being introduced to drinking on a college campus where I'm like, the warm beer or warm orange juice, not appealing. And I think to me, I was like, yeah, never done drugs, never desired to.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Some dark stuff. But more than the dark content in their books, it was like you all live dark lives. The amount of people that wrote a book and then became recluses or ended up separating from family, I think it meant top of mind success. for me was, oh, if this is something that I want to continue to study, what does that mean for me to prioritize quality of life?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It was never even a decision of, oh, I can't because that would look like this or that. Never desired to. It's just kind of your makeup, yeah. Yeah, some of my makeup. And so I think a lot of times I felt as though people were challenging my makeup as though I was moving super strategically when it wasn't that.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Of course, I definitely had a fear of failure, but I think the core tenets of who I am and how I move through the world came from authentically just how I landed here. And I think some of that, some of the attention I got for moving the way I did made me feel more...
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
what is the word made me feel like people were waiting for me to slip up really because it was always so voiced it was voiced to me so constantly the more I did that feeling of being like oh but you know you can be just a regular kid like I don't know why you think you need to do all this I'm doing this because I want to do it like I would not have been able to go through four years of school if I didn't want to be there no one could have convinced me into that flying back and forth no
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
No one could have convinced me into doing, like, a voting initiative unless I wanted to do that. And so I think the mistrust people had that it was coming from just truly who I am, and I have a team of people that were honoring who I am. It wasn't coming from external voices of, like, you know who would look great. Right. But I think it made me skeptical.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Like, are people waiting for me to slip up? Are they waiting for me to be... I don't know, something that I'm not. And I think that definitely made me aware, more aware of how I came off in the world because before I never questioned it. Really? Until I got the comments, I never questioned like why I was making certain decisions because it was just kind of second nature.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, it's who I am. And so I think that's something that I had to move through where the strategic thinking didn't come in until after I had heard, oh, people are kind of waiting for me to slip up for whatever reason.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Well, I think, honestly, the fear moving forward has been... Has been not living authentically. I think I spent – luckily, I don't think I was in that headspace for too long. But I think, again, feeling like, okay, people are waiting for me to slip up. Okay, I need to be on my P's and Q's. Also just having an immense responsibility of being like I'm on a show.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Right.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
that needs me to be on my A game. It doesn't matter if I didn't sleep. It doesn't matter if I have to catch a flight. I'm at a school that needs me to be on my A game. It doesn't matter if I was working. I can't write at the end of the paper, sorry, I was on set. So this is why this is like this. I was writing my thesis.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And in that week, right before leading up to my thesis, we were in Paris, Dubai, LA for work. And then I landed and I had 48 hours to turn in my thesis in person. And again, an abundance of opportunities and things I'm grateful for.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I think after graduating and after, again, kind of my general health journey and what that spurred for me mentally, I think it's been the fear now has been not learning from all that. You don't feel like you've learned from it. I think I have.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm saying that the fear to me would be if I don't continue to take it as seriously, if I slip up from all the learnings that I've had in the last year, two years. And I've made such great leeway, I feel like, in being able to show up as myself, show up authentically. And so I think as I figure out what that next phase of life looks like, what that next phase of career looks like, I think...
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I was that annoying person in all of our discussion classes, like, but were they happy? But were they happy? And what does it mean if they weren't? And why are we taking this so seriously if they weren't happy?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I don't know whether it's a fear, a want, a wish. I think my wish is to maintain and hold on to with a fierceness this feeling of authenticity that's been curated.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You know, I think it was a great therapy session that I was in where she asked the question, how do you feel about people? And I think as simple as that was, it changed the game for me because I was so curious about what people thought of me. And it wasn't even about – I was able to opt out of what people thought of me publicly pretty quickly.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And by just opting out, we realized, like, being on Twitter is not mandatory. Like, you may feel like it's mandatory. It isn't. Getting off of Twitter, great feeling for the spirit. Getting off of TikTok, not looking myself up.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
All those things were, I think, adjustments and things that I was able to learn in real time and get support to be like, all right, this is how I'm going to navigate the fact that I'm a public person. You need all these social media things for your job. But you don't have to engage in this way of being super accessible all the time and always looking at what people are saying.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So luckily, that was a lesson that I think I learned in real time and was able to learn from. But in terms of like just interpersonal relationships, I think it's the nature of just my job is when you're in an audition room, half of it is acting well, but also being liked. And so I think it made me aware of what people thought of me.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I'd like to think it didn't take up too much of my brain space, but particularly if I was at events, I'm like, I'm so preoccupied with how am I coming off right now?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Or even that feeling of, it sounds so silly. It's a good problem to have, but here I am coming in with my little Harvard degree. And again, seeming so put together that I'm putting an extra effort to seem super chill. I'm super laid back. Like, I know you know me as the kid that multitasked Harvard in the show, but-
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It's a good question. Today, yeah. Today, yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
i'm relaxed i'm relaxed the thing is i am relaxed but i was doing this other like layer of performing because i knew that people saw me as this like type a getting things done person or even if i'm at events and not drinking then there's a lot of questions because if you don't say oh it's because i'm sober i have this weird hard and fast rule unfortunately you still get a lot of questions like why is that it never stops
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Right. So now my issue is I'm like, I drink Coca-Cola at events just to have something in my hand, but now I'm drinking so much soda that I never intended to drink. Just drink water.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I know, but I'm saying for some reason within this age demographic, getting water is even more like, wow, you think you're all that. You're drinking water.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Precisely.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think that's truly the work. I think I knew immediately, okay, this is something to sort through because my journey is not drinking this much soda to make people happy. As simple as that was. My journey is not doing all of this extra work to seem chill because I think they think that I'm this way.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I say that to say I was talking through it with my therapist and she was like, oh, well, how do you feel about the people that you meet? And I realized I wasn't developing an opinion. I was so kind of preoccupied with what they thought I was like.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And as simple as that was, going into events and going into spaces, checking in with how I was enjoying myself has gotten rid of almost immediately all of the little thinking and like notes I made in my head about, oh, I wonder if that was awkward. I wonder how they feel about that. I wonder, da, da, da, da, da. But, yeah, I was prompted by me going to this event and knowing immediately.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I was like, I'm so in my head. And here I am in a beautiful room with beautiful people. It's a privilege to be here. It should feel like a privilege. It shouldn't feel like this constant job. And so luckily I had learned. She had asked me that question almost like a couple days after because I was like, it's time to work through this.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I really did feel such an immediate twist in being like, oh, if I am always asking myself how I'm feeling, there's just less room and space to ask myself how they're feeling about me. Still not perfect. I still go through my moments. But it definitely made a big shift in just how I move.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think... Part of the positive thing in suspending the traditional cause and effect, if I do this super well, then this is going to happen for me because of this event or because of this meeting. I've started to have more kind of personal self-development goals and less career goals when I go into those things. Like what? Meetings. Again, it's being honest.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
That's a good question. I feel like I'm a solid 7. Okay. Because I think the difference between even... my life last year to this year was in knowing that there are natural ebbs and flows of emotions. Because I think last year, as much as I could go through something and be really sad for an extended period of time, I always felt like that feeling was going to be permanent.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Like my goal in this meeting is to be as honest as possible. Mm-hmm. about where I am, how I'm feeling. And it happened even last week. I was in a director's meeting and it was a great meeting. I liked the person, but they had some questions on the fact that I live such a straight and narrow life and whether I'd veer from that for the sake of a role.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And it was nice where I think I typically would have just kind of laughed my way out of it and then had the team handle like, oh, tell them there may be a misalignment. It was so nice to have the wherewithal to be like, hey, yeah, I don't think that's the journey I'm interested in going on. I'm not excited by that.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, and I said it in the meeting, and I think that was really new for me, to be like, I have the feeling. All right. Thank you.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I know where to have the courage.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, but I think it was setting intention of saying, oh, if my goal is honesty, if my goal is finding what excites me, then it changes how I move in these rooms, and I honestly feel so much better about it, because the times that I've gone in, I speak in second person at times, the times I've gone in to a meeting with the idea of they are the keepers of this opportunity or thing,
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You know her as an actress on Black-ish and Grown-ish.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I feel like a short circuit just because it's like what are you supposed to do with that information? Like how does that change how you relate to somebody or how you show up in the world? And so I think the idea of having fun at events, as simple as that is, that's so many times been the intention. Let's say it's the Met Gala and I think there was – it's always like a high energy thing.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I think we realized pretty quickly it shouldn't be high stress. Again, it's a fundraiser. Right. It's a fundraiser. People spent... X amount for you to show up and get your team out there for you to look a certain way. And so it's nice because when we've been intention setting, it's been like, no, the priority is having fun and having a new experience. The priority is being open.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so the intentions change time to time. But I think as of late, they've really been more so about in my 24 years of life, what experiences am I looking for in myself? What things am I trying to unlock for myself?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
pretty immediately affected how I show up in rooms because yeah, I used to feel as though I was auditioning for things, but even in non audition settings, like it feels like, oh, it's an audition.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think it's just an opportunity. It's just another day. I think it's just another day. It's another opportunity to learn about myself. I think, especially in an industry where I'm grateful that the question that I'm being asked more than anything is what do I want? And I'm not 100% certain. I have ideas. I have things that, again, pique my curiosity.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I have no hard and fast, this is where I want to be in five years. This is what I want to do. My top priority right now has truly been I want to have new experiences. I've been in school for 16 years of my life. I've been on a show for 10 years. And I'm grateful that those have been net positive experiences. for me, like things that I've really enjoyed doing.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But it means that even as an actor, I've been acting for 20 of my 24 years, and there's still so many experiences I've never even had on a set. And so I think it's been nice even honoring the uncertainty in times where I think, no, my job is to come in super certain. Like, you know what I want? I want da-da-da-da-da-da.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, I'm unclear in a great way in that I'm like, there's so much that excites me right now.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And then I would snap out of it. And then, you know, I'd forget like, oh yeah, everything is kind of temporary. I think this year I carry a knowledge that it's all temporary, which allows me to float through it a little more. But I think it's also, kind of aligned with a lot of self-work of prioritizing what it means to take care of myself in a way that I wasn't. a year ago, two years ago.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I mean, I think the thoughts are inevitable now and then. I'd have to say it's not a main thought I have primarily because of how kind of diversified my interests are, what we're involved in.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think that's where having the production company is really beautiful because while there are projects that I'm connected to that may start filming soon, but you just, again, with this industry, you never know. It's nice to be like, we have our hands in things that inspire us that get us to wake up and do the work every day.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Since then, she's graduated from Harvard, become a successful producer.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think today there should be a script coming in we're very excited to read. But it's from a project that started with myself, Carrie, an incredible other producer across from us, an incredible writer looking at each other and saying, oh, we want to be in business together. We just enjoy how we all move. We're all from the Midwest. So I think that also helps.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Very similar sensibilities amongst the team. But I think that is really helpful. The fact that I, whether it even be like, I love doing college tours and public speaking at colleges. I was in North Carolina last week. I was in Boston the week prior. And I think having those things are very anchoring because it feels like I'm not sitting here literally waiting for the call.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Because there is a real pressure to it. Auditioning, I think what's funny is that it is... so not personal and so personal at the same time because it's extremely subjective. And there's nothing you did right or wrong most of the times because they're putting so many puzzle pieces together. It could be your height. It could be like, oh, they have a new vision for the character.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I think those feelings of doubt and those feelings of, okay, what's next will always be there. But I feel like having a very well-rounded world has allowed me to enjoy the challenge of that and has allowed me to then, even as an actor, prioritize. Working on television is a very different thing because it's a job. You're working for eight months. You're doing 20 episodes.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You're doing 18 episodes, 13 episodes. The edits of the lines are happening day of. You're getting your script and getting rewrites as you're heading –
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
to set and it teaches you kind of how to be a professional actor but it doesn't necessarily if you don't prioritize it teach you process and what what do you enjoy as an actor because I'm like yeah my skill set is learning lines incredibly fast it's how do I get this end result I mean I come from
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You know, my bubba's a director DP, so I'm thinking that steadicam is super heavy, the little rig that they have to wear. I need to get my lines out as fast as possible because I'm thinking about everybody else on set.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I think it's actually been really exciting to be kind of in this kind of theatrical, more film-centered part of my life where it's really been about what is my process as an actor? Because I was approaching the other sets as a producer, and I know how behind we are. I know what we're supposed to be shooting.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I know our schedules. Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So I wasn't necessarily giving myself the space to play. I'm happy with what we did. I'm happy with the set environment, but I think the space to play is kind of what I've been given now. Even just in auditions of being like, oh, my task is how do I do something I typically wouldn't have.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I had an audition yesterday morning that I was taping and it was just really, what was most fulfilling was that feeling of, oh, I'm really happy I did this process because that was something new for me and I wouldn't have done that typically. And so that felt like the win in that.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I honestly, it's where community plays a big part. Like I'm grateful that mommy and I are business partners because I think not only do we make the business side of it fun and we think similarly in that business side. And then she thinks beyond even where I imagine, but she's also invested in me as a human being, not as a client, not as an actor, they're trying to get on a job.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I think that also helps because for the first time I'm like, oh, I took seriously the idea of having tools to manage stress and challenges. Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so when I think about her and I think about even the rest of the team that I have around me, they're great people to talk to. So I do get to pick up the phone and be like, Yeah, that kind of hurt a little bit. That sings a little bit. And have people to talk through it with.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So rather than trying to avoid the feeling, I think the more I've just, the quicker I've leaned into the feeling, the quicker I'm through it. The more I've tried to hold off and be like, that's fine. They went in another direction.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
On to the next. The more I'm spending time at night actually being like, oh, that kind of stung. But I remember getting a note even a couple months ago for a director session that I had a very particular cadence. And that's something that didn't necessarily make me a fit for the character.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It was because you have agents asking for notes. Like, well, she got so far, so what could it be? Right. And so it wasn't like they called, like, hey, her cadence is so off, she doesn't have it. It was after asking, hey, what is it? They said cadence. And I remember just kind of being stuck on it for a second. Because I'm like, do I? I mean, I know I have particular speech patterns.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I have to do voiceover for the show all the time. So I'm always hearing myself talk. But I think that was a really funny instance because when there's very little you can do about how you speak, but it was actually a great, it was like the perfect exercise where it wasn't personal enough to super sting. It wasn't like, yeah, she looked funny.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You know, it was something that was just a little bit annoying. And it was just a great exercise in how am I going to move through this? How am I going to talk through this? How am I going to just kind of keep it pushing?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I ended up keeping it pushing because at the end of the day, it was like, yeah, they handed out a note because they feel like you have to give an actor something to hold on to, especially when you make it really far in a process. And it's what they thought of. And they have every right.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
They have a vision of the character that I only kind of approximated and the vision of the character also being on the producing side of the things. I've seen casting sessions and it was so enlightening because when you go in as an actor, you don't realize how much is happening around you that has absolutely nothing to do with you.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
The producer is shaking their head in the corner, not having anything to do with your performance. They're handling some line item.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so being on the other side when we did Grown-ish and seeing those sessions, I was like, oh my God, this is like the best, this is the best education because it meant that in auditions, I already know there's so much happening and I just happened to walk into the room right now.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so some of your reaction is gonna be about me, some of it, like you're not even gonna have an opinion about me until I leave the room and you watch the tape the next day because so much is happening.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
There's so many times where it's like, oh yeah, that the height doesn't work out because we just cast this person that's really tall or, oh, you know, now that I've seen all these people, I have this new idea for this character. And I may not have even said it in the room, but they're able to, they're allowed to honor their creative instincts because that's their job.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I think my job is to honor mine. Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
That's a great question. I think being frustrated. My character, Zoe, for the last 10 years, she's always perplexed about something, always a little frustrated by the people around her for something that they did. And I'm actually proud of her. She voices what she's upset about pretty immediately, all the time. And I think that's something... that I don't always do.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Because I'm working through this again, but I think so much of my personal process is, let's say I get annoyed by something, I go, why am I annoyed by that? Why is that annoying me? And I automatically think of that as just internal work I got to go sort out. And I think there's some truth to that, but I also think there's certain external variables that are just annoying.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
The truth and the right to say are annoying.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
That's for sure.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I think I've been on a journey of finding the middle ground of like, I can't always internalize, oh, there's something about that that made me angry. Why am I angry about that? Let me go figure that out at my own time. It has nothing to do with that person. Sometimes it has something to do with that person. And it's important to voice that.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so my character does a really good job of that. And I think in many ways it's what's fun about playing a character that's so opposite of who I am for so long. It's like I wish every teenager, imagine going through puberty and having an alternate world with no consequences where you got to just be a different person.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Like it's a real treat to be like, oh, I never am inclined to yell in real life, but here I am on set screaming. That's kind of fun. Yeah. I get paid to do this?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
The incredible Yara Shahidi. It truly starts as a vision board. Some random day, I was 18 and wrote down every deal that I wanted to have. And I don't typically think that way of being like, oh, I'm going to get this deal with this. But I just written down a list. Two years later, I was like, oh, we did it all. The priority in this world is building relationships with people around you.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think anecdotally it's the feeling of have I peaked? Because there's always that feeling of why is this coming? Sometimes I deal with the question of why is this coming easily? Why is this coming easily? You know, I've had – I've just felt very lucky in that – I wasn't the kid that woke up and said I had to be an actor. For me, it was I have a creative urge and instinct.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I started in printing commercials. I said no to auditioning for my first movie when I was seven because I'm like, I love printing commercials. I go play. Like I play and half the time I'm playing with my family.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Honestly, yeah, and COVID hit. That was crazy. I think starting a career early... The beginning, I didn't have to think about it much because I think the way my parents had set it up was like, oh, this is a hobby. This is something that you tap in and out of. But, you know, I was full-time enrolled in school. I had so many hobbies outside of acting. And, you know, people would laugh.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, I'm taking photos or a commercial like you're hula hooping. You're biking. You're just doing different things. Yeah. And so when I had done my first movie at seven, I think what it unlocked in me, again, wasn't even the instinct of, oh, I have to do this for the rest of my life. But was that was a lot of fun. I learned how to ice skate. I got to make pancakes.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I got to work with these cool people. That was super fun. And I think because, again, I've always had this diversity of interests. In some ways, as much as I think every actor, and I'm always dealing with rejection and misdirection, it's come kind of easy. In that, I'm like, I've gotten to go to school and be on a show. That's unheard of. And they made it happen. It took a lot of work.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But after a call, they were on board. There was no convincing that had to happen. I think if it wasn't for COVID, they were going to move the entire shooting schedule to the summer. So I just had an unencumbered year. Again, unheard of. And that comes from everybody from the president of ABC to the president of Signature to the president of... Wow. To the line producer all working in tandem.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think that's the flip side feeling of like, is this right? Is this right that it comes with ease? But I think... I've started to realize ease is the alignment.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, when there's alignment, there's ease. And I think... The thing I've been and my family's always been is pretty discerning. There's still ways to become more discerning, but I think – I was like, oh, some of the ease is because there's been such a discernment of pretty immediately. Like, oh, that's not for us.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Mm-hmm. And, I mean, there have been challenges within that, but for the most part. I'm like, the fact that macro, I'm not walking out with any crazy stories about being on set as a child actor. Yeah. I'm not walking out with any crazy traumas from 10 years on set. Like, I'm like, how lucky.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, you hear all these other stories. You know, I have a family that takes pride in us as individuals, both me and my brothers, handling our money and having a grasp of money management. So I'm like, we've never had a fear that one day it's going to be gone. because I know where it all is, you know?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I was doing an interview about money yesterday and they were like, so what were your money troubles? And I'm like... You got to see how I was raised. Again, I feel so lucky. I was raised with a family that was so intentional about being like, we want you to feel in charge and autonomous and we're here to guide you.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I was going, mommy set it up so I'd go make friends with accounting at Black-ish and I'd go pick up my check every week, where typically you don't see it as an actor. It gets sent to your team. And then you see kind of the end result. I got to see it. I got to see how much the percentages were. I got to see... what the taxes were, and I was able to check.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I remember one time there was the wrong amount on my check, and I was savvy enough at 14 to be like, hey, this isn't the right amount. They're like, oh, yeah, you're right. So I'm saying, again, it is easy to feel guilty, to be like, why have I had it so good in the general scheme of things? And I really couldn't tell you why, but I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Casting directors would laugh because they knew if they wanted me or my brother to audition during... the school week, like they just kind of have to reconfigure some things. Because if I had a test or my brother had an important basketball game, life came first.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Even on this road to self discovery, I do have to say I've known myself pretty well. And so I'm realizing that some of this is the result of having known myself and continuing to learn myself.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
They let me do so quirky. It's amazing. It did not cross my mind.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, I think... I mean, part of it... Like intense work and effort, but not extreme adversities. Yeah. And I think... For me, there are two things I realize. One, I think I minimize maybe some of the challenges I do face.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think some of it is that because I've moved through it, eventually sometimes I think my ability to look back with the rose-colored lenses, I'm like... No challenges. Yeah, wasn't that hard?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Mind you, while we were in it, deeply challenging. So some of it is that I do know I'm minimizing past challenges. And I'm trying to come to terms with just being more honest with that. But I think some of it, too, is just knowing... Again, coming back to the cause and effect thing, so many things happen to good people. Yeah, so many things you can't account for.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But by the time Black-ish came, that was the first time where I really had to re-anchor my life around being on TV in a way that I never had to before. And I think that was the first set of stresses and challenges. It was a great set to be on. But, you know, I'm number five on the call sheet. I'm not working every day.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It has nothing to do with how morally upstanding you are. It has nothing to do with how many resources you have, what you have, what you don't have. And I think maybe it's hitting my quarter-life crisis a couple months early. I think I hear stories of what people go through, whether it's family members passing, certain things like that.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I go, would I be not able to overcome, willing to overcome? I think I have the capacity to do things. But I'm like, do I have the willingness to see a challenge and push through it? I'm always... Part of it comes from just my genuine amazement of the courage that people muster in times that... feel almost impossible, at least outside looking in.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So maybe some of it, it just comes from that space of like, I'm truly amazed. I can't wrap my mind around it when I hear other people's stories of like, what made you double down and push through these hard moments? Again, part of why we started the podcast was being like, I want to hear what did make you go through that? And it's been really...
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
clarifying to me because I think it almost felt like there's some sort of magical alchemy that I couldn't name that's happening versus like, no, it's a mixture of human perseverance and the fact that hopefully, God willing, what... the traits that you need come to you when you need them. The qualities that you need come to you when you need them. And so that's helping me make sense of it.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I think for me, I'm like, what is the mental fortitude regimen that helps us as young people just continue to build A sense of not even just discipline in terms of schedule, but discipline in terms of being like, I know what my mind is doing. I'm kind of aware of it. That's interesting. I'm able to move through this.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm able to move through the inevitable losses we're going to deal with, challenges we're going to deal with, the things I can't account for. Yeah. That's really insightful, though. Yeah. So it's been top of mind, but I don't know how helpful it is to be thinking about it too much.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so the idea that this was the first time I wasn't in school full time in person, but I'm also not acting as much as I necessarily want to be on set. So you're just kind of in a trailer. Yeah. For hours at a time.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think that's the thought that keeps me up, which is what should I be doing? Do you feel like you've always been disciplined?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But even as a college athlete, that's something, even if I was flying back and forth and doing all that, my friends that were waking up at 5 a.m. every day, I was like,
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
That's a great way of naming it because I think that's something I've struggled to name. It's not fun to me. It's not that I'm sacrificing these things. It's not a sacrifice. I wasn't interested.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Mm-hmm.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I, like, love my castmates dearly, but having had such a full life beforehand, I think that was the first moment where we were like, okay, we have to do a little reconfiguring. And I think that was when Mommy and I looked at each other, and she was like, it's time for you to live your whole life again. So what else is interesting you?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'd have to say it's 50-50. I'm pretty lucky to feel surrounded by people that are chasing fun. Dream and all of it looks very different.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, some of them I don't even understand but I see the passion and so I think just by the nature of maybe just who I've ended up in community with I'm surrounded by people where I feel like Generationally, there are a lot of people that are moved by whether it's their art or their career I think I saw that both in the creative landscape.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I think even in the creative space, what was a good example is I'm like, all my friends are at the top of the top now, but they didn't start that way. And so many of them had really interesting experiences.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
kind of non-traditional ways of getting into their respective field, which require just a lot of belief in self, not necessarily traditional schooling to be a musician, traditional this to be that. And so in that regard, I see a lot of discipline there. And I think what's funny is I hang out with people that all have bedtimes. They're like, well, I'm cool tapping out.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And also people that are very sure about what is fun to them and participate in like, oh, this is what's fun to me. It's different for each of us, but it's cool to be like, oh, yeah, people are only showing up because this is enjoyable to them. And they have felt freed of showing up for the sake of showing up.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. I think it's a mix. Like when I see somebody like my little brother, 16, we're technically same generation.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And he's someone that's also very creatively inspired. But I think the difference that I see is that – Even having, like, Instagram didn't come about until I was 13. And even though that was young, it was enough time for my brain to have had a life before social media. And it was, sorry, it was years before it became a regular part of my life. Right.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think that's when I became more publicly politically engaged and started doing voting work, started, you know... going to concerts, seeing my favorite artists, just really pursuing other things. So my free time became a little more well-rounded. And then by the time Grown-ish hit, once again, it was kind of a level up in terms of what the commitment was because...
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And it was years before we were using that to compare. So I just feel like I had more mental tools about how to deal with it. Still hard. Still on my phone way too much. I turn on grayscale at random times to be like, let me, I don't know, does it disrupt the serotonin? I don't know the science behind it, but I'm like grayscale.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But I think the thing that I see is like, oh, their world is so busy all the time that I can't even blame the feeling of distraction because I'm like, between all the news that's being intaken and between the fact that I feel like when I was growing up, I was only preoccupied with the life that I was living.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. And there was also no way of seeing the life that even my friends were living, except for the handful of times we were having a play date. Right.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. I'm like, there was just no way of checking in on that.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think even like creatively, like I've had the privilege of being in all these luxury fashion spaces, but that was all tied to work. I did not find myself in any of those stores prior to working with these brands. Right. Because it just wasn't on my radar.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
The way my brother has friends where it's like, oh, they know all of it all the time. They're tracking Fashion Week. Really? And I was like, I think I learned what Fashion Week was when I got an invite to attend because I was working in this space. I didn't have, again, all these worlds I was checking in on that didn't have anything to do with me right now.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so I do feel like there's a particular challenge and I have a lot of empathy for just generationally that feeling of what are we going to do with this world? information overload where it's even hard to parse apart what do I need to intake.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm a severe over-news listener and I think my task has been listening to a little less news because it's like there's only so much you can do about it and it pushes, at least for me, I think it pushes me into a space of feeling very overwhelmed versus feeling activated. So I've been trying to be like, okay, what amount of news makes me feel activated but not overwhelmed?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, and some of it is a great point because some of it was that I've always been an audiophile. We grew up in a house where we didn't watch TV except for Saturdays for an hour, which I love. But it meant that I love audio. That is my form of entertainment. And so you're absolutely right.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
There was a time, even though I don't know if I would call it that while I was listening, that it was more so like, oh, I'm listening to NPR.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
You're listening to NPR so much that they're sending you free merch. That may be a cue. That may be a cue that you're listening to too much NPR. Because I was like, I have the app on my phone. I'm not even waiting until I'm in the car. I'm listening all the time. I'm waiting for the midday update. I'm waiting for the end of the day update. I'm cycling through local news.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm typing in local stations. And so I think changing that, because then I was listening to political podcasts at night. I was falling asleep to them. I was like, oh, bedtime. Time to turn on. Time.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I had turned the industry term legal 18 over the summer because I'd graduated from high school a year early. And so I forgot when I was getting my little high school diploma that this meant that I could work endless amount of hours. I may have been like, wait, I forgot to take a class. I still got to be in high school. So by the time Groner started, I went from working 10 hours to 17 hours a day.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I love NPR because I'm like it is pretty straightforward. But I think for me the amount I was consuming of just – of like every podcast available – again, was fulfilling more of an entertainment side. So it's been nice to literally reintroduce. I have those moments where I'm like, okay, time to get updated here. I'll do, I'm on twice a day. Maybe I'll get to a once a day person.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm a twice a day person. But in between, I'm back to listening to old time radio shows. Johnny Dollar is my favorite insurance investigator played by Bob Bailey. And so I'm like, oh, if this is fulfilling the need to be listening to something, what else can I be listening to? Back to this American life, back to just like,
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, well, like you said, I come from two really wonderful, thoughtful parents, Afshin and Carrie, who I call Bubba and Mommy, but really wonderful people that... have their own global background. So my bubba moved to the States from Iran when he was eight, comes from a very global service-minded family.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
My mama comes from a family where it's like my papa and nana, my papa in particular was really involved in the civil rights movement. So that very direct idea of what it is to be of service, to sacrifice kind of your own comfort for the greater good.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so much of the dialogue around being of service just happened at the dinner table, happened in a very natural way where I don't think I even realized, oh, I'm having these heady conversations.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think there were also things that they did that were very supportive of that, of going to schools that had volunteer requirements, whether that was the Montessori or the public school or the Catholic school I went to. They all had volunteer requirements. And so I think it was also being modeled for me in every environment I was in.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Not just how money is a resource, but how your time is a resource. The idea of giving as being just a part of the fabric of life and not as something that you wait to do once you have, quote unquote, made it. Even when they were giving me and my brothers just allowance, they, again, having really thoughtful decisions.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Parents, what mommy had done was we'd put all of the money that we made from acting right into savings, but they'd give us an allowance for being on set. Oh, wow. And from that allowance, from those $10 or however much we decided, they had the save, spend, and donate bucket. And we got to choose how much are we donating, how much are we saving, how much are we spending.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And again, I think these were – I say this all as a foundation of saying I had a great foundation of ways in which being of service can be integrated into our day-to-day life. And I think even still – That's cool.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
having Lami as a business partner, one trait I think I admire most that many people can attest to. I was in a room she wasn't in, talking about something random, and literally somebody else, another actress paused to be like, can we talk about Carrie Shahidi?
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
A day? Yeah. And given, we finessed and fine-tuned that. You're in a trailer a lot of the time. But also, I mean, I wasn't even in a trailer a lot for season one because my character was in both storylines. Wow. Where typically, you know, you have A storyline, B storyline, and actors kind of trade off between what the storyline is. Sure. And so you always have a break.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Because what she is is so deeply tapped into the world around her and so deeply curious that I think she is constantly of service by giving kind of her mind as a resource. We will see someone at the airport who says off randomly, oh, I really want to start this... shirt company. She'd be like, oh, that's interesting.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I've cataloged, oh, I met this one entrepreneur that makes shirts that I would love to connect you. She's connected authors with lawyers for their multi-million plus book deal and not realizing that's what it was for, but just being like, oh, you're an interesting person. This is another person that's interesting. You guys should be connected. That's cool.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But it comes from just being so deeply attuned and paying attention in spaces that we're in the same rooms. And she's picking up on things where I'm like, huh? Oh, yeah, I guess that did happen. But I say that to say I feel like. It's an example of what it means to be attuned towards service. And it's not even necessarily, oh, I'm working with this organization or this foundation.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It's truly I'm operating from an anchoring place of how can I be of value to you, even if it has nothing to do with me. Most of these things never circle back. It's a thank you that you may get. But to answer even your question on being of service and then receiving, I think it's
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I've had a lot of examples of how things, time, resources that I've given have come back around in ways that I could never expect. I wasn't expecting it when I gave. And I think even in our starting our production company, we were both astounded by how many people wanted to work with us when we were just opening our doors.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Had yet to prove ourselves as producers because they knew what it was like to be in a relationship with us.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And the things that we'd give generally without saying, hey, we're going to circle back around in a couple of years when we have our own offices. And so I think a lot of what I've received has been the result of giving. And I think I've learned so many lessons about how that happens.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
My papa has this great term, he uses relationship equity, which is one, just logistically, especially for us 20 year olds, call between needing things, especially from the people around you. It's okay if you need things and you need to call people, but call between, see how they're doing.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Not just when, not, hey, how are you by the way?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But more than just calling between needing things, I was raised on relationship equity, which is the priority in this world is building relationships with the people around you. It's not building networks. It's not building contacts. It's building relationships.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I was going to say it's so much about trust of both who you let in and building something, but also people coming to you and having a trust. So, yeah, I'd have to say I think trust is the resource that is given when you give.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Ooh, that's a good question. I think I said some of it for mommy, but just to double down, I really am so moved by how moved she is by the world, by how much she cares about the people around her, whether it's the people in this room we'll never be in again, whether it's the people that have been in our lives forever. She has a want to be a value add to somebody's life. And it could be
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
First season, I was in every scene all the time.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It could be in a very small way, in a very big way, but I think, I don't even know. It feels almost subconscious. There's an ease in which she does it. It's not like, oh, she's thinking about, oh, what can I do to benefit? But it's really inspiring how naturally that comes.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Because I think it's something that reminds me too of the power of being present, of what I was missing out on when I was so in my head, or like all the things that can happen when you're right here with somebody in a room. And I think from my Bubba, I feel like, I think there's, I mean, there's a lot.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
17-hour days, which I think it is what it is to be like a new show. We're on cable. We're just trying to prove ourselves. But I came from Black-ish where we got a juice truck. We have great trailers. We're on broadcast. And so it was funny because we would even sneak over to their craft services because they had it made. And we were just kind of like the little cousin trying to carve its own path.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Not only is he the reason that I'm a foodie and have a very wide-ranging taste in music, but I think he's also one of the first people that modeled the idea that being a family and being creative can really go hand in hand because he was the first one in our family. He was Prince's photographer for 10 years. And I think that was always such a...
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
family-oriented environment in which we were on tour with him. Wow. And would hop in and out, not the whole time, but we'd hop in and out of tour stops. We'd go to his house when he was dropping off film.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think in many ways he helped set up the model by which we run our family, which is like there's a way to maintain being a high-level creative and pursuing your career, but also being so invested in and concerned about our family as the main unit. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Because I think it reflects the fact that, you know, my brothers and I, whenever any of us had a job, we were always on set for the other person just to be there, just to be like, I'm so excited for you.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think it's those little things that have made the experience so enjoyable generally was like, oh, I never had to sacrifice a distance from family or this feeling that this was a solo journey in order to be doing this. And so, yeah, I think that's something he modeled very, very early on. That's cool.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Mm-hmm.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It's audio primarily, but there will be a video component that we're launching, which we're excited about. But yeah, it's with SiriusXM, but you can find it everywhere.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, and I think true to our business relationship, we've really co-conceptualized it behind the scenes. I'm hosting it. So we're both in the room, but I'm hosting and interviewing.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And it's some of what we teased and talked about throughout this conversation of it started from the conversations that her and I would have of one, these kind of more existential conversations of where we're both at in our lives and what are the questions that wanted to be answered.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But also a lot of it was both of us being very lucky to be in these exclusive rooms, finding ourselves just the nature of our community to be like, we're at a small get together with friends. every major politician and every major collected artist. Or we're at the TED conference, which has a barrier to entry of X amount thousand to get a ticket.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so many times the conversations that were really insightful to us were happening in these exclusive rooms. Right. And it was really a matter of accessibility. Like, there's so many questions we got answered not even realizing that that's what was going to happen, just the nature of having conversations with people.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so for us, we curated a guest list of the people that – many people that we've already talked to privately and personally of being like, no, let's make this official. There's so many gems in how they've shared their stories. And I think –
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
There are so many messages of optimism just through people's journeys of them sharing how they've overcome certain challenges, what their current takeaways are. So it's been a very exciting process because we do a lot of brain work behind the scenes. And then by the time I get out here to ask questions, the conversation always flows in very interesting ways.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But luckily, it has served its initial purpose, which was for us to be able to have really fulfilling conversations with people and realize... Many times I was always the youngest person in this room, and sometimes that can be mistaken for being the only young person interested, which is far from true.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I understand I could be an anomaly in a certain way, but I think I come from a deeply curious generation, and I think... There's so many things that we seek out in terms of information, and that's part of why it was inspiring to me to know, oh, yeah, I just happened to have been in the room while this conversation was happening, but I know so many people that would learn from that.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
But, yeah, I think that also was another moment. where I had to learn how to take care of myself and what that looked like. Because it was my first real challenge of being like, oh, a lot is being expected of me.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So many of my conversations with my peers are about us asking each other these questions.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Thank you.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm also excited to watch.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It's not building networks. It's not building contacts. It's building relationships.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think there were a lot of conversations, luckily, coming from such a tight-knit family, but also coming from the line producer and Kenya and other people coming from Black-ish and having seen me since I was young. They were definitely able to approach it from, okay, she's a human first and foremost, But we had to have those conversations.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think, what would 34-year-old Yara say? Well, I think to our conversation on mental fortitude, to know, to be reassured that I'll continue to show up for myself. Well, it would be nice to hear from 34-year-old Yara that there's no point in stressing about future challenges anymore. Maybe not that there's no point, but that we move through them and that we are capable of moving through them.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I mean, I think 34-year-old Yara, I'm excited for her to give me intel on what happens when we follow our curiosities. I think I've been able to do that, and I'm at a point in my career where there is always going to be a bit of strategy. There is always going to be a bit of business, and I like that part of what we do. But it'll be reaffirming to be like, well, what blossomed from the curiosity?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
What's the thing that I didn't expect we were going to do? Because I feel like even though I feel like I've been a very consistent person in my life in terms of like core values, like who I was at 16 is not a far stretch from who I am now. I also could never imagine what I was dreaming about now at 16. So I would love to know what 34-year-old Yara is dreaming about. That's interesting. That's cool.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Is that two things?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, what would she tell me? I mean, I'm... I think I'm excited for whatever wisdom on her journey and trusting herself and her instincts. I feel... grateful to be of service. And I know a part of my journey and being authentic to myself is, is trusting myself. Cause oftentimes I think I defer to the people wanting to be of service to the people around me, care for the people around me that,
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
it's more so a new mental challenge to be like, wait, how am I feeling about this? What am I thinking about this? Cause it's just how I've, how my brain works at this point. So I want wisdom from her about that. That's good. Okay. Yeah. Love that.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I also want to know what interest rates are.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think my definition of greatness, it could be a synonym for authenticity. When I look at people that I consider great, it's because I think they have tapped into themselves in a way where they feel irreplicable. No one could even try to do what you do. Not because other people don't have the skills, but no one could be you right now.
The School of Greatness
Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
So yeah, I think it's the people that are so authentically themselves and... that feel like, oh, you've tapped into a greatness that could only exist within you.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
This has been so fulfilling for me. I have a lot to journal about.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And my mother had to have those conversations with a first AD that would be like, she doesn't need to eat right now. She's good. We've got to film this. To be like, no, we've got to see her as a human being first, and then an actor second. And so I think adjustments were made along the way to then figure that out and what that rhythm looked like. And I'd go into the writer's room every day.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
No, I am. That was powerful.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I'm like, please write my cast up. They're brilliant humans. Zoe does not need to be in everything.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It's the opposite of what she needs to be in. And so, you know, it's nice to say that we hit a cadence. But then, of course, always seeking a challenge. Then I was like, great, I'll go to school. Now that my character's written down a little bit, I'll go to school full time. And I'd have to say I did not have a down pat what it looked like taking care of myself.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
All of the above. I think I've always been a task-oriented person. And I think I put my own needs first. behind everything else, even when it's not being asked of me. Yeah, like oftentimes I say, the best way I can say is like, my goal is to take care of myself as well as the people around me take care of me.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Because I have such great examples around me of people that are like, yeah, you need rest and you need to rejuvenate. But I'm the first one to kind of throw that away and say, hey, I have a paper due, I have this due. So, you know, my grown-ish schedule became, oh, I'm pulling all-nighters. I'm filming, pulling all-nighters to do schoolwork, and then going back to set. Wow.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I think at the time, part of it was just what the moment necessitated. I don't know if there would have been many other ways to accomplish that. But I think what was hard was that I also didn't have for myself a list of things to be doing to pour into myself, whether that be physically. Like as much as I look back at pictures of me in school, I was like, oh, I was ripped.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I don't know if I've talked about this,
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Girl, that's a calorie deficit. You weren't eating. I was like, that's not muscles. You're walking with basically a weighted vest, which is your backpack, and forgetting to eat all day.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. I was saying, yeah, I was saying.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. I think, I guess the way I'd put it is I know life consists of challenges. And at this point in my life, it's been a high priority to become friends with challenges because they don't excite me.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It's more so maybe another word is misalignment. Like I think to be a creative and to be in the production world, any kind of creative endeavor, obviously there's a lot of passion behind it, but there's a lot of business behind it. And there's so many times in which you hit bumps on the general road and – There's so many times I just get very disappointed.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
It somehow feels like when we hit a challenge, let's say, with a partner of being like, why aren't we on the same page about this?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Out of alignment.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah, when we're out of alignment, I think where I'm surrounded by people that are like, all right, cool, this is just a cue that we need to realign. I'm like, oh, Lord, what's happening? What's happening in the world? Why is this happening? This should be so simple. I think a lot of that is also the fact that
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Thank you for having me.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I love the creative industry, but in my mind, I'm like, what we do should be so straightforward. Out of all the life-saving things that people do in the world that really do require a lot of challenges, why is creativity so challenging?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And so it's part of what prompted the podcast because it was like, okay, a lot of the solves that I even experienced were just through conversations with friends, mentors, and peers in certain rooms where they would kind of contextualize is it a challenge or is it this? Is it a part of your personal alignment?
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And just in them sharing personal stories, I think it gave me a lot more context for the idea that I was just taking it too seriously, taking the sign of a challenge too seriously versus being like, it's just kind of a part of life. It's just life. Yeah. It's going to happen. It's not that you've done anything wrong or could have done anything better. It's just the process.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
That's a good question. I think You know, I think this is actually right now is the result of diagnosing the misalignment some months ago and being like, we're going to meticulously find alignment. And so I'd have to say what's been most inspiring about right now is that creatively we're working with people that we love.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
On the business side, it's like, oh, we have a team where it's like we're all – even when we deal with the basic issues that kind of happen externally, as a team we're all such a united front that it's also made those moments easier to get through because –
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Ooh, that's a great question. I think there are many different ways. I think for some of the bigger things, it really is...
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
I think a lot of it is that feeling of when I get a wave of excitement, it's like, oh, that's interesting. That means that my curiosity is piqued. A lot of, I think, what I'm interested in tackling next comes from a wave of curiosity. Like, for some reason, this has grabbed my attention. I really couldn't tell you why. It's not because, oh, it's the logical next step. I think whether that be...
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
you know, the podcast starting as conversations. And then I think I wrote the name, The Optimist Project on like a random hotel, like a little pen and pad they had at the bedside. And then the analytical side starts of like, okay, how do we bring this into the world? But I think, yeah, a lot of it comes from that just kind of wave of, oh, I'm really curious by this.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
This keeps grabbing my attention. And if it's grabbing my attention, it must mean something. And it really ranges from even, As random as it may seem for my kind of endorsement deals and fashion side, I remember at some random day, I was 18 and wrote down every deal that I wanted to have.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
And I don't typically think that way of being like, oh, I'm going to get this deal with this shoe company, this deal with this. But I just written down a list. And I think two years later, I was like, oh, we did it all.
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Yara Shahidi Opens Up: How To Prioritize Mental Health & Overcome Self-Doubt To Achieve Any Dream
Yeah. But I think that's what's nice about the fact that our team is also aligned in how we think and that it's like all of us get these waves of curiosity and then we bring in the analytics to be like, now how are we going about it? And so it truly starts as a vision board. It starts as like, oh, what do we see?
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I think anecdotally, it's the feeling of have I peaked? Because there's always that feeling of why is this coming? Sometimes there's a, I deal with the question of why is this coming easily? Why is this coming easily? You know, I've had, I've just felt very lucky in that I wasn't the kid that woke up and said I had to be an actor. For me, it was I have a creative urge and instinct.
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I started in printing commercials. I said no to auditioning for my first movie when I was seven because I'm like, I love printing commercials. I go play. Half the time I'm playing with my family.
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I'm taking photos or a commercial. You're hula hooping. You're biking. You're just doing different things.
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and so when i had done my first movie at seven i think what it unlocked in me again wasn't even the instinct of oh i have to do this for the rest of my life but was that was a lot of fun i learned how to ice skate i got to make pancakes i got to work with these cool people that was super fun uh and i think because again i've always had this diversity of interests
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In some ways, as much as I think every actor, and I'm always dealing with rejection and misdirection, it's come kind of easy in that I'm like, I've gotten to go to school and be on a show. That's unheard of. And they made it happen. After a call, it took a lot of work, But after a call, they were on board. There was no convincing that had to happen.
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I think if it wasn't for COVID, they were going to move the entire shooting schedule to the summer. So I just had an unencumbered year, again, unheard of. And that comes from everybody from the president of ABC to the president of Signature to the president of to the line producer all working in tandem.
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I think that's the flip side feeling like, is this right? Is this right that it comes with ease? But I think. I've started to realize ease is the alignment and it's because it should, there should be ease. Yeah. When there's alignment, there's ease. And I think the thing I've been in my family has always been is pretty discerning.
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There's still ways to become more discerning, but I think I was like, Oh, some of the ease is because there's been such a discernment of pretty immediately of like, Oh, that's not for us.
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And I mean, there've been challenges within that, but for the most part, I'm like the fact that macro, I'm not walking out with any crazy stories about being on set as a child actor. I'm not walking out with any crazy traumas from, from 10 years on set. Like I'm like, wow, how lucky.
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You know, I have a family that takes pride in us as individuals, both me and my brothers, handling our money and having a grasp of money management. So I'm like, we've never had a fear that one day it's going to be gone because I know where it all is.
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I was doing an interview about money yesterday and they were like, so what were your money troubles? And I'm like... You got to see how I was raised. I'm so again, I feel so lucky. I'm like, I was raised with a family that was so intentional about being like, we want you to feel in charge and autonomous and we're here to guide you. But I was going, mommy set it up.
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So I'd go make friends with accounting at Blackish and I'd go pick up my check every week where typically you don't see it as an actor. It gets sent to your team and then you see kind of the end result. I got to see it. I got to see how much the percentages were. I got to see. What the taxes were, and I was able to check.
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I remember one time there was the wrong amount on my check, and I was savvy enough at 14 to be like, hey, this isn't the right amount.
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They're like, oh, yeah, you're right. So I'm saying, again, it is easy to feel guilty, to be like, why have I had it so good in the general scheme of things? Uh-huh. And I really couldn't tell you why, but I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that even on this road to self-discovery, I do have to say I've known myself pretty well.
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And so I'm realizing that some of this is the result of having known myself and continuing to learn myself.
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They let me be so quirky, you know, like it did not cross my mind.
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Yeah. I think, I mean, part of it- Like intense work and effort, but not extreme adversities. Yeah. And I think- For me, there are two things I realize. One, I think I minimize maybe some of the challenges I do face. We're also dealing with a lot of pressures from just being in the industry and all these different things.
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I think some of it is that because I've moved through it, eventually, sometimes I think my ability to look back with the rose-colored lenses, I'm like... No challenges. Mind you, while we were in it, deeply challenging. So some of it is that I do know I'm minimizing past challenges and I'm trying to come to terms with just being more honest with that. But I think some of it too is just knowing
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Again, coming back to the cause and effect thing, so many things happen to good people. So many things you can't account for. It has nothing to do with how morally upstanding you are. It has nothing to do with how many resources you have, what you have, what you don't have. I think maybe it's hitting my quarter-life crisis a couple months early.
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I think I hear stories of what people go through, whether it's family members passing, certain things like that, and I go, would I be not able to overcome, willing to overcome? I think I have the capacity to do things, but I'm like, do I have the willingness to see a challenge and push through it? Part of it comes from just my genuine amazement of...
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The courage that people muster in times that feel almost impossible, at least outside looking in. So maybe some of it, it just, it comes from that space of like, I'm truly amazed. I can't wrap my mind around it when I hear other people's stories of like, what made you double down and push through these hard moments?
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Again, part of why we started the podcast was being like, I want to hear what did make you go through that? And it's been really clarifying to me because I think it almost felt like there's some sort of magical alchemy that I couldn't name that's happening versus like, no, it's a mixture of human perseverance and the fact that hopefully, God willing, what...
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the traits that you need come to you when you need them, the qualities that you need come to you when you need them. And so that's helping me make sense of it. But I think for me, I'm like, what is the mental fortitude regimen that helps us as young people just continue to build
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a sense of not even just discipline in terms of schedule, but discipline in terms of being like, I know what my mind is doing. I'm kind of aware of it. That's interesting. I'm able to move through this. I'm able to move through the inevitable losses we're going to deal with, challenges we're going to deal with, the things I can't account for. Yeah. That's really insightful though. Yeah.
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So it's been top of mind, but I don't know how helpful it is to be thinking about it too much.
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I think that's the thought that keeps me up, which is what should I be doing? Do you feel like you've always been disciplined?
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But even as like a college athlete like that, that's something even if I was flying back and forth and doing all that, my friends that were waking up at 5 a.m. every day, I was like...
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That's a great way of naming it because I think that's something I've struggled to name. It's not that I'm sacrificing these things. It's not a sacrifice. I wasn't interested.
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I'd have to say it's 50-50. I'm pretty lucky to feel surrounded by people that are chasing. Dream and all of it looks very different.
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Yeah, some of them I don't even understand but I see the passion and so I think just by the nature of maybe just who I've ended up in community with I'm surrounded by people where I feel like Generationally, there are a lot of people that are moved by whether it's their art or their career I think I saw that both in the creative landscape.
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But I think even in the creative space, what was a good example is I'm like, all my friends are at the top of the top now, but they didn't start that way. And so many of them had really interesting experiences.
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kind of non-traditional ways of getting into their respective field, which require just a lot of belief in self, not necessarily traditional schooling to be a musician, traditional this to be that. And so in that regard, I see a lot of discipline there. And I think what's funny is I hang out with people that all have bedtimes that are like, well,
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And also people that are very sure about what is fun to them and participate in like, oh, this is what's fun to me. It's different for each of us, but it's cool to be like, oh, yeah, people are only showing up because this is enjoyable to them. And they have felt freed of showing up for the sake of showing up.
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Yeah. I think it's a mix. Like when I see somebody like... My little brother, 16, we're technically same generation. It feels like a world of difference.
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And he's someone that's also very creatively inspired. But I think the difference that I see is that even having... Instagram didn't come about until I was 13. And even though that was young, it was enough time for my brain to have had a life before social media. And it was... Sorry, it was years before it became a regular part of my life. And it was years before we were using that to compare.
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So I just feel like I had more mental tools about how to deal with it. Still hard, still on my phone way too much. I turn on grayscale at random times to be like, let me, I don't know, does it disrupt the serotonin? I don't know the science behind it, but I'm like grayscale.
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But I think the thing that I see is like, oh, their world is so busy all the time that I can't even blame the feeling of distraction because I'm like, between all the news that's being intaken and between the fact that I feel like when I was growing up, I was only preoccupied with the life that I was living.
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Yeah, and there was also no way of seeing the life that even my friends were living, except for the handful of times we were having a play date.
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Yeah, I'm like, there was just no way of checking in on that.
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And I think even creatively, I've had the privilege of being in all these luxury fashion spaces, but that was all tied to work. I did not find myself in any of those stores prior to working with these brands. Right. Because it just wasn't on my radar.
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The way my brother has friends where it's like, oh, they know all of it all the time. They're tracking Fashion Week. Really? And I was like, I think I learned what Fashion Week was when I got an invite to attend because I was working in this space. I didn't have, again, all these worlds I was checking in on that didn't have anything to do with me right now.
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And so I do feel like there's a particular challenge. And I have a lot of empathy for just generationally that feeling of what are we going to do with this world? information overload where it's even hard to parse apart what do I need to intake?
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I'm a severe over news listener and I think my task has been listening to a little less news because it's like there's only so much you can do about it and it pushes, at least for me, I think it pushes me into a space of feeling very overwhelmed versus feeling activated. So I've been trying to be like, okay, what amount of news makes me feel activated but not overwhelmed?
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Yeah, and some of it is a great point because some of it was that I've always been an audiophile. We grew up in a house where we didn't watch TV except for Saturdays for an hour, which I love. But it meant that I love audio. That is my form of entertainment. And so you're absolutely right.
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There was a time, even though I don't know if I would call it that while I was listening, that it was more so like, oh, I'm listening to NPR.
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You're listening to NPR so much that they're sending you free merch. That may be a cue. That may be a cue that you're listening to too much NPR. Because I was like, I have the app on my phone. I'm not even waiting until I'm in the car. I'm listening all the time. I'm waiting for the midday update. I'm waiting for the end of the day update. I'm cycling through local news.
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I'm typing in local stations. And so I think changing that, because then I was listening to political podcasts at night. I was falling asleep to them. I was like, oh, bedtime. Time to turn on.
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I love NPR because it is pretty straightforward, but I think for me, the amount I was consuming of every podcast available again was fulfilling more of an entertainment side. So it's been nice to literally reintroduce. I have those moments where I'm like, okay, time to get updated here. I want twice a day. Maybe I'll get to a once a day person. I'm a twice a day person.
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But in between, I'm back to listening to old time radio shows. Johnny Dollar is my favorite insurance investigator played by Bob Bailey. And so I'm like, oh, if this is fulfilling the need to be listening to something, what else can I be listening to? Back to This American Life, back to just like...
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Yeah, well, like you said, I come from two really wonderful, thoughtful parents, Afshin and Carrie, who I call Bubba and Mommy, but really wonderful people that have their own global background. So, you know, my bubba moved to the States from Iran when he was eight, comes from a very global service-minded family.
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My mama comes from a family where it's like my papa and nana, my papa in particular was really involved in the civil rights movement. So that very direct idea of what it is to be of service, to sacrifice kind of your own comfort for the greater good.
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And so much of the dialogue around being of service just happened at the dinner table, happened in a very natural way where I don't think I even realized, oh, I'm having these heady conversations. Hear me. And I think there were also things that they did that were very supportive of
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of that of going to schools that had volunteer requirements, whether that was the Montessori or the public school or the Catholic school I went to, they all had volunteer requirements. And so I think it was also being modeled for me in every environment I was in of not just how money is a resource, but how your time is a resource.
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The idea of giving as being just a part of the fabric of life and not as something that you wait to do once you have quote unquote made it. Even when they were giving me and my brothers just allowance, again, having really thoughtful parents, what mommy had done was we'd put all of the money that we made from acting right into savings, but they'd give us an allowance for being on set.
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And from that allowance, from those 10 bucks or however much we decided, they had the save, spend, and donate bucket. And we got to choose how much are we donating, how much are we saving, how much are we spending. And, again, I say this all as a foundation of saying I had a great foundation of ways in which being of service can be integrated into our day-to-day life.
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And I think even still, having Lami as a business partner, one trait I think I admire most that many people can attest to. I was in a room she wasn't in. I'm talking about something random. And literally somebody else, another actress paused to be like, can we talk about Carrie Shahidi?
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Because what she is is so deeply tapped into the world around her and so deeply curious that I think she is constantly of service by giving kind of her mind as a resource. We will see someone at the airport who says off randomly, oh, I really want to start this project. It's like, oh, that's interesting.
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I've cataloged, oh, I met this one entrepreneur that makes shirts that I would love to connect you. She's connected authors with lawyers for their multi-million plus book deal and not realizing that's what it was for, but just being like, oh, you're an interesting person. This is another person that's interesting. You guys should be connected. That's cool.
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But it comes from just being so deeply attuned and paying attention in spaces that we're in the same rooms. And she's picking up on things where I'm like, huh? Oh, yeah, I guess that did happen. But I say that to say I feel like. it's an example of what it means to be attuned towards service. And it's not even less necessarily, oh, I'm working with this organization or this foundation.
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It's truly, I'm operating from an anchoring place of how can I be of value to you? Even if it has nothing to do with me. Most of these things never circle back. It's a thank you that you may get. But to answer even your question on being of service and then receiving, I think,
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I've had a lot of examples of how things, time, resources that I've given have come back around in ways that I could never expect. I wasn't expecting it when I gave. And I think even in our starting our production company, we were both astounded by how many people wanted to work with us when we were just opening our doors.
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Had yet to prove ourselves as producers because they knew what it was like to be in relationship with us.
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And the things that we'd give generally without saying, hey, we're going to circle back around in a couple of years when we have our own offices. And so I think a lot of what I've received has been the result of giving. And I think I've learned so many lessons about how that happens. My papa has this great term.
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He uses relationship equity, which is one, just logistically, especially for us 20 year olds call between needing things, especially from the people around you. It's okay if you need things and you need to call people, but call between, see how they're doing.
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Not just when not, Hey, how are you by the way?
The School of Greatness
3 Secrets To Manifesting Anything
But more than just calling between needing things, I was raised on relationship equity, which is the priority in this world is building relationships with the people around you. It's not building networks. It's not building contacts. It's building relationships.