Betsy’s Birthday Balance Blog (say that 10x really fast!)

...it's a long story, but worth it. Just read the blog.

Okay, so one of my favorite TV shows of all time is The West Wing. I’m obsessed. The day my husband and I watched the final episode of the series we were ready to re-watch the entire series again, I kid you not. So, it’s no surprise that when I came across this quote in a Sunday Times Op-Ed about the Autumnal Equinox — “A myth in many cultures holds that some mystical force lets us stand eggs on their ends, but only for a few hours immediately before or after the exact time of the equinox” — I recalled the West Wing episode, “Evidence of Things Not Seen, ” where CJ (played by the amazing Allison Janney) puts this very theory to test.

I don’t mention this simply to share my TV viewing habits with you (even though I could wax on about The West Wing, Lost, and Mad Men until I was blue in the face), but rather to talk about something near and dear to my heart — balance. In case you didn’t know, an equinox is a date and time when day and night are of equal length, and happens twice a year. It’s all about balance. And this year’s Autumnal Equinox, which is upon us tomorrow, is particularly meaningful to me because it happens to fall on my birthday (yes, I am a lady on the cusp for those of you who are into signs). So, it probably comes as no surprise that I LOVE balance. When one foot itches, I like to scratch the other foot too, just to equal things out. I was once in a yoga class where the teacher accidentally skipped the other side of a sequence of poses and I literally felt out of balance for the rest of the day. Needless to say, I can get a little nutty when this happens.

Balance traps, which are situations and mindsets that can knock you out of balance, are easy to fall into — I see it happen all the time in the coaching room (and I’m not immune to them, myself). Perhaps the most common balance trap that I see artists, in particular, fall into is one that I address in the Artists In Action lesson on Balancing It All: The Perfectionist. The Perfectionist trap occurs when one assumes that a balanced life equals a perfect life. When our career is perfect, and our relationships are perfect, and our health is perfect, and our creative life is perfect…only then will our life be in balance. Nope. Sorry to burst the Perfectionist bubble, but this is SO NOT TRUE!

Simply put, balance does not equal perfection. And the more time we spend assuming it does and pursuing something that is ultimately elusive, the more time we waste feeling frustrated with being out of balance. But here’s some good news: balance can be found in imperfection. In fact, it’s imperative – things are never going to go your way all the time, so you better make peace with the idea of imperfection in your life in order to find your way closer to balance sooner than later. Once you give yourself over to this idea, it’s amazing how much beauty can be found in that imperfection. What do you think? Can you work with that?

One other thing that I think is worth mentioning: according to the article from above, “Throughout history, the first day of autumn has been considered a good time to take stock of the year’s successes and failures.” Tomorrow, I’ll naturally be taking some time to reflect on this past year of my life, as I have a tendency to do on my birthday. And I might even test out this whole egg-balancing theory, too! I want to encourage you to take some time out of your day and do some reflecting of your own. If you do, please be sure to acknowledge your successes as well as your failures — regardless of what they are, I hope you take an extra moment to learn something from them both. Why wait for December 31st to take stock of your life when you can do something NOW? I plan on making autumn a season of reinvigoration and balance, and I invite you to do the same.

Oh, and if you happen to find yourself standing eggs on their ends tomorrow, let me know how it goes…even if it your experiments don’t go perfectly. Happy Autumnal Equinox to you all!

Welcome!

Hey everyone! Welcome to the official Capes Coaching blog!

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Betsy Capes, the founder and president of Capes Coaching, a career coaching company for actors, artists, and creative professionals of every kind. If you’d like the whole scoop on me, you can read the long version of my bio here; for everyone else, I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version.

I began my career in the entertainment industry over a decade ago in the casting department at Manhattan Theatre Club, in addition to directing theatre in New York City. During that time, I also began coaching actors on the side, figuring that my “other side of the table” knowledge could benefit actors in their auditions. What I began to see on a consistent basis was that the majority of actors I was coaching were focusing 100% of their energy on their craft, leaving the business side of their career virtually neglected. This made for a lot of talented artists feeling lost, overwhelmed, and frustrated, all because they had never taken the time to hone their business skills. Feeling compelled to support these artists and change the perception that success is based solely on talent, I focused my attention on career coaching — essentially, everything BUT the craft. That’s how Capes Coaching was born.

In the seven years since, I’ve coached over 2,500 artists from every corner of every medium. Through one-on-one coaching, master classes on every essential topic from marketing and networking, to time management and life/career balance, and the Path Class (our very successful class focusing on goal setting and planning), I’ve refined my techniques and tools to meet the needs and address the patterns that consistently come up in the coaching room. And in that time, here’s what I’ve learned: I absolutely LOVE what I do…and I can do more.

Center of the universe? Probably not.

At the risk of stating the obvious, New York is a big city. Huge. But, it ain’t the center of the universe (contrary to popular belief). I began to realize that there were thousands (possibly millions) of artists out there who were missing out on everything we were doing at Capes Coaching simply because they didn’t live in New York. So, we decided to take everything that we knew, put it all into one complete package, and bring the classroom and coaching experience to everyone, everywhere. That’s how Artists In Action was born, and I can’t tell you how excited we are about it!

From the very beginning, we’ve known that each artist has unique needs and faces challenges specific to them and their situation — there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, no magic pill. So we’ve created a program that will give you the tools and a process for figuring out who you are, what you want, and how to get it. Rather than giving you a so-called “formula for success”, Artists In Action helps you create a career plan that’s tailor-made for you, by you. It’s a radically different way of approaching your career from the inside out.

Which brings us to this blog.

We’re going national (even global) for the first time and we know that a lot of you don’t know who we are. So, this is our way of introducing ourselves, sharing our experience and knowledge, and letting you get to know us. I’m going to be touching upon everything in the Artists In Action program — goals, time management, marketing, networking, inner balance, and more — and I’m also going to bring real stories from the coaching room and from my own personal industry experiences. While we undoubtedly want to spread the word about a product that we wholeheartedly believe in, this is more about supporting the artistic community and helping to shape a new kind of informed and educated artist. We’re going to be giving away a lot of great curriculum and tools here.

On the flip side, this isn’t a one-way street — we want to get to know you, also. We want you to share your experiences and stories with us in the hopes that, together, we can build a community that engages with and supports one another. Believe me, I’ve learned just as much from the artists I’ve coached as they have from me, and I look forward to continuing that experience with all of you. So, go ahead and introduce yourself in the comments, and come back soon, because we’ve got a lot of to talk about!