Chewing the dang scenery
Hi! New here? Welcome to the Uplifters! I'm Aransas Savas. I've spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching. On The Uplifters Podcast, we share diverse stories of women who have found something beautiful on the other side of the hard stuff. Despite self-doubt and fear (and honestly, who doesn't have those?), they've done big, brave things anyway, and show us how we can too!
A few months ago,
invited a bunch of folks to Lonely Worm Farm, where inclusion, art, and ecology meet. She wanted us to read Shakespeare on the summer solstice outside with fireflies and a bonfire – "low pressure," she said, all about spontaneity and fun and celebrating what's good in the world. You can read more about it in her latest Substack.
When I opened her note in March, something in me exploded with delight. It was March. My Q1 had felt like a marathon of checking boxes, unpacking moving boxes, and generally boxing myself in with an overfull schedule. But, a lifetime ago, I was an actor. Got a master's in acting, in fact. Moved to NYC with big dreams, then discovered I really didn't like the actor's life and moved on to other things. But when I read Eliza's invitation – just weeks before my 50th birthday – it felt like waking up a version of myself that had been sleeping as deeply as Snow White.
Without hesitation, I responded: "Magical dreaming is apparently exactly what I needed in my life today. I am 100% yay yay yay."
When she asked us to choose parts, a quiet little voice whispered, "Let somebody more experienced, more talented, better suited play Titania." But I didn't listen. I stuck my hand up immediately for Titania in all her bold, silly complexity.
The day before our reading, I asked myself what my intention was. The answer was clear: Be brave. Be bold. Don't hold anything back. Play. Have fun. Lean in. Don't worry what others think. Be prepared.
On one hand, this felt beautifully low-key and low-risk. On the other? It felt like a giant invitation to practice everything I want to practice in every part of my life and work.
So I chewed the freaking scenery. I vamped and preened and took up so much space that I nearly ignited my dress in those citronella lanterns. Not once, but twice.
It was FUN! Like really, really, really fun! But what’s stayed with me all week is something one of my castmates said, "You made us all better. I was just going to read it aloud – that would have been nice. But you went for it, and it pushed us all to go for it more, too."
That's exactly what Eliza did for all of us that night. Her bold come-as-you-are acceptance, her playful delight, the magical community she's cultivated – it all went so big that we rose up to meet that energy.
This feels crucial to remember right now, especially when there's so much in the world trying to drag our energy down. Every single one of us has the power to raise the energy. That's what an uplifter is, after all – someone who raises the energy, raises the bar, makes us all want to go bigger and better.
It's what psychologists call attunement – the way we naturally sync up with and influence each other's attitudes, beliefs, and actions. When one person brings authentic enthusiasm and courage, it creates permission for everyone else to do the same.
I watched a CEO client do this just this week. She got awkward and brave with her team about what she didn't know, which gave her team permission to share what they didn't know. Suddenly, everyone could work together to actually address the problem because they'd been honest about what the problem was.
Another client who is a Marketing executive just started at a new company where layoffs are impacting morale. Instead of letting her new colleagues’ frustration drag her down, she’s committed to hearing them, engaging them in solutions, and intentionally raising the morale with her new kid on the block enthusiasm.
I've see it in brave Uplifters podcast guests like Emily Levin, who stepped out of her comfort zone as a therapist to co-found an AI-driven technology product that is helping get people into public housing more quickly and easily, saving millions of hours and billions of dollars, and the countless women who've shared their stories of taking up space in rooms where they were the first, the only, or the youngest.
Energy is contagious. When we choose to bring our biggest, boldest selves to whatever stage we're on – whether it's Shakespeare on a farm or a boardroom meeting – we create space for everyone else to rise up too.
The world needs more people willing to nearly catch their dresses on fire for the sake of beauty, connection, and play.
What energy are you bringing today?
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