Photo Credit: Linda Mackie Creative
Adera Angelucci is a creative entrepreneur who works with women to step out of their comfort zone and lead with confidence.
The first time things went horribly sideways for me on stage. I was nineteen, performing with the Vancouver Theatre Sports League. In the heat of the improv, I “gunned” down the other players on stage, leaving me all alone.
Not a smart move when the goal of improv is to play off each other. The lights mercifully went out, and the crowd cheered. I did great! I did not. Backstage, I was told I had destroyed the whole thing.
There were many more disasters.
When I was twenty-seven, I co-hosted the annual talent competition at the PNE fairgrounds with the iconic Red Robinson. The wind kicked up out of nowhere, and my dress flew up around my chest, exposing my underwear to thousands of spectators in the crowd.
I must have had an out-of-body experience because I can’t remember saying this, but my Mom told me I gracefully flattened my dress back down and said, “Well, I guess you got to see more of me than expected,” before swiftly introducing the next act.
With each blunder, I carried on with more and more grace. They taught me I couldn’t attach my self-worth to any particular instance. Instead, I saw them as gifts along my journey to find my flavour of happiness and success.
They built my self-trust and confidence.
By taking action (even less than graceful ones) without concern for the results, I lead myself to understand who I was and what I wanted. I gained clarity on my guiding values: freedom and creative expression. I kept altering my course by making new choices guided by this compass. My inner happiness and definition of success have been seeped in muck ups, wrong turns, and failures, each bringing me closer to where I wanted to go.
Once I started to trust myself and feel confident with who I am, (through mistakes and mishaps, of course), I’ve been able to make decisions with clarity and intuition, even if sometimes what I’m deciding to do seems insane. I trust there is a reason that I am not privy too in that moment.
Owning an award-winning video and marketing company with my husband for almost ten years has taught me to continually go with the flow. We’ve switched up our offerings dozens of times, trying out new products and services, and every time it starts to feel heavy, or we’re stuck, we alter course until we find a good rhythm. For us, our workday needs to feel fun, creative and manageable. Of course, there are days when these needs aren’t fully met, but again there is a reason that we have learned to trust, and it’s all part of the flow.
In January of this year, I decided to take a leap of faith and publish my first book “Free Spirit”. It’s a memoir about how self-love, chaotic creativity and questionable choices taught me to lead.
I had moments, like ever creative does, where my head said, “no one will read this, no one cares about your story and are you sure you really want to do this?” But a force in me greater than that voice decided to press on and didn’t take these comments to heart. I became a best-seller on Amazon and have sold over 500 copies so far, but the real success for me is getting comments from people for whom the book resonated, as it opened their eyes to their own stories and choices, which was the true intent for my book.
I feel like I’m entering into a new phase of life. Firstly, I am 40 and secondly, seven months pregnant with our first child and I have zero clue how my business and life will be altered. Yet, I know with everything I have created to date and have gone through, I have everything I need to be able to expand and go with the flow.
