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Welcome to Film on Tape, a free audio library for creatives in film and television. My name is Misha Calvert, and I've worked as an actor, writer, director, and producer for many decades. I had so many questions when I was first getting started in New York,
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and I just wanted fast, free answers. That is what this library is for. The work that you do as a creative is so important. I really hope that this library is going to help get your work out there. Film on Tape is sponsored by Vermillion, a coaching and educational company for creatives. You can learn more at clubvermillion.com. Can you believe it's halfway through the year already? Boy, time really, really, really flies.
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I'm going to do a mid-year review with you today. One of the most downloaded episodes of this podcast is the Life Inventory, which I did in January. And we didn't even really promote it that much but people went freaking crazy over it. They just loved the review of their lives and looking at everything laid out. And so in the spirit of that I'm going to offer a mid-year review to take stock of where have you come to after six months of this year? And where - and potentially where do you want to go? Are you on track? Are you not on track?
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Do you want to correct? Do you want to course correct? Let's start by thinking of the yearly goals that we set out at the top of this year. And you know maybe you didn't have specific goals but just thinking generally about where you wanted to be this year of your life, well we're halfway through that year of your life. So are you close to those goals? And I know there's so much going on in the world right now. At the time of recording we're potentially going to war like literally any minute. Any minute.
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I'm sure things will have changed by the time this airs but there'll be like 55 different crises in the news just between now and a week from now. But is that distracting you or pulling you away from what you're trying to do with your life?
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Are you finding that world events are making you move slower or are they making you move faster? I've seen both. You feel like, well it's now or never. Might as well do that thing I always wanted to do. Might as well hurry up with that personal development
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because I might not be able to in five years or whatever. So it's interesting to witness how crisis affects us. Does it make you move slower or faster? I see these world events, and some of them quite frightening and harmful. I see them like a tide of energy. You know, putting aside the morality of it for a moment,
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there's this tide of energy. It's almost impossible to ignore it, but I think if this tide is coming or here, I would rather be on top of that wave and surfing it as opposed to being pulled under by it. I don't want to be unprepared by this wave and pulled underneath it and drown. So it's good to just understand, okay, there's a lot of energy right now. There's a lot of shifts that, you know - I can't control the ocean. I don't know if any of you've ever surfed before. I have a little bit. I love it. It's so hard.
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But you get to a point where you're like, oh this is way, way bigger than me. Like the ocean is just incomparably bigger than me. So I have a choice. I can either get underneath a wave or I can ride it. This gets a little bit easier if we stop thinking about only ourselves. And I don't want to say abandon your own survival. Like that's not what I'm talking about. But when it comes to trying to stay on course and stay on goal, there have been studies and
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a lot of people that are smarter than me writing about this that show if you want to stay accountable and committed to what you're trying to do, if you take into consideration the other people that are going to be affected or benefit from what you're doing, you're more likely to finish what you're doing. You're more likely to carry on the mission if the mission isn't just about you. So as you're looking at how productive or not you are this year, consider pulling in
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other people to what you're trying to do and who you're trying to do it for and why. Why, why, why. What if your audience needs you more than you need an audience. What if they need you more than you need them? I think that you're needed to serve. I think that we need you as an artist to create and help keep the energy on the planet properly aligned in a spirit of creativity and benevolence. You serve better when you're joyful and healthy, so and thus, I want you to be joyful and healthy - not only because I want that for you and I want you to be happy, but it's also going
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to make you better at serving other people. So please get healthy and joyful and then serve. It's like you serve yourself in order to then serve other people better. And then look around and see what are the results of that service that you're providing, the creativity that you're providing, and then you optimize and you improve the cycle and you do it all over again.
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This is the formula to having a really great rest of your year. Figure out what you're here to do, your why, do it, fix up the process, fix up yourself, and then repeat. Most people don't do this, and most people feel kind of unfulfilled. It was when I launched Vermillion,
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and I started to really focus on service, that everything started to make a lot more sense. I started to feel very fulfilled by the work. Now Vermillion isn't the only thing I do. I'm also a filmmaker. I'm directing this weekend. But that combo of serving my
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vision and then serving other people's dreams works really well for me. It's a really good balance. Maybe that'll change someday but for now it feels like a good balance. And of course when I'm on set I'm not like some you know self-obsessed maniac. The whole point of filmmaking is that it's collaboration and you are serving other people all the time. All the time. Even if you're the star. Especially if you're the star you're serving other people. So and so now I think it's a good time to talk about how to find your why. Aka your purpose.
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I'm gonna ask you a few questions that are gonna help you land on your why. Now Simon Sinek has done a lot of work on this. He's written some very good books on this already. So if you want to really deep dive into your why, check out his work. I love his work. He's great.
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And also this is me expanding on it a little bit in my own way. So you might want to grab a pen and paper if you can take notes, like pause the podcast for a moment and write down your answers or you can just think about it as I'm going. But you are going to need someone to help you with this. So if you can pull in a friend to listen to this part of the episode or just write down the questions and sit down with a friend over coffee and do this at a later time. In four simple questions you're gonna get very close to finding your why. Simon Sinek would say that we only have one why.
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It's the same why that we're born with and it doesn't really change over the course of our lives. It can refine and we can get more clear about it but basically we already have our purpose built in. It's just up to us to find it and start acting on it. So here are the questions.
I am so excited to tell you that I'm launching a brand new slate of classes that are incredibly helpful on my website. Some of the classes include on-camera acting technique and how
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to self-produce your own film, actor self-care, which is something that nobody talks about, and how to write a feature film in 10 days, which I'm gonna teach you how I did it and how you can do it too. And believe me when I say I poured my heart into these courses. Go to clubvermillion.com. I am so excited about this website. I can't wait to work with you.
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Number one, when are you most lit up? It's a two-parter. As a child and now. When were you most lit up? Doing what? Number two, what activates you the most emotionally? As a child, what activated you? Made you happy, sad, mad? And how about now? Happy, sad, mad, disgusted, confused, excited? What activates you the most? Number three, what is your superpower? I know you have many but what's the main one as a child? And now what's your superpower now? Is it the same?
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And finally number four, this is where you need the friend to help you with this. So find somebody else to answer this question. Let them hear all of your answers to these first three questions and then you ask them, okay friend, what's the through-line? What is the through-line for all my answers? And that friend is going to tell you what they hear and they're probably gonna find something that is touching on your why, if not a bullseye. So really take on board what they say.
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The through line in your childhood and in your adulthood and it might even be the same. So now that you have perhaps a sense of your why maybe for the first time really deeply, how can you take what you learned and bring it into what you're trying to build for the rest of the year? How can you marry what is already in motion with what you just learned about yourself?
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Because I guarantee that an accurate why, once you learn how to harness it, is going to make you go faster and farther with your goals. You're going to feel like a jet pack is on your back. And it just really gives you some weight behind what you're already doing. Because suddenly you have purpose.
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And again, that purpose will probably involve other people, but other people includes you. You're part of people. So if your why is like, I want to serve relationships because it's the most important thing we have, that also includes your relationships. You may be building a whole, I don't know, creative empire around like Hallmark movies.
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That's basically what Hallmark movies are about is relationships and somebody somewhere founded Hallmark and maybe maybe they're like, yeah, I want to dedicate my life to creating portrayals of positive relationships on screen. That also includes your own relationships at home. So I don't want you to think that this means neglect yourself because that's not what I'm talking about. All right. So we have our why. We have some idea of how that's going to inform the second half of our year.
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I'm gonna give you four categories to look at to take inventory for this mid-year review. So the first category is health. And again, you can pause the episode and write this down or just think about it. But how are you on health?Physical, mental, emotional, and emotional includes joy. How high is your joy?
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Once you've looked at health, let's look at your relationships. Family, friends, partners, partner, singular, maybe, partner or partners. Hey, it's 2025. Uh, animals, pets. If you have pets, what are your relationships like? That could even be with strangers. Relationship to the world. Number three, money. Look at the quantity and quality of the money in your life and think about if it's where you want it to be.
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And finally, number four, creativity. This includes inspiration, projects, community time and effort, given purpose. Or why. Right. Let's do just a quick little fun quiz where let's say that you have - we're gonna score each of these four categories and see which one is the one that you need to focus on. You might not wanna take the answer and run with it, but.
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Maybe you will. It's just like a fun, mathematical way to approach these four categories. For the midyear review. For the midyear review that I, I think is really like, it's almost like a Cosmo quiz. Okay, so let's say that health, let's say that, that you could only focus on one thing. If you focused on health and you fixed up your health and your health was A++.
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Would that fix also your relationships, your money, and your creativity? And you get an automatic point for the thing that you fix. So for instance, if you fix your health, you get one point. And then let's say it's not gonna fix your relationships and it's not gonna fix your money, but it is gonna fix your creativity.
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That's two points. So you get one point for health and you get one point for creativity. Go to the next one. So health gets a score of two, right? Or whatever you decide based on the quiz. Relationships. If you fix your relationships and they're all A++ and it's all great, you're really happy with where your relationships are at...
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Is that going to fix your health? Is that going to fix your money? Is that going to fix your creativity? Let's say it doesn't fix any of those. You get a score of one. Relationships just fixes itself. If you fix your money, is it gonna fix your health? Is it gonna fix your relationships? Is it gonna fix your creativity?
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Maybe it fixes all four or, yeah, all the, the other three. So you get a score of four. Right? And for your creativity, if you fix that, is it gonna fix your health, your relationships, your money? So I'm really curious how this scoring plays out for you. And I say fix, like in quotation marks. It's, it's a fun way to, to talk about it, but you know, in the healing and wellness community, fix can be a triggering word.
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So I'm not saying you're broken. I'm not saying you're bad or you know, it's just a way to talk about putting effort into an exploration of getting each of these categories to where you want them to be. So you are not broken, don't worry. I love you and we're all good over here, but also I wanna hear your score.
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So tell me your score of DM me. Tell me what you scored and I'll tell you what I scored too. This has been such a fun mid-year review. It's got me really thinking about taking big, bold action for the rest of this year. I'm not getting any younger. Maybe you are, I don't know, got some biohacks that you're doing, but I certainly am not getting younger, so not right now.
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I'm gonna hit my goal list super hard and make Q3, hmm, possibly the most productive quarter of my life. I'm just gonna go ahead and name that and claim that right now. This has been really fun. Thank you so much for coming with me on this midyear review and let me know if it works for you. All right, friends, I'll see you next week.
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Thank you so much for listening to Film On Tape. If you like the way that I approach the industry, check out our other classes, consulting and mentorship at clubvermilion.com. Vermilion is a home for artists and those looking to expand creatively, whether you're an actor, a film professional. An entrepreneur or A CEO, we'll help you find your voice and hone your skills to thrive in any market at any scale. You can schedule a free phone [email protected].
