I’ve always felt most at home in the world of numbers. My comfort zone was in ledgers and columns, where everything added up and made perfect sense. Then, one day, my life takes an unexpected turn. My teachers pull three other students and me out of a class. We’re ushered into a room where people from Oxford University are waiting. They tell us they expect the four of us to get the grades to go to Oxford. I hear the words, but they don’t land. My mind immediately shouts, “They’re fools. How is someone like me going to get into Oxford?” I walk out of that room, and the thought sticks with me. I don’t see that my teachers believe in me, or the smart people from Oxford, or even my parents. My self-esteem is so low I can’t see past my own self-doubt. For years, a nagging voice in my head tells me I’m not good enough, so I don’t try anything new. I just stick to accounting, wanting nothing more than to be safe.

When I’m 30, a friend hands me a Tony Robbins tape. It’s the first step on a long, slow journey to get rid of that nagging voice. I spend more and more time developing myself through tapes, videos, books, and courses. I make some progress, but it’s still not enough to quiet the doubt.

Then, in 2020, the pandemic strikes. I’m in a full-time job and the world seems to pause. I start to reassess my life, specifically my belief that I’m not a creative person. It’s an opinion I’ve always held, but the self-development work has taught me that beliefs can be changed. I challenge that old opinion and ask myself, “What evidence is there to back this up?” I ask it over and over, and I can’t find any. So I decide to embark on a new journey, a creative adventure to gather evidence. I quit my job.

My adventure takes me to a place I never imagined: the stage. I take improv classes at The Free Association and then at Hoopla. I even take a clowning course at The Why Not Institute. To enhance my storytelling and soft skills, I experiment with acting at places like the Citylit, the London Meisner Company, and the Actors Door Studio. An actor’s job is to make an audience so invested in a story that they are totally mesmerised. A good example of this is when you are so engrossed in a movie that you jump when a door slams in the room you are sitting in. To emotionally reach an audience and compel them to invest in the story; that’s the skill I’m after, and I’m using acting as a tool to get it.

Through this process, with a lot of compliments and small wins, a new reality begins to set in. I realise I am funny when I’m not trying to be. I have a natural gift for creativity, a process that’s actually quicker than some of my mentors’. The positive feedback I receive provides the evidence I need. The nagging voice that told me I wasn’t good enough has finally disappeared. It’s been replaced with a voice that tells me I can achieve anything I want, because I know now that if I can change one belief, I can change any belief.

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