The Hang”OWN”ver

Sorry for the divergence from “Your Body Is Not A Disneyland”. We will return to that in my next post. Stay tuned.

I just finished the open audition for Your OWN Show and found it to be a very interesting experience. Mark Burnett (reality show guru) and Oprah Winfrey developed a reality show to have a competition for a talk show that a “Winner” of the competition would host on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

I am not much of a purveyor of many reality shows (I do like my American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance), and never saw myself involved in one, but the opportunity to “win” a talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network seemed to be too big an opportunity to pass up, especially when I have been working on developing my own show for the past year. Apparently that is what about 10,000 or so other people thought too.

I didn’t want to do this audition at first, because I am a more conventional person when it comes to business and have been pitching my show through the more established channels. However, when three separate people told me I should do it and then my Intellectual Properties Attorney said, “You are crazy if you don’t try this.”, I thought I better give it a whirl.

Today, I am never amazed by the number of people who get involved in reality-based shows. So many of us want to be stars, and we often see these opportunities that will bring fame and fortune to be the answers to all of our troubles. Often they are just the beginning of others.

What I loved about the idea of this show was to see so many people who had some really good ideas, and those with dreams who were willing to put themselves out there. Thousands invested in their dream and saw themselves in their OWN studio on the air, daring to dream big. It seemed that others just wanted to be part of the experience so they could have the memory.

As someone who has worked for years on being in the media to share a message I strongly believe is worth sharing, I have to be honest and say that it felt difficult to see all of those people out there wanting something that I have worked for for so long, who likely have not worked as hard as I have. But I also acknowledge that it is my own ego that had me feeling that I was more deserving than many of my compatriots out there for such an opportunity.

The process began with an application. I spent hours on this and tried to put as much of myself into this as I could. I worked off and on for a week on the application. I found it to be a great exercise to reflect on my life, my goals, and to really help me focus on what I want. The next step was the “big day”, the open call audition at a Kohl’s store in Atlanta (sounds a little cheesy don’t you think).

So, I decided that I wanted to be fresh for the day and got a hotel ten minutes away from the Kohl’s store so that I would be able to maximize sleep and not have to worry about the drive. I had my wife and daughter come along so we could spend the evening together, and they would be part of the memory. I went to bed at 11pm. Little did I know that my brain would wake me up at 2 am, more than two hours before I intended to wake up. So my plan for 5-6 hours of sleep turned into 2 hours of sleep. I got out of bed at 4:15 to get ready and then arrived at 5:15, only to find that there were hundreds of people in line waiting already.

While waiting in line, I struck up some conversations with others to hear their stories—everybody has a story. By 5:45 the line was moving and by 6:45, I was given number 874, and per my number, was supposed to be back between 11 and 12. When I looked behind me, there were still another 400 people in line.  In seeing all of those people in line, I had that internal fear that all of these people are going to take my opportunity away from me (after all, the was MY OWN show). The Reality – it wasn’t my opportunity to be taken.

So I returned for my first round. According to the producer, the 20 others in my group and I each had :30 to 1:30 to pitch our show. I was the only man in my group… hmmm great odds. I heard some great ideas and some that seemed like someone just wanted to be on TV. It came to my time, and I felt that I nailed the pitch. It was as I practiced it: I presented my qualifications as an expert, defined the pain to be healed, presented the solution, remained concise, incorporated humor, and ended with my sound bite, all in less than :90. I saw heads nodding, got the applause, and the producer commented on how well I ended the pitch. I felt that they would have to be crazy not to select me for the next round (100 were people selected for the next round of interviews from the 1200 or so that showed up).

So I celebrated my success and waited for the call. It wasn’t if they were going call me, it was when… I also realized that there were many factors that they may be considering for entertainment purposes for the reality show that were beyond my control. I went home and waited for the call. My wife, daughter and I had a relaxing evening, and I waited…   and waited…        and waited. I quietly thought, “Are they calling the best first or last?      How could they pass me up?      I am perfect for hosting my OWN show… Oprah is going to love me…  Why are they not calling me?     This competition is rigged…”

I was feeling the resonance of all of my past rejections in my life, and while I wanted to feel cool and calm about it, there was a part of me that felt that I will never get where I want to be—to change this world. “How could they do this to me?” There was also the balanced side of me that realized that there are likely many others just as qualified as me, if not more. I had to also remind myself that this was not my first choice to do this reality show, and I really was not enthused with the idea of being on it in the first place, so why did I feel so upset. I felt like it was a blind date, and my not so attractive date left me with the dinner check.

I packed it in at about 11pm and went to bed. It felt like Christmas came and went, and Santa Claus didn’t show. So I woke up the next day with my Hang“OWN”ver, realizing that one more opportunity to reach my goals of changing this world came and went. One more opportunity to have my hopes, dreams, goals and expectations fulfilled fell to the ground like a Ming vase off of a museum shelf. The feeling felt so familiar to all of the other times in my life when I experienced losses and perceived betrayals. When things like this happen, I have learned to stop and look inside of myself to find these times and places where my emotions emanate from and honor the emotions and memories that came with them. I knew it would take some time to adjust to the “loss”, and continued to remind myself that this opportunity to get my show off the ground wasn’t the way I wanted to do it. So why did I feel the loss that I did?

Well, what I realized was that my Hang”OWN”ver wasn’t that I truly felt badly about feeling rejected by the show. The experience dredged up the emotional resonance of past rejections that I suppressed and did not want to feel. With that realization and my acceptance of my journey, I had rebounded by Sunday night, and I resolved myself to continue to work toward my goals that I had set. The gift of this experience was that it helped me to renew my commitment to myself, my wife and my daughter, appreciate my practice with my clients who have taught me so much, and reinforce my goal to continue to work toward my show. It is me who chooses how long I stay down and when I choose to get up.

If there is one thing that I have had to learn is that life is what happens when you are making plans. I will refer you a blog I wrote last year, Reach for the Stars and Land on Uranus. I look forward to what the Universe has in store for me. And to all of you who made it to the next rounds in the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Your OWN Show, I wish you all the best. To all of you who put yourself into the process and didn’t make it, I wish you all abundance, and hope your Hang”OWN”ver doesn’t last too long. As Casey Kasem says, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

BTW, Oprah, call me…

Respectfully,

Dr. E…