How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life(37)
Two days before I was supposed to take off, I still didn’t have a flight booked. It made me feel unsettled. It’s cool, though, I thought. This is how L.A. functions, super-last-minute. I continued ironing out the details of my #GirlLove Challenge until my manager called me with some bad news. For whatever reason, the shoot wasn’t going to happen anymore. I wasn’t going to New York and I wasn’t going to collaborate with one of my biggest inspirations. Just like that. In a matter of minutes, everything fell apart. I was absolutely heartbroken.
“I KNOW THE QUOTE GOES, ‘WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES ANOTHER OPENS.’ BUT WHY DIDN’T ANYONE EVER TRY OPENING THE CLOSED DOOR?
For a whole day I walked around like a zombie, completely unmotivated and disappointed. I loved the #GirlLove Challenge idea so much, and I was bummed that it wouldn’t happen. I complained and ranted and then finally tired myself out and went to bed. While lying there, unable to sleep, I had a spontaneous thought: What if I didn’t need to collaborate with a movie star to do the challenge? What if I stopped focusing on the person I couldn’t meet with and started thinking about all the people I did have access to? After all, I believed in the idea more than anything! Right then and there, I sent a voice note to my management saying that the #GirlLove Challenge would happen, regardless, and I would need their help. I was going to pry the door back open.
Over the next week I contacted every influential woman I knew, from Grace Helbig to Shay Mitchell, and got them to send me a clip complimenting another woman, aka the #GirlLove Challenge. Instead of focusing the whole thing around an upcoming movie, I focused on my channel’s demographic and pivoted the challenge toward making a positive difference for my large female audience. I released the video, featuring eighteen influential women, as one of my Christmas collaborations—and the response was overwhelming. Countless media outlets picked up the video, and it reached the likes of Tyra Banks and Priyanka Chopra (to name a few), who each tweeted about it and took part in the challenge. The #GirlLove became a global phenomenon—young girls across the globe were complimenting each other on social media using the hashtag #GirlLove.
After all the hype died down, which it eventually did, I thought the #GirlLove Challenge would die too. It might become a once-upon-a-time viral hit. However, the video birthed a passion within me, and in 2016 I hired a team and launched #GirlLove as a full-fledged social campaign. Today, as I write this, #GirlLove has a complete social strategy and is an episodic series on my channel. It got me inside the White House to discuss women’s issues with Michelle Obama and recently allowed me to travel to Kenya to learn more about women’s education in the Maasai community. Furthermore, a #GirlLove rafiki bracelet was created in partnership with ME to WE (an amazing organization—Google them) and the proceeds are going toward giving Kenyan girls scholarships to attend secondary school. I also held a workshop in Singapore to teach young girls how to spread #GirlLove, and the venue was completely sold out. All of this happened because my collaboration didn’t work out. Every success that #GirlLove has is a direct result of molding the broken pieces of a previous failure.
In most negative situations in life, you can create a positive outcome if you just look hard enough. Aside from the #GirlLove Challenge, there is a much greater example from my life in which I took something not so great and made it great. When people ask me what I’m most grateful for in life, they get confused when I reply, “Depression.” I started making YouTube videos in 2010 because I was trying to make myself happy and escape depression. I thought if I could make others laugh, then I could also make myself laugh. My dedication to YouTube was me self-medicating; it was a pick-me-up, a distraction, and a goal to work toward. To this day, depression is the worst feeling I’ve ever encountered in my life. It was heart-wrenchingly painful. Everything I have today—every video, success, and opportunity—is the direct result of taking that pain and turning it into something positive: comedy. I’ll never have to take a pottery class because I’ve already molded the most difficult thing: my life.
To take failure and turn it on its head, to make something unexpected out of it, is a beautiful thing. I could have abandoned the #GirlLove Challenge. I could have let my depression take me down a path that led nowhere. But instead I decided to get my hands dirty with some Play-Doh and create something new. Often we’re too busy being disappointed or upset to recognize that the tools we need to create a new masterpiece are right in front of us. They just require a little rearranging and assembly. Don’t let disappointment blind you to potential. Roll up your sleeves, use your creativity as glue, and mold your success.
MY LIMO PULLS UP and the driver walks around to open the door for me. As soon as I step on the red carpet, my fans go crazy and start chanting my name. Cameras are flashing and my security is surrounding me. I’m about to walk into the premiere of my very own movie, A Trip to Unicorn Island, a documentary that follows me on my world tour. It’s taking place at the prestigious Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. The entire street is shut down for my event. The film is a hit and I have a blast at the afterparty. People are congratulating me left, right, and center. Mama, I’ve made it.
Fast-forward to two days later and I’m nervously driving around a studio, completely lost, already two minutes late. I park somewhere random and speed-walk toward the closest person I see to ask for directions. They have no clue. I find someone else and they proceed to draw me a map on a pamphlet with a dying pen. I race left, then right, then left again, trying desperately to follow these chicken-scratch directions. Finally I find the building and walk into my audition. I sit down in a small room with a water fountain and two other people. No one even looks at me. Eventually a woman calls my name and I follow her into an even smaller room. She riffles through some paperwork without giving me a proper look and says, “Do you have your headshot?” Confused, I reply, “Um, my agent should have sent all my information.” She looks up at me and says, “Oh, sorry. Found it. Lilly, right?” Yup. That’s me. I do the audition and within 120 seconds I’m back out the door, struggling to find my car. I am a nobody.