Yara Shahidi
Appearances
The School of Greatness
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I think anecdotally, it's the feeling of have I peaked? Because there's always that feeling of why is this coming? Sometimes there's a, I deal with the question of why is this coming easily? Why is this coming easily? You know, I've had, I've just felt very lucky in that I wasn't the kid that woke up and said I had to be an actor. For me, it was I have a creative urge and instinct.
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I started in printing commercials. I said no to auditioning for my first movie when I was seven because I'm like, I love printing commercials. I go play. Half the time I'm playing with my family.
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I'm taking photos or a commercial. You're hula hooping. You're biking. You're just doing different things.
The School of Greatness
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and so when i had done my first movie at seven i think what it unlocked in me again wasn't even the instinct of oh i have to do this for the rest of my life but was that was a lot of fun i learned how to ice skate i got to make pancakes i got to work with these cool people that was super fun uh and i think because again i've always had this diversity of interests
The School of Greatness
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In some ways, as much as I think every actor, and I'm always dealing with rejection and misdirection, it's come kind of easy in that I'm like, I've gotten to go to school and be on a show. That's unheard of. And they made it happen. After a call, it took a lot of work, But after a call, they were on board. There was no convincing that had to happen.
The School of Greatness
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I think if it wasn't for COVID, they were going to move the entire shooting schedule to the summer. So I just had an unencumbered year, again, unheard of. And that comes from everybody from the president of ABC to the president of Signature to the president of to the line producer all working in tandem.
The School of Greatness
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I think that's the flip side feeling like, is this right? Is this right that it comes with ease? But I think. I've started to realize ease is the alignment and it's because it should, there should be ease. Yeah. When there's alignment, there's ease. And I think the thing I've been in my family has always been is pretty discerning.
The School of Greatness
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There's still ways to become more discerning, but I think I was like, Oh, some of the ease is because there's been such a discernment of pretty immediately of like, Oh, that's not for us.
The School of Greatness
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And I mean, there've been challenges within that, but for the most part, I'm like the fact that macro, I'm not walking out with any crazy stories about being on set as a child actor. I'm not walking out with any crazy traumas from, from 10 years on set. Like I'm like, wow, how lucky.
The School of Greatness
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You know, I have a family that takes pride in us as individuals, both me and my brothers, handling our money and having a grasp of money management. So I'm like, we've never had a fear that one day it's going to be gone because I know where it all is.
The School of Greatness
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I was doing an interview about money yesterday and they were like, so what were your money troubles? And I'm like... You got to see how I was raised. I'm so again, I feel so lucky. I'm like, I was raised with a family that was so intentional about being like, we want you to feel in charge and autonomous and we're here to guide you. But I was going, mommy set it up.
The School of Greatness
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So I'd go make friends with accounting at Blackish and I'd go pick up my check every week where typically you don't see it as an actor. It gets sent to your team and then you see kind of the end result. I got to see it. I got to see how much the percentages were. I got to see. What the taxes were, and I was able to check.
The School of Greatness
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I remember one time there was the wrong amount on my check, and I was savvy enough at 14 to be like, hey, this isn't the right amount.
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They're like, oh, yeah, you're right. So I'm saying, again, it is easy to feel guilty, to be like, why have I had it so good in the general scheme of things? Uh-huh. And I really couldn't tell you why, but I think I'm coming to terms with the fact that even on this road to self-discovery, I do have to say I've known myself pretty well.
The School of Greatness
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And so I'm realizing that some of this is the result of having known myself and continuing to learn myself.
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They let me be so quirky, you know, like it did not cross my mind.
The School of Greatness
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Yeah. I think, I mean, part of it- Like intense work and effort, but not extreme adversities. Yeah. And I think- For me, there are two things I realize. One, I think I minimize maybe some of the challenges I do face. We're also dealing with a lot of pressures from just being in the industry and all these different things.
The School of Greatness
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I think some of it is that because I've moved through it, eventually, sometimes I think my ability to look back with the rose-colored lenses, I'm like... No challenges. Mind you, while we were in it, deeply challenging. So some of it is that I do know I'm minimizing past challenges and I'm trying to come to terms with just being more honest with that. But I think some of it too is just knowing
The School of Greatness
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Again, coming back to the cause and effect thing, so many things happen to good people. So many things you can't account for. It has nothing to do with how morally upstanding you are. It has nothing to do with how many resources you have, what you have, what you don't have. I think maybe it's hitting my quarter-life crisis a couple months early.
The School of Greatness
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I think I hear stories of what people go through, whether it's family members passing, certain things like that, and I go, would I be not able to overcome, willing to overcome? I think I have the capacity to do things, but I'm like, do I have the willingness to see a challenge and push through it? Part of it comes from just my genuine amazement of...
The School of Greatness
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The courage that people muster in times that feel almost impossible, at least outside looking in. So maybe some of it, it just, it comes from that space of like, I'm truly amazed. I can't wrap my mind around it when I hear other people's stories of like, what made you double down and push through these hard moments?
The School of Greatness
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Again, part of why we started the podcast was being like, I want to hear what did make you go through that? And it's been really clarifying to me because I think it almost felt like there's some sort of magical alchemy that I couldn't name that's happening versus like, no, it's a mixture of human perseverance and the fact that hopefully, God willing, what...
The School of Greatness
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the traits that you need come to you when you need them, the qualities that you need come to you when you need them. And so that's helping me make sense of it. But I think for me, I'm like, what is the mental fortitude regimen that helps us as young people just continue to build
The School of Greatness
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a sense of not even just discipline in terms of schedule, but discipline in terms of being like, I know what my mind is doing. I'm kind of aware of it. That's interesting. I'm able to move through this. I'm able to move through the inevitable losses we're going to deal with, challenges we're going to deal with, the things I can't account for. Yeah. That's really insightful though. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
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So it's been top of mind, but I don't know how helpful it is to be thinking about it too much.
The School of Greatness
3 Secrets To Manifesting Anything
I think that's the thought that keeps me up, which is what should I be doing? Do you feel like you've always been disciplined?
The School of Greatness
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But even as like a college athlete like that, that's something even if I was flying back and forth and doing all that, my friends that were waking up at 5 a.m. every day, I was like...
The School of Greatness
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That's a great way of naming it because I think that's something I've struggled to name. It's not that I'm sacrificing these things. It's not a sacrifice. I wasn't interested.
The School of Greatness
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I'd have to say it's 50-50. I'm pretty lucky to feel surrounded by people that are chasing. Dream and all of it looks very different.
The School of Greatness
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Yeah, some of them I don't even understand but I see the passion and so I think just by the nature of maybe just who I've ended up in community with I'm surrounded by people where I feel like Generationally, there are a lot of people that are moved by whether it's their art or their career I think I saw that both in the creative landscape.
The School of Greatness
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But I think even in the creative space, what was a good example is I'm like, all my friends are at the top of the top now, but they didn't start that way. And so many of them had really interesting experiences.
The School of Greatness
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kind of non-traditional ways of getting into their respective field, which require just a lot of belief in self, not necessarily traditional schooling to be a musician, traditional this to be that. And so in that regard, I see a lot of discipline there. And I think what's funny is I hang out with people that all have bedtimes that are like, well,
The School of Greatness
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And also people that are very sure about what is fun to them and participate in like, oh, this is what's fun to me. It's different for each of us, but it's cool to be like, oh, yeah, people are only showing up because this is enjoyable to them. And they have felt freed of showing up for the sake of showing up.
The School of Greatness
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Yeah. I think it's a mix. Like when I see somebody like... My little brother, 16, we're technically same generation. It feels like a world of difference.
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And he's someone that's also very creatively inspired. But I think the difference that I see is that even having... Instagram didn't come about until I was 13. And even though that was young, it was enough time for my brain to have had a life before social media. And it was... Sorry, it was years before it became a regular part of my life. And it was years before we were using that to compare.
The School of Greatness
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So I just feel like I had more mental tools about how to deal with it. Still hard, still on my phone way too much. I turn on grayscale at random times to be like, let me, I don't know, does it disrupt the serotonin? I don't know the science behind it, but I'm like grayscale.
The School of Greatness
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But I think the thing that I see is like, oh, their world is so busy all the time that I can't even blame the feeling of distraction because I'm like, between all the news that's being intaken and between the fact that I feel like when I was growing up, I was only preoccupied with the life that I was living.
The School of Greatness
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Yeah, and there was also no way of seeing the life that even my friends were living, except for the handful of times we were having a play date.
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Yeah, I'm like, there was just no way of checking in on that.
The School of Greatness
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And I think even creatively, I've had the privilege of being in all these luxury fashion spaces, but that was all tied to work. I did not find myself in any of those stores prior to working with these brands. Right. Because it just wasn't on my radar.
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The way my brother has friends where it's like, oh, they know all of it all the time. They're tracking Fashion Week. Really? And I was like, I think I learned what Fashion Week was when I got an invite to attend because I was working in this space. I didn't have, again, all these worlds I was checking in on that didn't have anything to do with me right now.
The School of Greatness
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And so I do feel like there's a particular challenge. And I have a lot of empathy for just generationally that feeling of what are we going to do with this world? information overload where it's even hard to parse apart what do I need to intake?
The School of Greatness
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I'm a severe over news listener and I think my task has been listening to a little less news because it's like there's only so much you can do about it and it pushes, at least for me, I think it pushes me into a space of feeling very overwhelmed versus feeling activated. So I've been trying to be like, okay, what amount of news makes me feel activated but not overwhelmed?
The School of Greatness
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Yeah, and some of it is a great point because some of it was that I've always been an audiophile. We grew up in a house where we didn't watch TV except for Saturdays for an hour, which I love. But it meant that I love audio. That is my form of entertainment. And so you're absolutely right.
The School of Greatness
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There was a time, even though I don't know if I would call it that while I was listening, that it was more so like, oh, I'm listening to NPR.
The School of Greatness
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You're listening to NPR so much that they're sending you free merch. That may be a cue. That may be a cue that you're listening to too much NPR. Because I was like, I have the app on my phone. I'm not even waiting until I'm in the car. I'm listening all the time. I'm waiting for the midday update. I'm waiting for the end of the day update. I'm cycling through local news.
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I'm typing in local stations. And so I think changing that, because then I was listening to political podcasts at night. I was falling asleep to them. I was like, oh, bedtime. Time to turn on.
The School of Greatness
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I love NPR because it is pretty straightforward, but I think for me, the amount I was consuming of every podcast available again was fulfilling more of an entertainment side. So it's been nice to literally reintroduce. I have those moments where I'm like, okay, time to get updated here. I want twice a day. Maybe I'll get to a once a day person. I'm a twice a day person.
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But in between, I'm back to listening to old time radio shows. Johnny Dollar is my favorite insurance investigator played by Bob Bailey. And so I'm like, oh, if this is fulfilling the need to be listening to something, what else can I be listening to? Back to This American Life, back to just like...
The School of Greatness
3 Secrets To Manifesting Anything
Yeah, well, like you said, I come from two really wonderful, thoughtful parents, Afshin and Carrie, who I call Bubba and Mommy, but really wonderful people that have their own global background. So, you know, my bubba moved to the States from Iran when he was eight, comes from a very global service-minded family.
The School of Greatness
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My mama comes from a family where it's like my papa and nana, my papa in particular was really involved in the civil rights movement. So that very direct idea of what it is to be of service, to sacrifice kind of your own comfort for the greater good.
The School of Greatness
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And so much of the dialogue around being of service just happened at the dinner table, happened in a very natural way where I don't think I even realized, oh, I'm having these heady conversations. Hear me. And I think there were also things that they did that were very supportive of
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of that of going to schools that had volunteer requirements, whether that was the Montessori or the public school or the Catholic school I went to, they all had volunteer requirements. And so I think it was also being modeled for me in every environment I was in of not just how money is a resource, but how your time is a resource.
The School of Greatness
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The idea of giving as being just a part of the fabric of life and not as something that you wait to do once you have quote unquote made it. Even when they were giving me and my brothers just allowance, again, having really thoughtful parents, what mommy had done was we'd put all of the money that we made from acting right into savings, but they'd give us an allowance for being on set.
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And from that allowance, from those 10 bucks or however much we decided, they had the save, spend, and donate bucket. And we got to choose how much are we donating, how much are we saving, how much are we spending. And, again, I say this all as a foundation of saying I had a great foundation of ways in which being of service can be integrated into our day-to-day life.
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And I think even still, having Lami as a business partner, one trait I think I admire most that many people can attest to. I was in a room she wasn't in. I'm talking about something random. And literally somebody else, another actress paused to be like, can we talk about Carrie Shahidi?
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Because what she is is so deeply tapped into the world around her and so deeply curious that I think she is constantly of service by giving kind of her mind as a resource. We will see someone at the airport who says off randomly, oh, I really want to start this project. It's like, oh, that's interesting.
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I've cataloged, oh, I met this one entrepreneur that makes shirts that I would love to connect you. She's connected authors with lawyers for their multi-million plus book deal and not realizing that's what it was for, but just being like, oh, you're an interesting person. This is another person that's interesting. You guys should be connected. That's cool.
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But it comes from just being so deeply attuned and paying attention in spaces that we're in the same rooms. And she's picking up on things where I'm like, huh? Oh, yeah, I guess that did happen. But I say that to say I feel like. it's an example of what it means to be attuned towards service. And it's not even less necessarily, oh, I'm working with this organization or this foundation.
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It's truly, I'm operating from an anchoring place of how can I be of value to you? Even if it has nothing to do with me. Most of these things never circle back. It's a thank you that you may get. But to answer even your question on being of service and then receiving, I think,
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I've had a lot of examples of how things, time, resources that I've given have come back around in ways that I could never expect. I wasn't expecting it when I gave. And I think even in our starting our production company, we were both astounded by how many people wanted to work with us when we were just opening our doors.
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Had yet to prove ourselves as producers because they knew what it was like to be in relationship with us.
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And the things that we'd give generally without saying, hey, we're going to circle back around in a couple of years when we have our own offices. And so I think a lot of what I've received has been the result of giving. And I think I've learned so many lessons about how that happens. My papa has this great term.
The School of Greatness
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He uses relationship equity, which is one, just logistically, especially for us 20 year olds call between needing things, especially from the people around you. It's okay if you need things and you need to call people, but call between, see how they're doing.
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Not just when not, Hey, how are you by the way?
The School of Greatness
3 Secrets To Manifesting Anything
But more than just calling between needing things, I was raised on relationship equity, which is the priority in this world is building relationships with the people around you. It's not building networks. It's not building contacts. It's building relationships.