Well Intentioned: Yara Shahidi on Embracing Curiosity, and Why Pushing Yourself Beyond Your Limits Isn’t Always Cute

By Emily Ross On May 24, 2022

From mantras to meditation, mindfulness to manifestation, Well Intentioned offers an intimate look at how to make space for self-care in meaningful ways, big and small.

Yara Shahidi is quite possibly the busiest 22-year-old in America. Last month, as her hit ABC series, Black-ish, aired its final episode, she said goodbye to the show that made her a household name (she’ll continue filming its spinoff, Grown-ish, which has been renewed for its fifth season), all while completing her senior thesis at Harvard University on the work of scholar Sylvia Winter. “Now is a fun time,” the actor and filmmaker says over Zoom from Boston, where she is counting down the days until her graduation. “Fun time,” it should be noted, isn’t down time. “I’ve just wrapped filming for my part as Tinkerbell in Peter Pan and Wendy,” Shahidi says, adding that she’s preparing for “some movies” post-graduation, including Sitting in Bars with Cakes, Amazon Studios upcoming adaptation of author Audrey Shulman’s award-winning novel, which she is particularly excited about. There are also ongoing ambassadorships with Christian Dior and the tech giant, Dell, to maintain, both of which she has parlayed into her ongoing philanthropic efforts.

Case in point: As part of her new campaign for Dell’s XPS laptop, she’s working with the nonprofit Ghetto Film School as a mentor to the next generation of creatives. “In entertainment, as much as I feel like we should be able to follow our whimsy and our dreams, it’s easy to sometimes be detached,” she says. “All of these modes of staying connected to the world globally, of staying connected to my peers—of using tech to bridge the distance—have been integral to making sure that what I do actually has resonance and is tapped into greater missions.” One of those greater missions is what Shahidi describes as “the advocacy work” she’s able to do through 7th Sun Productions, a company she runs with her mother, Keri Salter-Shahidi. “It’s where I get to most clearly manifest what I love to do,” she says of “making sure that you’re standing up for the people that you believe in, and that you’re pushing norms that have kept people out for so long.”

In the free time she does create for herself, Shahidi’s activities are relatable to any twenty-something adjusting to life after the past couple of years. She’s watching tutorials on low-food-waste cooking, audibly recording voice memos while crying at concerts (“I would see Frank Ocean wherever he chooses to show up”), and patiently awaiting the day that she can return to one of her favorite pastimes: laser tag. “I’m a big laser tagger,” she admits of what she sees as another way to forge deeper IRL connections with friends. Here, Shahidi shares some of the rituals she uses to spark creativity, tap into her musical instincts, and serve her community.

1. Find Creativity Everywhere

I think creativity plays such a central role in showing how we, through culture, deal with monumental moments in life. On a practical level of being a 22-year-old, I’m music obsessed. Even with something as serious as my thesis, what I love about Sylvia’s work is that she’s quoting Nas in these crazy papers about anti-colonial humanism! I’m always listening to something—music, a podcast. It’s actually a problem; I can’t tell if I’m just uncomfortable with silence. But I think it’s just how I feel tapped into the world, by just listening to different perspectives. I’ve been listening to a lot of Dave, I had the honor of seeing him live a couple of days ago. I was already a fan, and had known a good handful of the songs, but by no means his whole discography. It was one of the best live performances I’ve seen. What a stage presence! He played three different instruments! Even though there were songs I was unfamiliar with, it was enjoyable the entire time. When I got home, I downloaded his last album, We’re All Alone in This Together. I also love Dissect, which is a music-based podcast, and The Daily where I can just tap in the morning and see what’s happening in the world. I really lean into tech, and I lean into these larger networks we have. I take pretty seriously being an ambassador of anything so when I tell you my XPS is something I’m on most moments of the day, I’m not kidding. I’m writing my final paper of my undergraduate career right now— I’ve been up since 3 a.m.! And when we’re connecting with directors and we’re not in the same space, we’re obviously Zooming and I’m sending mood boards, and newspaper clippings of inspiration, and I use my laptop to be able to bridge that gap to make sure that I can communicate my creative vision.

Dave’s We’re All Alone In This Together CD

2. Embrace Your Curiosity

One thing my family has always said is that people get educated one way or another, and it happens in different forms. Cornel West has given a great Masterclass recently that I love, and I’ve had the honor of sitting in class with him. But I literally am even going back to the old-school crash courses on YouTube that are run by the Vlogbrothers. I started watching those probably in 7th grade and I still go back to them. John Green and Hank Green started this series so many years ago and it has cute little cartoon people, but they cover subjects on everything from summaries of classic books, to random social phenomena. It has nothing to do with higher education academic interests, but when I’m curious on a subject I don’t know much about, I’ve been trying to embrace those curiosities, to follow those, to honor those, and this feels like a really approachable way to just kind of get into things that I’m unfamiliar with.

3. Show Up As Your Best Self

I come from a family that’s definitely taught me the importance of powering through until whatever’s at hand is done. But I’m trying to kind of break away from that. Because I never end up with the best product, and I finally had to admit that to myself. As much as I used to take pride in, let’s say freshman year, I’d be on set, I’d go home, I’d pull an all nighter, I’d get my homework done for the handful of times that I was off campus, I’d go back to set, I probably got an hour of sleep in the makeup trailer, and I kept it pushing. And it just is not sustainable. I used to have a sense of pride about it, too; there was something cool about that level of sacrifice, or overlooking my personal needs. And I’m at a phase now where it’s just not cute anymore. Because of that, I’ve had to start super simple. I don’t have a daily yoga practice, or even a daily exercise or energy practice. But, like, I need my sleep, which means I need to have my day planned and honor the fact that I need to have my day end at a certain time, which is something I didn’t used to do. I’m also trying to actually focus on staying hydrated. I’m obsessed with lime, it’s a superior citrus in my mind and I’ll drink anything with lime in it. So I’ve been carrying True Lime packets around, which is literally two ingredients, so if you don’t have a lime wedge, these make it really easy to just knock out the first couple of glasses of water. And I’m also a big tea drinker. I’m a Sadaf cardamom tea person. When I’m thinking of just water intake, I love the ritual of getting up and making tea, it’s something that gets me going in the morning when I’m having a hard time waking up. Just being Iranian, you grow up very close to cardamom tea your entire life and it is something I have for sure embraced. And my lunch box! On set they laugh at me. I gifted my Black-ish cast lunchboxes because they were laughing at me throughout the season because I always have a lunchbox on set. The one I’m using right now is called The Foundry lunchbox and it’s just super simple.

Foundry by Fit + Fresh thayer insulated lunch bag

4. Be of Service

I grew up in a household in which being of service was a dialogue that we had at a really young age. The expectation of assessing the resources you have that go beyond the monetary, to what time do you have? What advice do you have? How can you be of support, and how do you give that to people? My parents surrounded us with the expectation that in order to receive you must constantly be giving, but also the idea that abundance has to flow, and it’s not our job to capture everything there is for the taking, but to continue passing on opportunities and moments. It was a blessing to be on a show like Black-ish and then Grown-ish that really didn’t shy away from being about something, or taking pride in the fact that we have things to offer and conversations that we’re excited to start. So much of what brings us together is figuring out how we can do good together. For me, as somebody that’s been so moved by the people that have poured into me and mentored me in the space of acting and production, it was exciting to be able to partner with the Ghetto Film School and in turn be a mentor of sorts and offer resources. Even what drove me to want to go to school in the first place was that I want to learn more, I want to dive in and understand that I’m one small part of a much bigger lineage of people that have chosen to be of service, that have chosen to use their platform. This means that every couple of weeks my idea of what service is, and how to be effective, changes.

5. Explore, Explore, Explore

This really comes from my mother. The one thing she says that I think I say like, every other day, is “there’s nothing more interesting than an interested human.” People that are interested in the world draw other people towards them and it’s really easy to build community with them. It is that feeling of honoring curiosity. Oftentimes, especially now, there’s such a pressure to be an expert. But that limits our ability to honor that we are humans with so many natural and varied instincts. Sometimes it means that the barrier to entry in any topic feels so high, like, I can’t speak on this, I can’t participate in this, until I’m an expert. But you’re never going to get there until you dive in first. It may not directly translate immediately to some sort of gain or success, but it does have a lot to do with your personal development. One thing my parents gave me the space to do at a young age, why I’m a nerd to begin with, is that if I had interests, we’d figure out simple ways to pursue them. I have a TalkBox—one of the OG voice synthesizers. I’ve had it for like 8 months, and I do not know how to use it! I got it because I love Stevie Wonder’s rendition of “Close to You / Never Can Say Goodbye,” where he’s on this Talkbox and it’s the most incredible video to watch. I was just so moved, and while I do not have any interest in releasing an EP anytime soon, something that personally fascinates me is how people produce music. It’s similar to writing for me, coming from an actor’s perspective, it’s just so impressive that nothing existed on the page until you got there and decided to write something down. Nothing existed in this song until you figured out what worked together. So those are just random hobbies that I’ve found so much joy even in failing at. I also have this beautiful Auris xylophone my parents got for my 22nd birthday, and I know it’s an instrument that we usually get in kindergarten, but I’ve had so much fun because it has all of the notes and I’ve found it a more approachable way of learning notes than looking at my keyboard.

Dunlop MXR M222 talk box with cables

Auris Glockenspiel Xylophone

For all the latest fasion News Click Here

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.