Ep. 06 - Adam LaSalle: The Teacher Who Walked Away From Everything to Chase a Dream

At almost 30, Adam Lasalle had it all figured out. A stable job, benefits, students who adored him, a future mapped out for decades. He was the founding music teacher, building a school from the ground up. Then one Friday, an email landed in his inbox. A theater contract. Someone had dropped out of a show. Could he start Tuesday?

He thought it was spam. He deleted it.

In this episode of The Underdog Protagonist, host Pratyush PK sits down with actor, musician, and creative coach Adam Lasalle to unpack the terrifying, tearful, and ultimately life-changing decision to walk away from security and bet on himself. Adam gets brutally honest about the fear that ruled his life, the therapist who told him nothing was wrong with him, his life was just out of alignment with his values and the moment his high school students taught him the lesson he'd been preaching all along.

This is a conversation about the "messy middle" nobody posts on social media. About unlearning the story that says you're only allowed to be one thing. About why practice is terrible and why that's exactly why it works. If you've ever felt trapped between the life you have and the life you actually want, this one will stay with you.

Adam shares the daily ritual that keeps him grounded, why he "wastes time" on purpose, how to tell the difference between passion and comparison, and the honest truth about choosing meaning over money (and why he refuses to accept that it's a choice at all).
You are one decision away. Press play.

Guest: Adam Lasalle (Actor, musician, creative coach, and founder of the Adam Lasalle Studio.)

This episode touches on anxiety, therapy, and mental health. If you're struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or a professional.

Drop a comment if this hit home and don’t forget to subscribe for more stories that speak to the heart of what it means to care, love, and live fully.

Connect with Adam:
Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube


Connect with Pk: LinkedIn | X | YouTube

If you are liking the show, please share it along! Its free.
Support the show to help us keep creating awesome content.

Buy me a Coffee

Transcript

From being a teacher to achieving so many things, I believe the pure art is something that is kind of difficult to achieve. And that's one of the things that I try to mention everywhere that I go. My graduate school studies, what I studied was, can you teach passion? I was really interested in understanding kind of what motivated people to take those big exciting risks in their life, to follow something so wholeheartedly.

One of the things that I learned in my research was that modeling is everything. People feel inspired when they see inspiration embodied. People understand the world when they see people living their version of their truth.

I'm assuming that being a teacher, you have a lot of attachment with your staff, with the school, the university, and the students the most. This is a fun story. It took me a long time to make the decision to pursue my dream.

I don't know if other people experience this, but for me, I feel like I needed it to spiral in my mind for years. And I had a conversation with my parents who are a bit of like a board of directors in my life. And so I went to both of them and I said, this opportunity came into my life.

I don't know what to do. My father, who I love dearly, but he is rooted in an old school way of thinking. And my mother said something I'll always remember.

And she said, if you don't do this, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life. She was absolutely right. And that was the moment that I said.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to a fresh episode of The Underdog Protagonist. I'm Prakush. And our guest today is someone who knows what it means to bet on yourself, even when the outcome is unclear.

Adam Laszlo is an actor, musician, and creative coach who left behind the safety of a teaching career to build a life that felt old, aligned, and deeply human. Since then, he has starred on TV, performed off Broadway, voiced national ad campaigns, and founded the Adam Laszlo Studio, where he now helps others turn creative vision into reality. He brings honesty, humor, and heart to every conversation.

If you have ever felt stuck between the life you have and the one you want, then this one's for you. So without any further ado, let's welcome our guest, Adam Laszlo to the podcast. Hi, Adam.

Welcome to The Underdog Protagonist. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Likewise. But before we begin the podcast, could you briefly explain, like who you are and what you do and what are you known for the most? Sure. Well, I think I'll go in the reverse order.

I don't think I'm known for anything yet, which I would think would hopefully bring me here and I'm in the right space. I am an actor, a speaker, a coach, and an educational consultant for coaching programs. So I have been an active, let's say, creative multi-hyphenate for the past seven or eight years or so.

I started as a high school music teacher that quit my day job to pursue my childhood dream of being an actor and a musician. I've been so fortunate to be able to do that. And so now I've split my time between full creative pursuits, as well as helping other people kind of wake up the creativity within themselves, pursue the things that they want to pursue, kind of find their light and chase whatever dreams light them up.

And so a lot of what I do is working with people, reminding them of their potential and worth, and hopefully using all my education background, studying passion and human potential and motivation to push people lovingly to do everything they've always dreamed of doing. Awesome. I mean, from being a teacher to achieving so many things, I believe the pivot is something that is kind of difficult to, you know, achieve.

A lot of people, including me, if I have to make a major decision for my life, I'll be always thinking 100 times over and over to verify, is this step the correct way ahead? Or do I have other options that I can consider, which is not as risky as this one, you know? So when you were actually trying to pivot from being a teacher to, you know, traversing to all these different medias, what was going on in your mind? Was there any fear at all? It was 100% fear. It was entirely fear. And that's one of the things that I try to mention everywhere that I go, is my graduate school studies, what I studied was, can you teach passion? I was really interested in understanding kind of what motivated people to take those big, exciting risks in their life, to follow something so wholeheartedly, so meaningfully, because I felt incapable of doing those things.

And so one of the things that I learned in my research was that modeling is everything. Essentially, I could summarize all the data in one sentence. People feel inspired when they see inspiration embodied.

People understand the world when they see people living their version of their truth. And that was really striking to me as someone who studied how people make these leaps, and yet I myself wasn't doing any of it. And so the conversation that I had with myself was, how do I become that person? And so I was swimming in fear constantly.

And one of the things that I always struggled with, and I wonder if any listeners would also connect with this, is that I was obsessed with self-help. I was reading every self-help book. I was consuming as much YouTube content as possible.

I wanted to be this version of myself. I took risks and started a business or pursued a dream. And even though I had clocked hundreds of hours of books and research, et cetera, I could not apply those things.

There was something in that. There was some hurdle in that way. And so what I learned from me is that there was actually one step between thinking and action, and that was actually believing that you could be someone who does this.

And so a lot of what I do in my own life and what I help a lot of my clients do is the first step, I think, is destroying that narrative that this is somebody else. This is their narrative that, you know, somebody else is an Academy Award winning actor. Somebody else can start a business.

Somebody else can have a happy, healthy relationship. That's not for me. That's not me.

I'm not capable of that. So it's amazing kind of how many ways in which we trap ourselves into staying implicit in our own lives. And so in that sense, what I have learned, and I think this is an entirely personal thing, is understanding when you look in the mirror at some point, you go, something has to change, right? Like you have to hit your version of, and I hope it's not rock bottom.

My hope is that I can help people before they get there. But they just sense that I need to change something now. Because every major change I've had in my life, I've been saturated in fear.

But the thing that I do is I play the game of, which is a little morbid, but it does motivate me. And I've realized that data, like this works for me, is I have to play the, what if a bus hit me tomorrow? And that thing is that if, you know, some people are like, well, if I'm on my deathbed, or I'm like, if I had all that time, that's going to be an excuse. But if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, which again, hopefully that doesn't happen.

What would it say on my tombstone? What would it say in my, oh, situary? What would they say? Adam did a nice job of napping a lot and swimming in self-doubt. I was like, no, he started his dream. He started to go after it.

Like, that's what motivates me. And so I just can't stress enough that fear will always be there. But by only doing the action before the belief, can you actually push through that? And that's what served me too.

Interesting. For a lot of people, it's, I mean, fear is part of the narrative, but there's also a sense of attachment that you kind of build when you're doing something. Because when you're trying to be someone, when you're pursuing your career, doing the business, or trying to fulfill a purpose which seemed to fit at the time, you kind of build that sense of responsibility and you feel like, okay, this is what I am meant for.

And then if you are thinking of pivoting from that, if you have found a greater purpose, if you have found a calling from somewhere else, you feel like, okay, this is something I need to chase now. Now my life's motto has been changed in a way, or maybe I feel a different sense of responsibility for which I have to pursue this career path instead of this. What mostly keeps people from going that way is the attachment.

I'm assuming that being a teacher, you will have a lot of attachment with your staff, with the school, the university, and the students the most, right? And it must be hard to say goodbye to all those things and starting a path or traversing to a path which is very unknown to you at the moment because it's very new. It might have worked for a lot of people back then, but for your case scenario, it must be different, right? Because every other person has different scenarios, different possibilities, and different talent levels. And, okay, it's kind of hard work.

It's there, but the decision, the doubts, and this attachment is always holding us back, right, as I've said before. So I'm curious to know how that last day as a teacher felt like? How was the day living like? Yeah, so this is a fun story. Well, I think it's fun, I guess, but it took me a long time to make the decision to pursue my dreams.

As I don't know if other people experience this, but for me, I feel like I needed it to spiral in my mind for years. I had to work out every scenario and every which way, and, oh, this is irresponsible. How can I afford it? Who am I to do this? I'm, you know, almost 30, blah, blah, blah, which I think is mostly just the world telling us that we need to play a role that we don't subscribe to.

And so I'm totally here for breaking that. And I hope anyone listening to this, if they connect with that story, for me, I stayed in it longer than I needed to. I knew the answer, and I could have leapt much sooner, but that's okay.

I did what I could at the time. I was teaching, and I had a remarkable kind of bit of luck in my life that I went to therapy and I realized that I asked for help, essentially. I was really struggling.

I was anxious. I wasn't sleeping well. And I went to therapy and I realized I was repressing the want to be an actor.

Like I really, there was a bit of me that felt like I was killing this creative side of me. And I thought I had anxiety. I thought I had depression.

I wasn't eating well. I wasn't sleeping well. And I had a physical and I went to therapy.

And essentially they said, there's nothing biochemically off with you. And I worked with an extraordinary therapist who essentially just told me, you don't have clinical anxiety. Your actions just don't align with your values.

And that blew my mind. And I thought that is it, is that I have an idea of what I want to do with my life. And yet I'm constantly choosing something different.

And so after I went to therapy, I started auditioning and I went part-time teaching, but I was still at a job to the point you had just made. I saw myself at this school for decades. I had, I was essentially the founding music teacher.

I was building this school up from the ground up. I knew these kids from the day they walked in the class or in that school building. I'd been with them for years.

And I had this really lucky moment that on a Friday, I got an email and I remember sitting in my classroom and it said, essentially somebody dropped out of this show. We'd like you to be in it. Can you start on Tuesday? And I said, and I actually thought it was spam.

I thought it was made up. I just deleted it. And I was like, that's crazy.

This doesn't happen. Cause it was a real theater and a real con contract. It was paying me decently.

And as a public school teacher in the States, like you don't get paid a lot. So I saw this price and I thought, oh my God, that's what they're willing to pay. I'm like, man, this is, this is a scam.

So I deleted it. I moved on. I get an email a few hours later and essentially it said, hey, Adam, we need to know rehearsal start on Tuesday.

Can you be here? Or we're going to move on to the next guy. And I thought, oh my God, I said, this is real. So it took a weekend to think on it.

And I had a conversation with my parents who are a bit of like a board of directors in my life. And so I went to both of them and I said, this opportunity came into my life. I don't know what to do.

And my father, who I love dearly, but he's rooted in an old school way of thinking that doesn't serve me in this chapter of my life, which is, hey, you've been there. You know, you essentially have committed yourself verbally. But I said, I was going to be at that school for a long time.

I was involved in these kids' lives. I had benefits. I had blah, blah, blah.

And my mother said something I'll always remember. And she said, if you don't do this, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life. And she was absolutely right.

And that was the moment that I said, I can't argue with that. And so I went into school on Monday. I'd emailed my principal actually on Saturday night.

And I said, I'm so sorry for a weekend email. If it wasn't so time sensitive, I would have done this. But I need to tell you immediately.

My last day will be Monday. I got a one. I essentially was like, I feel like I won the lottery.

I had this opportunity came up and I need to take it. And to answer your question, and this to me, I think is the big moral of my story. I went into that school that day.

And I sat down with my principal, who I will be forever grateful for, because he just understood. He said, you have to do this, don't you? And I said, I do. And he just said, okay, good luck.

And he just got it. And I'm forever grateful for that because he could have been upset. He could have been angry.

He could have been disappointed. He could have said, oh my God, what are you doing? But he said, you really care about this. And I had made it very, I had sent him an essay of an email trying to explain myself.

So he knew where I was coming from. But to answer your question, I got into school that day and I told the teachers, I told my colleagues who I'd worked with for years. And I said, this opportunity, this once in a lifetime opportunity came up and I think I need to take it.

I need to take it or I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my life. I could wait for another one, but like this just felt too wild. And all I remember, and this could be some of the past changing things, but what I remember is I had so many adults in my ear saying, are you kidding me? You're going to abandon these kids? You're really, you're like, how selfish of you? How inconsiderate of you to leave these kids? You're their teacher.

You're their advisor. You're their teacher. You know, like, what are you doing? And I was, I was saturated in guilt.

And I remember going into my classroom and I remember choking up and tears running down my face. And I said, y'all, I got to talk to you. I said, something, something happened in my life and it affects my tenure here at the school.

And I told them, and I said, this once in a lifetime opportunity came up. I said, it's doing what I've always dreamed of doing since I was a kid, which is playing piano and acting in a show. And I get to do it six days a week and I'm getting paid.

And it's, it could be the start of a very promising performing career. And like, I think I need to do it. And I'm getting choked up thinking about it.

And every student said, you have to do that. And they were just supportive. They just got it.

They were like, oh my God, like, of course you need to do that. And they had the insight and wherewithal to reflect back to me. And they're like, isn't that what you're teaching us? Isn't that what you're, like, you're saying, listen to music, play music, go do, and you have an opportunity to do that for a living? Of course, like go.

And I can't deny, I'm sure students were upset and they were, but like in that moment, they showed up with so much love and support more than any other adult who had been jaded by the world of you need to do this. You need to fit in this box. You have benefits.

You have to stay safe. I had all the kids, all these high school kids that just got it, that you only live once. You have to go after your dreams.

You have to do it. And so in that sense, like I remember leaving that day and I thought, I don't think that could have gone any better. Like that was, I might've had the disapproval of my colleagues, but I had the support of the students.

And that's all that really mattered. And so, and you know, thank goodness for social media and the internet is that there are still students that I talk to that I keep in touch with and that had been really champions of my career in the arts and I'm forever grateful for them. And they have taught me so much.

And so I got really, really lucky that I guess that I, if I had just spoken to my father and if I had just heard the words of my colleagues I don't know if I would have taken that leap. I am forever grateful for those kids. They literally changed my life.

Truly embodied the sentiment of practice, what you preach as you have been making them understand that this is your calling, this is your passion and one should choose it. And as the children have been so much closer to you and have had so many interactions with you they have already known that, okay this is what you really like the most. And if at all we are being kind of, we're keeping them like in their case, like you were talking about that if they feel like, okay, if we are trying to keep our teacher with us for a longer period of time maybe we are stripping away his willingness or his passion in a way.

And if this is his calling, maybe I should chase for it and we should support because we care for someone which is such a wonderful person and who has such a strong feeling for this line of work. Yeah. But I have this lingering feeling in my brain that we are always hit with a lot of anxiety, a lot of second doubts.

We question our, you know, whether we are capable of this feat or not. And we fumble with our steps, right? Sometimes the anxiety kicks in, sometimes, you know, bashing of thoughts in our brain kind of takes over and sometimes we're just there still overthinking stuff and can't make a decision. Right? This is partly why I fumbled, you know, while calling you up on the podcast.

I was like mixing up words here and there. I was not treated it. But this, it takes a lot of courage, you know, to make a leap.

And for the listeners of this podcast, they are in the phase of that transition, you know, that leap. They consider themselves the orthodox. They are the ones who feel like they have not made it yet and they are in the path to meet the big breakthrough.

And I really value them a lot. If we put light on the elements, what gave you courage during this transition? And because this was happening so fast, where was the fear actually living inside you? One of the things that I talk about with my clients is that for me, and for a lot of the people I've been working with, is that anxiety really just exists in the head. It just exists in one tiny part of our body.

And one of the ways that we can combat that is really waking up our nervous system. And it sounds kind of trite, but going on a walk, eating good food, verbalizing our thoughts. Sometimes people like to write and that's great.

And I support that if that works for you. But there's something I think that brain chemistry supports that by verbalizing our fears, by saying them out loud, by kind of having a sounding board with a friend or a colleague or a safe kind of partner in your thinking, helps kind of move the head into the body and kind of brings it into the real world, which oftentimes puts it in perspective. And so I know for me, I know when that anxiety starts kicking in, I have a choice.

And I'm working on following that more and more, but like to really rattle yourself, because we are creatures of habit. We all are. We like to do what we like to do in the way that we've always done it.

And that's, I think for me, the hardest thing is just choosing to form a different habit. Doesn't mean you have to stick to it. You don't have to start every day with a morning jog or whatever it might be.

But just to challenge the idea that you don't have to be the exact same person you were yesterday. And so one of the things that when I was swimming through my fear, it's that I realized that sometimes I would shut myself away and I thought I needed quiet time because it felt so overwhelming. And I thought, well, I don't want to burden anyone with this.

It feels like a really deep, complicated thought that I don't even know how I feel about it. So let me take some quiet time and think about it. That for me led to just rumination.

I could spend hours, I could spend days just kind of hyper-focusing on this. And it was negative and it always spiraled even more negative. It never got better.

And so one of the things I learned very quickly and I would recommend for anyone else who might be in that is that find a way to connect with people in your life and set an expectation that this might happen. If you have a brain or conditioning or whatever it might be that sometimes you just need a safe space to talk things out, try your best to create one. And if not, truly talk to me.

Go to my website. Sometimes I just hold space for people to vent and they go about their day. It's not like an official thing.

I'm happy to hold space because sometimes just to get that worst case scenario of thinking out of your body and to herbalize it can be very releasing for a lot of people. For example, you might be having a rough patch with your partner, your spouse, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. And to say the words, I just want to break up.

I need some time. You say that, you're like, Oh my God, I don't actually think that. I just needed to say that.

I just needed to get that out for a second. I'm going to quit my job. I hate my job.

I'm just upset with my manager. Actually, I just didn't like his assignment. I had to work over the weekend.

Like sometimes that big banner is what's in the way of what's actually behind that. And oftentimes the stuff that people come in as the kind of headline of their thought is really just a cover. It's the anxiety kind of building it up to be something bigger than it is.

And so oftentimes what I think is really important, and this is again, I think moving from the head to the body is moving through the throat. Talk about it. Get it out there.

Move your body. Get some sunlight. Do something that just changes dynamic.

So you don't reach for your phone and scroll, or you don't see what this person's up to, or you don't text your ex or something where like forge a new path. And that is so, so, so, so hard. And so I think what really starts before that is knowing what works for you.

And it's just a lot of experimenting. What I tell my clients too is, and then experiment until it works. You're going to try different things.

And you're like, I still felt pretty crappy. Okay, but throw that one out. We're not gonna do that one anymore.

Try this one. Well, I felt a little good. Cool.

Let's keep doing that. Experiment some more. Experiment until it works.

It might work and then it might plateau and it might stop. Cool. That works for this chapter of your life.

We have to find something new now. There's so many resources. There's so many things.

And so environment is huge. I just can't stress that enough. But like find your people.

If you need someone to talk to, say hi to me, really. But set the expectation to say, I'm gonna say some stuff I don't actually know if I believe. I just need to get it out.

Can you just hold space for me? I don't need advice. I just need a sounding board real quick. And I'll let you know when I need advice.

And then when people, when they share, you know, essentially set the expectation to say, okay, that's it actually. This is what I actually feel. Thank you for holding space for me.

We can let go of this. I just needed to talk about it. So you set the parameters for the beginning and the end of that conversation.

You verbalize everything you need to verbalize. And then if you make a habit out of that and you find yourself talking about the same things, that's when you can start experimenting with, you know what? I actually want to conquer this. I don't like that I'm still talking about this or whatever your feelings are.

You then have data because then you might have a friend or your board of colleagues or directors that says, hey, you've been talking about this for a month. Do you want to maybe consider X, Y, and Z? Then you go from a kind of a sounding board to a strategic partner kind of relationship. But you set that up.

And so the only thing I can really say is ask for help. Or don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to ask for help because we all experience that.

We all do. And especially people whose brains run in that way. We get it.

And we're here for you. Absolutely. I 100% agree with the fact that environment, you know, influences a lot of decisions that we make.

And I bought this thing somewhere. I can't remember from where. Maybe from a different podcast or article.

I also chase a lot after self-help. You can see the books lying behind me. I did.

I did see that. 80% of them or maybe even 90% of them are self-help books. And I follow that category a lot because there was a time in my life where I was chasing to fix this part of my life.

I was kind of stripping away my compass. I was not into my job. I was pursuing unhealthy habits.

I was not focused. There was no discipline. And I felt like I was drowning with no way back up.

You know, all that suffocation feeling is there inside that you just can't get rid of. That is kind of made me seek for help. But as you've mentioned, a lot of people are kind of hesitant on seeking any kind of professional help.

Some of them also feel like they are not obligated to share their personal feelings to someone. Even though that person is the friend, spouse, partner, parent or whoever that is. It's kind of their defense mechanism to keep everything inside them and try to figure it out themselves until it's too late.

I was kind of in that phase as I was going through. And thankfully, books and podcasts really helped me a lot. It's not always that okay, if someone feels like they need to talk to someone, great, I think they really should.

But if you're really, really hesitant, if you're someone who is great introvert, maybe try this method as well, right? But I'm more curious on the behind the scenes on these things, you know. When we are talking about the transition, when we are talking about the tree, the stages, I mean, you're very grounded, I must say that. And you always talk about this messy middle.

You know, we always tend to see what is there on the big screen, the big projector. And maybe we even compare the before and afters, right? Like for your case, you were a teacher and now you're a successful actor, a musician and a whole lot more, right? But what we are essentially trying to compare is two different things. Now you're here before you are there.

But what about that phase where you transitioned from being a teacher to this? Maybe you got lucky by getting that chance of, you know, applying there as well for theater as an actor. But within that luck, it takes a lot of skill to kind of hold that position. What if you did not perform well? What if the gig that you had got back then kind of backfired to you because you are not prepared, because you might feel like there's an imposter within you and it's kind of holding you back from exploring that full potential.

And you kind of, even though you got the chance, you do it. But you did not. That's a good thing.

And which is what we often don't talk about. That what did Ray do for you to hold that thing and not let it go or maybe not reach 100%. So I want to know the real behind the scenes happening at that moment.

What you did, what did not happen overnight and what all those messy, messy, messy part was looking like. Yeah, thank you for asking that. This is, I think this is the most important thing.

Is giving voice to that transition. Because to your point, I know that as a former public school teacher, I know unfortunately I was part of the problem because what I was telling my students was essentially trying to fit in one of two boxes. You're either this or you're that.

It's entirely binary in the sense of you're either a success or you're a failure or you're maybe for some people with their physical health, they feel fat or they feel healthy or they feel, you know, especially in schools, at least when I was teaching and this was now 10 years ago or so. But students, I mean, kids have an extraordinary barometer for authenticity. Like, you know, when you're a kid, if you are, are you a smart kid? Are you a dumb kid? Are you, but like, we just put ourselves in boxes and we identify with those narratives so quickly and then we live out those scripts.

You know what I mean? And so to that point, I think the messy middle starts with unlearning. It's saying, I don't need to just be that or that. And that has been my biggest thing is that I thought, I saw my name comma teacher and that was all I thought it was gonna be.

And I don't think our world gives enough room for us to change our minds is that we can be something different and we're so scared of judgment and we're so scared that we're gonna be something we're not. And the whole thing is that you're not one thing. You're everything.

And that sounds trite, but it's true. You're everything. I think everybody has it in them to be something else than what they are.

Call it human potential, call it being able to pivot, et cetera. But like, no one is one thing. That's a crazy idea.

That's a ridiculous idea. And yet I subscribed to it forever because what kept me in it was that I had to, well, I was a teacher. I have degrees in it.

I have, you know, blah, blah, blah. I was under the impression that I had to stay there because I had worked my central...

But if I expand that out a little bit, what I was also doing is that when I was coming home from teaching and I was grading papers and I was stressed and tired, I'd sit and I'd play piano, or I'd pick up the guitar. And never would I walk through my life and say, I am Adam and I play piano. I'd never say that. 

I was embarrassed because I wasn't good enough. I wasn't monetizing it. And that's, again, an unlearning I have to do.

You say, well, you have a passion, you have to monetize it. You have this, you have to make money doing it. You have to pursue it as a business.

You have to do that. And you had social media. And, you know, we're all comparing ourselves to some version that people have literally put up a camera to say, this is what I do when I wake up.

It's like you put a camera there to wake up. Like you didn't actually wake up that way. You know what I mean? And so there's like this weird cinematic version that we're all just getting spoon fed.

So you add all that together from literal childhood conditioning to adulthood being, you know, myself included, being essentially addicted to our phones. And we're just constantly told you're this or you're that. How could anyone be anything in the middle? And so going back to the graduate study and research that I did, it's all about modeling.

I love that you asked that question. I hope and wish more people interviewed people who were at the beginning of the journey. I don't care about the multi-millionaire who has advice for me when I'm 21.

It's like, no, talk to, I want to hear from the 22 year old about what they would have done at 21. You know what I mean? And so for me, my messy middle ground was essentially entirely self-doubt. I was like, I can't do that.

I can't do that. And I needed professional help because I had, to the point we're making earlier, my environment of people were wonderful, loving, kind people, but we all grew up in the same world and it's not our fault. It's not our fault that we didn't believe in ourselves.

It was the world that we grew up in. It was all the stories that we were told. And I was an English teacher too.

And so like one of the things that I always struck me is that we would read in class about the like hero's journey. You see it in any movie, you know, it's Harry Potter, it's whatever it is. And I think that I was one of those kids that I was like, I'm not the hero.

That's somebody else. I'm not the hero. And that to me is not my fault.

That was the world that I grew up in was either you're a Harry Potter or, you know, you're Rocky or whatever version of it. You're the hero or you're a secondary character or you're in the ensemble or you're the background character. And I always thought that.

And so I think a part of it too is unlearning the idea that what you were told is just wrong. It is limiting you and understand that. And I hope people would understand.

I mean, like I hope people would synthesize this as like none of this. None of this is human. I left education because it didn't feel human to me.

I left education because we were telling kids you have to do this and then you have to do this. And then you're only going to be a success if you do this. And there was something about it that I thought, oh, my God.

Most of the kids in this classroom might not connect to this and actually see themselves as the other side of it. I'm not going to do this, which means or what you're telling me is that then I meant to do something this and then I meant to be smaller in this way. And then I meant to be the background character to someone else's hero journey.

And so my messy middle ground was understanding that that's not my fault. That is conditioning that somebody else put there. That's somebody else's story.

That's somebody else's fear. That is capitalism. That is society.

That is social media marketing. That is that is everything outside of what it means to be a human, which is Adam is a teacher. Adam is also an actor.

Adam is a pianist. Adam is a guitarist. And in that sense, I have to start practicing, personalizing that narrative to say, what are all the things that you are? Like what? I'm also a son.

I'm also a brother. I'm also a fiance. I'm also a cat dad.

None of these things are competing for each other. They are harmonious. They are what make me me.

And what's so cool about that is if you stretch that out a little further, is that it would make zero sense to compare your journey with anyone else's. And so in that sense, everything that we were taught is ludicrous, truly. Because there's no way that if you really boil it down to the individual parts, there's no way for anyone listening.

There's no way for you to compare yourself to anybody else because you are not them in any way. Even if you went to the same school, even if you were raised in the same family, even whatever it might be, you have your interests and your skill sets and your curiosities and what intrigues you and your natural skill sets and things that like your innate geniuses and the things that you love and the things that you're passionate about. Like you had all that.

You had history and people you've dated and jobs that you've had and like that conglomerate of a human being. It's nowhere near any other single human being in the world. And so what's so cool about that is that if you own that and you think, what unique thing do I offer? You already are enough.

You already offer something uniquely your own because it's you doing your thing in your way and what you believe that you want to do. Period. It's just your thing.

And so the messy middle ground to me, I really think is unlearning. I think it's detaching. And for me, it took years.

It took years to do this. But I also didn't see other people doing it. I saw the multimillionaire start when he was 14.

He started his first business. And I saw the musicians who were child prodigies. And then they went to Juilliard.

I'm someone who changed his job at 30. I took my master's in education. I put it in the garbage to try to be an actor.

And I worked hard. And I'm so fortunate that it worked. And now I'm taking some of that.

And I'm now being a professional coach with people to help them find their own life. And it's going to work because I know if I keep at it, it's a great thing. And I know this is a long answer, but it's all, I think, the same idea.

There's a wonderful thing that I love in the musician world. We have a saying. And it's the terrible thing about practice is that it works.

And I love that for two reasons. I love it because it acknowledges that it's terrible. It is hard.

Go back to your instrument day in and day out. And to suck at it. And to play hard parts.

And to slow it down. And to get it perfect. But it works.

And I think in that sense, the messy middle ground is that's the practice. The terrible thing is that it works. Just keep showing up.

Just keep showing up. Shake it off again. Wake up again and say, it's not my story.

It's not my fault. I'm me. I'm totally me.

I'm me. And a lot of that is sitting with yourself and getting in tune with yourself. So that you're like, I know who I am.

I know who I am. I know who I am. So I think, for me at least, it was doing that 365 days a year.

Every morning. Every evening. Every time I sat on a train.

When I looked out the window. Or I stared at the ceiling when I was going to bed at night. And I thought, what am I doing? How am I out of alignment? This doesn't feel right.

This doesn't feel good. And then every now and then, every now and then, you get those little twinkling moments. And you're like, oh, that's some data.

That felt really good. That's really interesting. What YouTube rabbit holes am I going down? And why? Why is it that I would study all these actors and musicians? And I loved watching and listening to.

I spent so much time doing that. And when I reflected on that, I was like, of course I wanted to do that. But if somebody asked me, I'd say, no, no, I'm a teacher.

I'll be doing this forever. Blah, blah, blah. Because I was so holding on to that narrative.

So anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying, it's not your fault. Don't be afraid to really challenge that with yourself. And that starts with sitting quietly by yourself and saying, who am I without all that noise? And being okay with who that is, because that's the best version of you, is the one with all that noise out of there.

A lot of people talk about how unique we are in our own world, right? Everyone's built unique. It's a term that has been going around since ages. But we fail to embody that sentiment that, okay, we are unique.

Our situation is unique. Maybe our circumstances are different. Maybe our skills are different.

Maybe we don't like what is happening there. But we want the same result as the person sitting next to me. Therefore, we are kind of misled in a way, how social media is shading or showing things to us.

As you mentioned, you're seeing all this day in the life or how I was an entrepreneur at the age of 14. And now at the age of 20, I'm a multi-millionaire. These before and afters are kind of reshaping this understanding of, maybe I'm not the best.

Maybe I'm not there yet. Or maybe even though I'm trying, I might not be as good as the person who started years ago. And these narratives are what holding us back in a way.

But as we have discussed in this episode a while back, it's all about that discipline, that practice, that consistency that will take you forward. There are a lot of people who have practiced this in their lives. And if you look through their biographies and documentaries, they have said time and time again, that if you're doing something, that one thing for multiple times, then you'll be far ahead from the people who have been doing multiple things the same number of times.

Just because you try that one thing so many times, you are now the master of that thing, a specialized entity that can take over hundreds of people who have practiced tens of things within that same period. So it's essential to understand that the day-in-the-life breeze is very different than the real life that is happening in our day-to-day scenarios. So the narrative is that I was trying to get to is that we often fail to grasp the fact that we are the protagonist of our story and our story has to be narrated differently than the person you're looking up to.

Maybe you're trying to be that person, but the path might not be the same because the scenarios, the situations, the circumstances are completely different. And once you are letting go of the feeling that maybe I'm not the best and the practice reaching that, even though I'm not there yet, I'm giving it my all to be the person which be the one I'm looking up to. And then for sure, you'll be the person which is greater than the mind-setting effort.

So this shift of identity is what happened within us that we have to convince as you have said before. But all of this comes to clarity and that clarity comes to courage, right? And to give power to that courage is discipline. Now, I want to ask you that if it's all about discipline, there must be something that you need to do in your daily life so that the dream that you're chasing becomes reality one.

So walk me through if there is a daily ritual that helps you keep yourself grounded while daisying that deep-free that I hope. Yeah, what I found the most helpful for me, and I'll even rewind actually a little bit to add a quick note to what you were just saying that, and this is just my hypothesis, is that there is great merit in learning from other people and seeing what their path is. But the moment you start thinking, and then I'm going to do this that will be in comparison to them, I think you've already lost.

I think the goal is to really unpersonalize other people. And one of the things that's worked with me, and I think language is super important in the sense of what is profound to you is something that you should hold on to. It's like for me, I'm not a particularly religious person.

I'm spiritual at times, but the word blessing is very, something very beautiful about that word. I like how it sounds. I like just like the way that it's written.

And so when I see someone get a part or a role or a job that I was hoping to secure, I like to say that's their blessing. There's something that it feels almost outside of my control to say that, because it was, it was. I don't know what factors were going into that.

And so just to add to the point you had just made is that be aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it. Because if it is solely in comparison, then I think that there might be some merit in slowing down and making sure that you're in alignment with what you really care about, making sure that it's not actually secretly masked as competition in some way. Healthy competition is good, but I'd say for the creative pursuit, for the entrepreneurial pursuit, I don't know.

I don't think it should start there at least. Personally, I think that if the goal is to beat out somebody, the goal is to be better than somebody, then I would ask for what purpose? Like, is it to be validated in some way, to be remembered? Is it a legacy thing? Is it an ego thing? Like, I just want to make sure that people are leaving with love. And so in that sense, daily ritual that I have found really helpful is adding what I would call blank space to my calendar.

So there are times in which I made the decision when I kind of started my own personal journey that I never wanted autopilot to kick in for too long. And so one of the things that I do is that every single day, I have time where I do nothing. I waste time because that is unlearning from the hyper productivity.

Oh, well, this person on social media, they timed it in a bullet journal and blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. That is the way to be productive or the way to get ahead or the way to crush the competition. And so that's my daily reminder that I schedule nothing and I don't even schedule when I'm going to do that space because then there's already an expectation around it.

And so at some point during my day, I find time to sit with myself. And the goal is not to think about how I will do that. It's to leave it so that when I get there, I'll know exactly what to do.

Most of the time, it is truly to do nothing. I have cats. I like to sit and just pet the cat.

Sometimes I pet somebody that I care about, tell them I'm thinking about them, and they do nothing. Sometimes I go on a walk, sometimes I just breathe. But I have found that the practice of slowing down, checking in with myself, really helps me stay in alignment with who I am and where I want to go because it helps me take a break from what I'm doing and evaluating if it's actually contributing to the life I want to live.

And it also gives me time to check in with myself. Am I anxious today? Am I sad about something? Am I grateful for something? Something overwhelming? Is there something that I need to prioritize that I'm not? And I just get to wrestle with those questions, but it's not to wrestle with questions. There is no expectation about it.

I've heard it called white space. I've heard it called blank space. But the daily discipline of giving yourself the ability and the permission to do absolutely nothing has become fundamental to who I am.

And I would recommend to anyone else who's just hoping to get in touch with who they are and what they want. I feel like essentially the main reason why people are stuck in that hyper productivity loop is because they are not able to figure out whether to choose passion over practice. When I'm coming at it, if your passion is not paying you well, you start doubting.

You start questioning whether I'm good at this thing. Why is it not paying me well to sustain my life? Then the question comes that maybe I'm not great at it. That's why I'm not there yet.

If I was, I would have to earn a good substantial amount to sustain my life because I'm not. Maybe I have to do two, three other things to sustain my, you know, or to aid my thoughts over there. So this primary decision of whether it should be case-by to live a comfortable life and be miserable or to live a life which is interesting enough because it's our passion, but don't get paid equally and maybe live in a life where maybe I'm not great at that lifestyle or the things that you really want to live a comfortable life.

So what advice would you give someone who feels torn, you know, between this passion and practicality, man? Well, I guess for me personally, what I would say is I, in all due respect, I just don't disagree. I don't agree that that is the case. Is that I think that that comes from, I would recommend unlearning that because I think what that is, if the narrative behind it is, if I pursue what I care about, I will never make money, I worry that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And I think this is more so a conversation about expectations. If you want to pursue something that you find meaningful and you could switch that out with passion or your dreams or your goals, whatever it might be, I would say know that there are other people doing it that are making a living doing it, that are happy, that are fulfilled, and they're able to do that and they are able to contribute to their bank account in a way that fulfills them. I know for me, when I told people I wanted to be an actor, everyone in my life told me, you're going to live in a box on the side of the highway.

Oh my God, 0.01% of people make it in the world of acting. Who do you think you are? There's no way that could happen. And so I was carrying with me this idea that it was always going to be a side hustle.

I'm not Brad Pitt. I'm not going to be able to have a bajillion dollars doing acting. There's no way.

And what I unlearned very quickly was that I met a lot of people who were pursuing acting, who were pursuing music, who might not be a household name, but they were paying their bills doing that. And I had to realize that the ideas that were influencing my old thinking was just the bubble that I grew up in where we didn't know people who were doing it professionally, who were paying their bills doing it. And so to us, our truth, our narrative was the idea that nobody does this.

There's no way to do this. And so I would respectfully challenge the idea that to pursue one's passion is to give up on their financial goals. Because I think thinking like that, again, going back to that kind of binary thinking is that if you think that the way that is to pursue passion or to make money, I worry that an older version of, or younger version of myself, I should say, would naturally gravitate towards the making money while I need the stability.

Who am I to do that? I don't have the resources. This goes back to expectation setting to me. It's going to be hard.

Yeah. We all know that. I think deep down, I don't think anyone necessarily, or if they do, I would respectfully challenge the idea that if you want to start a life as a magician, I don't know what that takes.

I'm sure you have to be really good at it. I'm sure that takes many, many hours to practice. Yeah.

But there are people making a great amount of money being a magician somewhere in Vegas, somewhere around the world. You know what I mean? Like there are people that are doing it that have put in the time and hours. So I think it really is an expectation thing.

Understand that this path is different. It is a winding path. It is the road less traveled.

But I will tell you as someone who has walked both paths, when I had the stability, when I had money, when I had, or at least I had this salary, whatever it might've been, in the world of teaching, every single night, I dreamed about what my life could have been if I had just believed in myself a bit more. And now that I've taken the winding path, my expectations are this every day is a dream because it doesn't matter it doesn't matter for me if I got the part or I booked the gig or whatever it was. The fact is that there's certain days where I'm sitting in an audition room and I'm holding a script and I'm about to go in for a Broadway director and I'm terrible for the part.

There's no way I should get it. I'm not good at it. I'm not ready for it.

But life has put me in a position that I'm in the waiting room about to go in and I always look at the clock and I think at this time, I would have been lesson planning. At this time, I would have been teaching about quarter notes for my Thursday music class or whatever it might be. And instead, I'm taking this path and I walk through the streets of New York City with a smile on my face because regardless of how it turns out, I have made a decision to believe in myself.

And I think for anyone who wants to choose these paths, the winding road, the creative late blooming path is one that you get to live with yourself in a way that I don't know if you do if you give that up to pursue safety and security. You might have that and you might have responsibilities that might keep you in there. But what I would recommend to anyone who's on that path is begin to think about what it might look like.

That it doesn't have to be you move to LA and you audition for every movie and film and you become a movie star. It's like there are many, many ways in that gray middle zone that people are working in their community that there might be musical opportunities. And then once you take that step, you meet other musicians who know other musicians who then they need an opportunity.

Like you don't know how your life will unfold. But what I will tell you is that if you stay in this lane that is safe and secure, you won't be able to even take 1% into that. You have to begin that journey.

Set the expectation that it is a journey. It's an adventure. It's going to be different for everybody.

There's no way you know how it's going to turn out. But at least, at least you can say that you tried. And there is such internal validation and merit and self-esteem that comes from just, just beginning to say, I don't have to believe this anymore.

I can do this. I can do this even if I just start a little bit. And I think that, that to me is a pretty amazing way to live.

I agree with you. What I was trying to say is that maybe I could not specify that properly. That when you're trying to do something, maybe you're not earning as much as you should.

That's why you have to hustle quite a lot. You have to go through different ways at the same time. You just have to set yourself.

You have to sustain your passion. Yeah, so that way you're not losing it on the way. Because you're so driven for that one thing.

You achieve that one thing. You would die day in, day out, working it out. So that you make it.

But we have this doubt in our brain that what is? As you have mentioned, what if I had, could have been doing the other job instead of this? And to feel visible instead. Because I'm not pursuing my passion anymore. Just doing this purely for money.

And if you don't have the energy, you must have a burden. Saying that, do I want to be miserable in my Ferrari? Or do I want to be happy like my Toyota? I like it. And this essentially boils down to one thing.

That if you're not enjoying what you're trying to do, if you're not enjoying your work, then maybe your living lies backwards. If there's a passion you have, strong passion, then you shouldn't even operate. If money is one entity, then you soon realize that the life you're living is kind of a jail.

You're stuck there, doing the same chores over and over that you're not enjoying. And you're doing this because at the month's end, your bank's balance is saying something to you. Yeah? Yeah? Right? As you have mentioned earlier also, we are working on something to build a legacy.

And this passion is also, in a way, legacy to build. We want to leave something behind, maybe for our children, maybe for the upcoming generation, or maybe someone who might research about the space we are working in. So I'm curious to understand that why this underdog narrative that you have with it matters so much.

You can talk about it in your perspective, you can talk about it as a whole also. But I'm curious either ways. Yeah.

I think for me, I would imagine, again, just a hypothesis, I would imagine most people connect with the underdog. I think there's something very human about it. I think there's something very relatable about it.

And it goes back to the soapbox I was on earlier, that the reason I think a lot of us feel like the underdog is because we have experience being witnessed or consumed some version of reality where things worked out for somebody else. They became a billionaire, they became a movie star, they became successful, they're famous, they're whatever. And I think with that is the idea that that's not for me.

Or what I worry is that the end of that is that's not for me. There's no way I could do that. And so what I really connect about the underdog is that that's us, that's everybody.

And I think a lot of it, and I appreciate your words, I appreciate this podcast, is that I think we need to give more light to this idea that everybody is that, and that's a great place to be. I think anyone in their journey is an underdog because everybody, if they are seeking something more out of their life, they're going up against the odds. They're going up against an old version of themselves, they're going up against challenges, kind of what we were just talking about.

Even finding a sustainable side hustle as you pursue your passions. Whatever that is, it's saying, yeah, this is gonna be hard. I know it's going to be hard.

How can I set myself up for success? One of those things I would say is moving that goalpost, giving yourself permission to say, I'm gonna do it in a year. It's gonna take me at least a year to begin this journey. Cool, great.

And so in that sense, I think we are all that underdog. And what I would say for anyone else who is listening and hoping to believe in themselves is that the point you had made earlier, you are the protagonist. You are that.

And so you are both the underdog and the protagonist. The story begins when you want it to start. It doesn't, you're one decision away from an amazing life.

It just starts with one and it doesn't mean it's gonna happen overnight. It means it's going to start changing. You are about to enter your gray zone.

It's about to get really crazy but it's also gonna get really exciting because there's gonna be a sense of adventure to your life that you didn't know was possible. It's going to wake you up. It's going to inspire you to do something different.

You're going to learn about yourself in ways that you didn't even realize. You're gonna turn over all those stones internally and go, okay, I guess we care about this. And you know what you will learn, I think, is that you'll learn the path that you need to be on because you're going to get green lights in ways that you didn't know.

A door is gonna open, a connection is gonna happen and you have to believe that that's the case because you are the protagonist. And this is gonna be a really cool movie. You're in the best part of the movie.

This is what I like to tell some of the clients I work with. As they're beginning this journey, as they're beginning to identify as the underdog and the protagonist, I say you're in the best part of the movie. This is where the montage starts.

Your montage is gonna be real life and so it's not going to be half second clips to suddenly race to the ending of the movie. Our lives are not two and a half hours. But what you're about to enter is the part that every audience member looks at and go, I wish I could do that.

That's cool. That's amazing. And so I love this because everybody gets this.

We all get this. We all root for the underdog because we are the underdog. You know what I mean? So Dukie, I think you have summarized what this podcast stands for, The Underdog Protagonist.

I love it. Because every time I get on with the mic, I share the sadness that you are the protagonist of your own story and you're playing it in a movie, right? And we are f***ing your movies. Well, we feel like there's a plot twist happening there.

And that plot twist is basically this nacelle that we were talking about where all of this is swinging around. Maybe something is okay. Maybe something is not.

But the sheer adrenaline that is giving to us right now was with our passion to pursue that jive that we have for that particular thing is making us truly special. It's making us stand out. It's making people hooked in and I am sad that this podcast is coming to an end.

We are short on time. We have almost ended our segment. But before we say our goodbyes, we have this one segment we do with all our guests.

It's a rapid fire round. So I'll ask you four questions. Okay, one after another.

The catch is that you can't take time to think. You have to be fast. You have to be short.

And then the answers are perfect. Okay, got it. Okay, ready? Okay, the first one.

One quote that shaped you. One quote that shaped me? Teddy Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena quote. The credit does not belong to those cold Oh, I'm going to screw it up now.

Those cold and timid souls that neither know defeat nor victory. Essentially, the credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred with dust and sweat, who knows what it's like. Something like that.

But everyone should read that. Got it. Second one.

A role you are trying to play. Helper. Okay, the third one.

Last song you had on. Peace Somehow by Abby Kaplan. Is it an instrument? Is it a song? It's a song.

It's kind of a folksy, almost like Appalachian kind of bluesy song. Peace Somehow. And the artist is Abby Kaplan.

Sure. The last question. What would the teacher version of you be sure to learn today? That Adam really could do it.

That's it. That wraps up the rapid fire session. Thank you so much, Adam, for spending your time with me today.

And I'll be following up.

I have made quite a few pivots in my life, but some have worked out, some have not. I try to learn from these experiences over and over, which is quite what I try to encourage people to do as well. Because not everything goes according to the plan, some might fail.

So, it's important to be resilient, you know, in the process. And just because you were, is why you have landed to the position you are. And it's inspiring for people like us, for people to consider themselves as underdogs. 

But before we part our ways, do you have anything you have to share to our listeners? Any finalist tip? Please don't let the world influence you so deeply that you stay still. You are more capable than you realize. You're more hardworking than you can even fathom. 

You have so much within you that is just unlocked, but it is there. And if you need a reminder, reach out, I'd be happy to help. Awesome. 

That is so deep. Again, thank you so much. I hope we'll be able to do more sessions in the near future, talking about art, entrepreneurship, you know, passion and more.

That'd be wonderful. Okay. Thanks a lot.

See you. Thank you so much. Thanks.

Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you found clarity on how to make a pivot successful. I'll leave links to Adam's socials and his website down in the description for you to go and check it out. 

I'll catch you in the next one. But until then, take care.