Her Story
About Sandra
I started my career in 1986 as a professional actor and spent over 40 years in the entertainment industry as a director, producer, playwright, and teacher of acting and improvisation. Over the years, I developed techniques for working with actors both as a teacher and director, and I started using those techniques to work with kids with special needs. This work led me to deeply believe Einstein's quote that everyone is a genius, but if you ask a fish to climb a tree, it'll spend its entire life believing it's stupid. I believe everyone, regardless of their neurodiversity or seeming challenge, is a genius, and the only reason we don't think that is because we expect genius and brilliance to show up in a particular way. After about 30 years, I finally heard myself saying to actors every day that in acting as in life, or in improvisation as in life, certain things are true. I realized that Shakespeare's line in As You Like It, that all the world's a stage, is not just a pretty piece of poetry but a literal roadmap for how to show up authentically on the great stage of life. I put those two metaphors together and created my book, Spontaneous Brilliance, which codifies what I teach and believe. I use acting techniques and improvisation techniques as my metaphorical, metaphysical guide to life. I teach people that life is a 24-7 improvisation by definition, and everything you do in an improv is either making an offer, accepting an offer, or blocking an offer. Everything you think, do, or say in life is doing one of those three things. Since 2012, I've been focused on coaching, consulting, and speaking as a creativity specialist. I'm the CEO of Spontaneous Brilliance, where I coach and consult, and we recently opened a membership program for group coaching that includes all the courses, meditations, affirmations, and visualization work I've created over the years. I also host a weekly audio podcast, the Spontaneous Brilliance podcast, available on Spotify, Apple, and everywhere podcasts are found.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Sandra
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
My theater mom, Olympia Dukakis, an extraordinary, brilliant Academy Award-winning actress, was kind of a powerhouse, and one of her favorite sayings was 'fear is boring.' I shifted that a little bit to say fear makes us boring, because it makes us make boring, restricted choices. In my belief, we are 100% responsible for the lives that we're living, and I put a hyphen in the middle of the word responsible to be response-able. We are able to respond, and we are making choices every moment, and if those choices are out of fear, then we're necessarily blocking, which goes back to my belief that everything is either an offer, it's an acceptance of an offer, or it's blocking an offer.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My greatest piece of advice to anyone entering any field is to recognize that they are their own greatest resource. The wisdom that they're seeking outside of them is really just a way to kind of verify or codify or make them feel more empowered about what they are already thinking and feeling. So I would say trust themselves, know that they are creating their life, and so endeavor to do that consciously and authentically. And that's for anybody in any field.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I believe that everyone has unique creative genius, and that they came here specifically to this planet to be, do, and share whatever that is that's calling them, and that my work is to help them share it. I always say that our mission at Spontaneous Brilliance is to create a world of loving, conscious creators where everyone's unique creative genius is recognized, acknowledged, shared, and respected in our hearts, homes, classrooms, companies, and communities, regardless of our age, education, neurodiversity, or perceived abilities. Most people don't live, learn, and work in an environment where their unique creative genius is recognized and respected, and because we don't approach each other that way, we don't treat each other with that level of respect. That's the reason that our mission is like it is, because it's really about shifting the way people view themselves and one another, and helping people to recognize that genius in themselves and in everyone around them. I believe the biggest thing that people can recognize is that the universe never blocks. The universe only offers and accepts, it doesn't block. The only entity on the great stage of life that blocks, consciously, is human beings, so if we think that the universe is blocking us, that means we're probably blocking ourselves.
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