Meet My Client: Eva Levy

[sketch by me]

Eva (not her real name) and I worked together for about seven months. She has been a writer, director, and producer of film and tv all over the world. See what she says about coaching….

TELL EVERYONE WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU’RE UP TO RIGHT NOW…

I’m an independent filmmaker and producer specializing in documentaries, living in Los Angeles. 

WHAT MADE YOU INITIALLY SEEK OUT COACHING? 

I had been living in LA for a year or so and my career felt like there was always a lot of momentum but it didn’t always feel like forward momentum. I would get into a project and get really excited about it, complete it, and then I would sort of reset. I’d move onto the next thing, but it didn’t feel like I was building anything. I was expressing these frustrations to a friend of mine who had worked with you and she thought coaching could help me create a through-line where I could see myself building something rather than building a mole hill, moving on, building another mole hill … she thought coaching would help me feel like I was climbing up a mountain. 

HOW WOULD YOU SAY YOUR LIFE HAS CHANGED AS A RESULT OF WORKING WITH A COACH? 

We started working together at a time when things were accelerating for me. Coaching helped me let go of a lot of anxiety and false ideas I had about myself and the ways that I work. 

At the time we started working together, I was working on a project that became a game changer in my career — it was a very successful thing that brought me a lot of recognition and I learned a lot from it. I think being in coaching at the same time this was all happening really helped me take advantage of all the opportunities that were coming to me. And it helped me let go of this idea that things had to be a certain way. I was really able to take the ride more gracefully and with a lot more authority than I might have otherwise.

WHAT ABOUT INTERNAL SHIFTS?

I think one thing coaching really helped me with is thinking about the way I approach my peers.

For a long time my perception was there was this inner circle of filmmakers who were cool and who all knew each other and were always working and getting to fly around the world. And I was like, why can’t I be one of these people? I learned not to let what I see on social media or stereotypes that swirl around about people inform my encounters with them. I learned to approach them as allies and now I think I’m in a much better position to see them as potential collaborators and people who I can learn from instead of rivals or someone to be jealous of. While this is a competitive industry, it doesn’t have to be that way. 

I was able to unlock this idea of — well, I perceive things as being one way, but what would my ideal look like? How do I want to exist in this community? How would I want this community to work for me? And not just think, oh, this is an exclusive club and I’ll never get inside… and to let that create resentment or jealousy. 

Coaching helped me get over a lot of these hangups I would have about just going to an event and seeing someone who’s work I’ve seen or maybe I’m friends with them on Facebook but I don’t really know them and actually going and having a conversation with them and usually by the end of that conversation being like you're cool! let’s be friends! or talking about things we have in common. I was making up stories about them in my mind, which distanced me from them. I don’t do that anymore. 

WHAT ARE A COUPLE OF THINGS THAT HAVE STUCK WITH YOU, SOMETHING YOU CONTINUE TO THINK ABOUT OR TOOLS YOU STILL USE? 

I think about my behavior and notice when I’m getting in my own way. A major thing I realized about the way that I was operating for a long time, and that coaching help through, was this myth that as long as I was being productive in some way, everything else was fine. I’ve come to a place where I realize there will be planting times and harvesting times — it doesn’t have to be this relentless thing where I’m burning myself out because I’m thinking in order to keep up I have to keep doing doing doing all the time. It’s very much not in my nature to cut myself slack, but I think that coaching really helped me see that is a very necessary part of being a human being. 

WHAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT WORKING WITH A COACH? 

I was surprised by how revved up I would feel after the sessions. I can’t say that I always followed through on everything we talked about in our sessions, but it was great knowing I would have that point in my week to check in and get to talk about all the stuff that is hard to talk about with friends and colleagues. Because a lot of the time it feels like a broken record and it feels so myopic. Just having that opportunity to get into that stuff — I would always hang up the phone and be like OK! I want to change my life! I had very positive energy coming out of it that I wasn’t expecting. I think I thought it would be closer to therapy — like usually I have gone to therapy and been so drained afterwards and I’d want to continue crying, but this wasn’t like that.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?

I don’t know that I could have identified this at the time, but looking back, I think when we started working together — I didn’t know it was going to be this time of shifting a lot of my professional focus, but it sort of turned out that way. Part of this shift was letting go of this idea that I shouldn't be doing all these different things (writing, directing, producing), I should be putting all the emphasis on how I was presenting myself — I was looking for some singular way to characterize myself … and through coaching I let go of that idea. And that was when I was thought oh! I can be all these things! It released me from that expectation I had to be ONE thing. That’s when I came upon what I had been searching for. I let things be. 

WHAT ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT RIGHT NOW? 

Right now I am excited that I’m producing five movies. 

OH MY GOD! WHAT?

Yeah! and they’re all very different in scale — a friend of mine is a director who was like, hey, want to make this movie with me, let’s start doing it! And I’m also working on a series for Netflix that is going to be a major part of my life for eight months, but it will be a finished thing that the world will see. 

I feel like I can own this role of producer a little bit — not a little bit, a lot. And feeling confident in that has really opened me up to a range of projects that I feel excited about. Some might happen, some might not, but it’s cool getting to investigate and go on these little journeys — on all wildly different topics — little wormholes that allow me to get really deep into a story and live that for awhile and go and live something else for awhile. 

AS YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR ROLE, IS THERE ANY KIND OF HESITATION OR CONFUSION OR DO YOU JUST KNOW THIS IS WHO I AM AND WHAT I’M UP TO? 

I think this is who I am and what I’m about right now. I’m still really struggling to figure out how to make my own work. I feel very confident and like it’s very easy for me to be in this creative producer role and work with people. I have a major role, but it's someone else’s baby. I’m still figuring out what my own baby is.

But for the moment I’m really excited about just the different stuff the seems possible right now. I feel like I’m finally getting paid to do all the things I can do — I am finding myself in positions where I get to do all the things I can do. And I made it happen. I got hired on this Netflix series as a post production supervisor and I was like, you know guys, there’s all this other stuff I can do and they were like great! and now I’m fully producing the whole show. 

THAT IS SO AWESOME! I’M EXCITED FOR YOU! 

It kind of feels like I’m at the beginning of a new thing. It all feels like I’m on this longer trek. No more molehills. 

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This originally appeared in my October 2018 email newsletter. To get on the list, sign up at pamdaghlian.com/newsletter