Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Yana Malik. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Yana, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I don’t know that I would have ever considered myself to be resilient. Maybe it’s because I felt that the challenges I faced early in my life either went away on their own or never affected me too much in the first place.
My mother is an extremely tough woman. Growing up with her was a constant inspiration to be the best I could be.
I always believed she could do anything and I wanted to be like her in that way.
We went through difficulties in my childhood together, I saw the way she dealt with things.
It felt like she was unstoppable. So when I turned 18 I decided that I would chase my dreams because I was going to be unstoppable too.
I went to Moscow, Russia and started a film career which I had always dreamed of doing.
It was extremely successful. Resiliency wasn’t really a part of that story anymore because things seemed to be working out at every turn until the war began and the country where I lived was sending bombs to the country I was from.
I knew I had to get out. It was a terrifying thing to leave my whole life behind and escape to an unknown world but in my head I saw the eyes of my mother and I heard her voice. I knew that now was the time to demonstrate the resiliency that had been exemplified to me my whole life.
For the next year, I was constantly in new and uncomfortable situations where I was nearly out of money, I didn’t speak the language of the countries and it wasn’t always certain where I would sleep that night. I never gave up, I always knew things would work out for me. I had become unstoppable, just like my mom.
If you want to hear more about the story of how I escaped Moscow and became a refugee looking for a new home, you can find that on my YouTube channel @theyanayang or
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and since early teenage years, I have been obsessed with making videos. I didn’t have any specific goals, I just loved it so I grabbed my Mom’s vacation camera and was constantly filming everything and everybody in my surroundings.
I dreamt to be a filmmaker but it was a very unrealistic goal in Kharkiv because there was no film industry at all.
I knew I should put myself in a city with the most opportunities possible for me so I decided to take a risk and move 9 hours to Moscow, Russia.
I knew the chances of success were slim but amazingly, things worked out for me very quickly. I gained access to real film equipment and taught myself how to operate it properly. From there on out, I became the girl with the camera until some of my videos started to perform really well online. I made my first music video on my own and it absolutely blew up and was even featured on MTV. After that I had the chance to be a director with a full crew and production team.
The last project I did was for a huge artist and I knew that I had truly ascended to a higher level than I had ever dreamed possible. On the day of its scheduled release, Russia launched a full scale invasion on my home.
Over the next three days, I transitioned from an up-and-coming star director, to one of the millions of war refugees.
My new goals were to avoid homelessness and find a place to start over with nothing.
Having to find a new home and start over was hard, but I always believed things would turn around.
I didn’t know what I would end up using it for, but I filmed everything. Video diaries, the places I went, the people I met, I captured as much of it as I could.
After a year of searching, I settled in Toronto, Canada. I’ve been active in the film industry here, making short films and music videos. I finally found a place that feels like home.
This feeling of home has allowed me to heal and grow through all the hard things that happened and as a result, I’ve started a YouTube channel to tell my story. I am currently releasing episodes in a series that talks about my whole journey from Moscow to Toronto and the year I was lost in the universe.
Sometimes even I can’t believe so much happened, but making these episodes helps to subdue the surrealism related to getting wrapped up in such a wide scale tragedy.
This YouTube channel is absolutely my number one priority right now. Making these videos as high quality as I can is a necessity because it isn’t just my story, many parts of this story is a shared experience of my people.
I owe it to them to treat this story with respect, it feels like there’s a lot of purpose in it. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and comforting to have so many people reach out and say they’ve gone through the same things and relate to the story. To help people like me feel represented is currently my greatest passion.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Flexibility – Allowing my expectations to be flexible in new environments helped me to avoid the sometimes very attractive self pity that could have drawn me in. My lifestyle had changed dramatically, and if I didn’t become more flexible with my expectations then my new surroundings would have been constantly overwhelming. I think this is an approach I take with me, but now it looks more like gratitude for everything I have.
Create your own opportunities – When I went to new countries, obviously I didn’t have established rapport or personal connections to help me out so I needed to find a way to create openings. For me and my skills, that looked like reaching out to everybody that could even possibly be relevant to the work I could offer. I became comfortable with people saying no and knocked on every door that might have an opportunity on the other side of it. This was a survival tactic, not casual networking. The desperation allowed me to see that I have to make an opening for myself, I can’t just wait for somebody else to offer one.
Learn a monetizable hard skill – For me that was videography. Having this skill allowed me to survive anywhere in the world and for that, I’m infinitely grateful. Even though family photoshoots and videography wasn’t my dream, it gave me the most important gift, time. This allowed me to fund my next steps and put me one step closer to my real goals.
My best advice is, when it’s hard to keep going, make realistic expectations of yourself. When you’re feeling your worst, even getting out of bed and doing dishes might be the realistic expectation. Scale those goals up as you become ready to. One small step every day while you’re not doing well puts you in a much more favorable position for when you regain the strength to move forward. Make short term measurable goals you can achieve and be happy with yourself for doing them. Be flexible, create opportunities and practice your hard skills so you’re ready to deliver on the opportunities you receive. Even if the whole world falls apart, you can find your own way out.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m looking to share my skills with people they could be useful for. I have done a lot of work for personal and professional clients all over the world and am excited for the opportunity to help make high quality media for anybody who is interested. I have done everything from high level music videos, commercials, social media campaigns, photoshoots, you name it.
Ultimately my goal is to find work that will allow me the resources to invest into my YouTube channel so I can share my story as well and as consistently as possible.
If you would like to book a consultation and have a chat about how I can help, that can be done through my website or you can contact me on Instagram @Theyanayang
Contact Info:
- Website: theyanayang.art
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theyanayang
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTYrF-NNXmrSX6IJNCuducQ
