Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alejandra Camacho. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Alejandra, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
I feel like my resilience comes from wanting to become a better human being and a better artist. Not wanting to go anywhere else other than where I set for myself when I chose this path. I got it from seeing the people that I admire being successful after so many setbacks in their life and believing that if they were able to make it, I am too. Honestly, It comes from being adamant, and enjoying the journey, even when sometimes I don’t, I am not going to lie. Although, I ask myself very often, if maybe, I chose the path of insanity.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am an actor and a belly dancer. I also produce, write, and love photography. What is special about acting and dancing is that, you get to create and live in the moment outside of your everyday life. For acting, you got to really ask yourself what makes the character you’re playing unique, what is your character’s point of view about life, and where is your character going. I know it sounds like an acting class, but if you think about it, us, as human beings, we live differently from one another because we want different things and depending on how we grew up our point of view changes, and that is what makes it fun and interesting to create and play.
As a bellydancer, I think for me it is how I feel the music that makes me dance to it. I love Arabian music, I listen to it and I get chills, it’s like if a new part of myself came out when I dance, and I really enjoy how it makes me feel. It brings out parts of myself that I don’t like showing in my everyday life, sometimes parts of myself that I hadn’t even seen before or haven’t seen yet. It’s an everyday self discovery. Love moving to music, especially Arabian music.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say it is more about being passionate and loving what you do than being good or trying to be good at whatever field you want to pursue, because when you are passionate you’re going to find the way to be good at something, because you can’t stop doing it, therefore you’ll get excellent at it. Like Malcolm Gladwell says in his book Outliers, spending at least 10,000 hours at something will give you the skill set you need to be amazing at your field. And that is very unique about me, my passion. My passion has always made me spend hours training and figuring out my craft of acting and dancing. That, and I must say my sense of rhythm. I come from a country where rhythm is inherent to the culture. Rhythm is what has made me have a better control of my body, either in stage combat, dancing or doing any other physical skill.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
I think it is the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and The Power of Now by Eckhart Toll. Before pandemic, I was feeling stuck and disappointed on myself because I was not where I wanted to be. I felt like a failure. We put so much pressure on ourselves that we forget to enjoy our craft, we forget why we started doing what we love in a first place, and Julia Cameron, made me feel like there was no shame at feeling stuck, because it is part of our growth and it’s part of the human experience. Sometimes, as artists we are too harsh on ourselves, we’re always judging our creative process. We want the first thing we create to be great, we are very perfectionists and she says that perfectionism is our own fear to suck as artists, and honestly if we’re judging our creative process, there is no way we can create something unique and amazing. It is in the freedom to be messy at creating where we find our originality. We want to be unique not copies of everybody else. She mentions in her book, “Do not fear mistakes, there are none”.
And the Power of Now, just reminds me how if we keep thinking on the results, we miss the beauty of enjoying the process and our own present. And now, I am still not where I want to be yet, but I stopped looking for results, I just focus on the work. I trust my work and that results will show eventually. I know that today I am not in the same place as last year, and I’ve also seen progress and results of my hard work too so I know It is not in vain and that I am moving forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alejandracamacho.com
- Instagram: @ale.camachog
- Youtube: @alejandra.camacho
Image Credits
Photographers: David Muller, Suzette Mora, Christian Andrei
