Meet Angie Escusa

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Angie Escusa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Angie below.

Angie, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

Confidence and self-esteem, I learned, go hand in hand. It took my late teens to early twenties to figure that out and slowly strengthen those qualities. Escapes through fashion and living more optimistically has helped me strengthen how I view and carry myself. From the moment I was free from school uniforms, fashion and the way I dressed was the key to my confidence. I found that even on the days I felt the worst was when I dressed the best to feel like I was at least in control of something. I used to do the most in high school by preparing my outfit the night before and spending time doing a full face of makeup either before or during first period. Looking good helped me feel good, which boosted my self-esteem. And on days I felt the least confidence in myself, I also ended up having a low self-esteem.

As I entered my twenties, it took a lot of reprogramming my thoughts to change negative remarks like “I suck, I hate myself, I’m dumb.” I may not actually have meant it when I said those things, but the mind and body remembers and will subconsciously start to believe those things when repeated so often. I started to limit myself from saying such remarks, because positive sayings are just as easy to say instead. So instead, I started incorporating positive affirmations into my morning routine. One affirmation I would always tell myself is ‘I light up every room I enter’. Suddenly every time I went somewhere, I always caught people looking at me! It always caught me off guard and weirded me out, until I remembered that affirmation. It could be placebo or delusion, or maybe telling myself affirmations everyday had made me unconsciously carry myself in a lighter manner that translated that way.

Building confidence and self-esteem also requires some humility, especially when entering an unfamiliar space or trying something new. I may not be confident at what I’m trying for the first time, but I can also be confident that I’ll do my best. If it doesn’t go the way I planned, at least I tried. Comparison was the most damaging to my confidence and self-esteem. But even as a perfectionist, I had to learn that even if I may not be the best at something, it doesn’t make me lesser or take away from other qualities and talents I have. I had to give myself grace and accept that of course there will always be someone better than me, but they’re also not me. So I should focus on just being a better me.

The rock for my practice of confidence and self-esteem is being firm in my principles of who I am, my morals, and what I believe in. I can be confident in who I am if I just practice being a kind person with good intentions. I can be confident if I practice being a good friend, partner, daughter, and sister. And I can be confident if I live honestly with myself and others with a strong belief in myself. If I can feel good practicing those, my self-esteem will follow.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m the youngest daughter of Filipino immigrant parents. Being Filipino was the biggest part of my identity while going through grade school and is still a pride I carry with me today. I was heavily involved in my alma maters Filipino org (UNT FSA), and there, I also fostered my love for photography and videography while majoring in Media Arts with a minor in marketing. For 4 years, I made recap videos and took photos for everyone to be able to look back on their memories, and I loved being able to provide that for the org members and myself.

Post college, I’ve worked for a Dallas non-profit called Heart House which serves kids from the immigrant and refugee community in Vickery Meadows. Currently, I’m enjoying serving the community as a coffee barista. However, on my own time, I freelance in photography and videography. I’ve collaborated with other Dallas creatives within the fashion community and have done shoots and videos together. I love and have a special interest for editorial style photography as a blend of my love for fashion and visual art. However, I also provide my freelance services to new graduates, couples, models, and newly weds. I still have aspirations to work on big films, become a producer, or be a creative director and will always be working towards it. In the meantime, I’m enjoying working on my craft and growing!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Three qualities that helped me most on my journey were optimism, being goal oriented, and giving myself grace. I also consider myself to still be early in my journey, but these three qualities have personally given me the best head start based on what I have also learned from fellow peers. My younger self was often pessimistic, not very goal oriented, and was extremely hard on myself. I realized that all those traits would stunt me from growth and would definitely make post-grad life difficult as a creative. When I started to work on my confidence and self-esteem in the ways I mentioned prior, my mindset began to shift into optimism. With optimism, I started to have more confidence that I could do anything I wanted to. It also gave me a better outlook on how to live life and embrace the future. Instead of being hard on myself or feeling inadequate for a lost opportunity or job rejection, I looked at it as something that wasn’t meant to be and is just a redirection towards something meant for me.

Second, being goal oriented definitely keeps the motivation going. Looking too far ahead in the future (like 5 years ahead) is a little difficult for me, so I like to set multiple achievable short term goals for months ahead that can also lead up to achieving a long term goal for the year or next year. Being able to reach each small goal feels rewarding which motivates me to keep achieving the next one. Creating a vision board for the year helps remind me of those goals and motivates me to keep working towards it. Last year on my vision board, I was able to achieve 70% of it such as attending New York Fashion Week, working production assistant gigs, being consistent with integrating the gym and reading into my lifestyle, camping at a national park, and completing certain projects. Always having something to look forward to or work towards kept me from feeling stagnant in life and as a creative.

Third, giving myself grace has done the most wonders for me as a 23 year old creative dealing with post-grad. The most common sentiment I was told by peers when they first entered post-grad was that it was going to suck. Finding a job can take a while if you don’t already have one lined up after graduation. And it can start to feel stagnant pretty fast without the comfort of school-structured life. As disheartening as it sounded, it really prepared me for how I was going to live after graduating. I especially knew that graduating with a liberal arts degree was going to come with challenges. I decided that no matter what happens, the most important thing I had to look after on my journey was my mental health. Giving myself grace has kept me strong and motivated. I felt bad for working a non-profit job that wasn’t in my major instead of working a ‘big girl’ job right away, but I gave myself grace because I was still able to contribute to a community and learned how to work with kids. I sometimes felt stunted because I wasn’t hearing back from job applications, but I forgave myself because at least I was trying, and the right one would come to me eventually. I sometimes felt like I wasn’t as successful as other creatives, but I gave myself grace because everyone in life is going at their own pace.

Because of this mindset, I decided I was just going to enjoy life as it came. I dismantled the idea in my mind that your career is your biggest most important label. I can be more than that. I allowed myself to explore different hobbies and test myself as a creative by trying different styles and finding my signature. Of course I have my career goals I want to achieve in life, but I also allowed myself to find joys of living life itself like going on trips or having get-togethers with friends to look forward to at the end of the week.

Having optimism, being goal oriented, and giving yourself grace is my advice on how to achieve anything and how to go about life in general.

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 am all for collaboration! I would love to work with anyone who wants to model, has a love for fashion, or is a fellow photographer/videographer/filmmaker. Every experience and interaction with other creatives is always a learning experience and a chance to grow. If you’re interested in collaborating, please shoot me a DM on my instagram @escusameedia!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://escusamee.my.canva.site/
• Instagram: @escusameedia