Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dara Ratcliff. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Dara with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
This question is a no brainer. I get my work ethic from both of my parents. Since a young age I knew what having a job was and what a days of work looked and felt like. My mother being a single mother of 4 had to work her tail of day and night to provide for us. Which led me to being the mom of the house, a job within itself. Being the oldest sibling helped form my work ethic as well. Having to cook, clean, study, help with homework, bathe us all, and then get them to bed on time helped to form structure and a schedule for young me. I would usually get a break “vacation days” when I would visit my dad and family in Texas for summer breaks. While I didn’t have to be anyones parent I still watched my dad and God mother work long days to be able to treat me to fun activities around town. At the ripe age of 14 or 15 I knew I wanted to start a real job to help release the load from my mom of taking care of all 4 of us. I began working at McDonalds and my schedule was so limited due to child labor that I would on the weekends pick up everyones shift that I was allowed to. Soon as I was able to add more time, get trained for bigger positions I took it. I remember our first family vacation to Atlanta GA and I told my mom I wanted to be able to bring my own money to buy whatever I want and that was the first time I ever touched $1000 dollars. I was saving so much and my last check before we headed out was $500 I took a video of all of my money for my own sake of motivation. Since these times above Ive only gotten more aggressive with my work ethic, recently implementing it into chasing my dreams.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Growing up in a society where going to school, and getting a good job was the taught motivation to living a successful life. I adapted to adult hood seamlessly, until I didn’t. It took me a long time to break from that mindset and chase after my dreams wholeheartedly. Til this day its a battle in my mind some days being better than others.. When life begins to be so tempting to quick money schemes and you begin to experience “the struggle” I always wanted to run back to what I know, get a 9-5 and don’t spend money. By placing my faith in God I decided to not worry on whats going wrong or not working, but instead on places I have improved and how to make the most out of what I have. Thats when my life itself begin to be the factor that mattered most. I want to live a good quality of life no matter the stages I am in. In order to do that I needed to find peace in every situation and then solution. Versus time constraints and anxiety that fueled my search for solution inconsequently making the solution seem further away.
In return, having this mindset has allowed me to stay on track with my acting, I am currently experiencing a high volume of work which hadn’t happened before. Alongside, launching my entrepreneurship where I now own 2 businesses, and climbing the ladder of digital marketing. To be transparent I just jumped in, well did some research, and bought a spot in the room of course; I had no clue this would be something I would do 2 years ago. Now, I have always had the ideas, but I thought I needed to be rich before I did so. Even saying this back is letting me know that sounds a bit ridiculous.
Speaking of acting and entrepreneurship I have a few acting projects dropping later this year, ill be sure to update you all on the dates. I am also excited to announce that in just a few months I will be launching a 6-week fitness guide along with a mystery product, I have been working on for years. Stay tuned, follow my socials for updates and first dibs!
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?
Looking back, I would say being a reader, breaking down the text, and then implementing the information obtained from sed text has been the most impactful in my journey. As a young girl, I remember struggling to obtain what I had just read. I could read the words easily, spell them perfectly, but connecting the story to the sentence was a struggle. I learned how vital it is to retain what your feeding your brain and not be on autopilot when reading. Then breaking down the text meaning, I had to make it make sense to my capacity. Ask questions like do I resonate with this, have I experienced this -this is depending on what your reading. I read a lot of self help and financial literacy books. So, breaking down the text is a very important part that I seen shape how I started to retain the information. Last, implementing the knowledge received into my daily life only brings me closer to the text especially if what I read turned out to help me greatly. This has happened more than once!
Be mindful of those around you, an area of knowledge I have always walked with naturally. I mention this because it seems that people are now beginning to realize not everyone who says they’re your friend are really rooting for you. I have been graced with being able to read auras and sometimes receive visions of people who enter my life and their intentions. A lot of Deja Vu happens with me and none have been detrimental, but wanting to inner stand where that comes from I went down the rabbit hole. This has been impactful to my journey because I know I have avoided a lot of chaos, though not safe from all.
Last but not least finding my faith and standing strong or should I say standing on business with it everyday. These three areas of knowledge have taken me far beyond what I could have even imagined. With them I continue to be a student to life, improving, learning and growing at divine timing. I suggest anyone reading to find their three qualities, skills or areas of knowledge and breakdown if they have truly been impacted for good and if they discover that have not, then to find/create new ones.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
Its a battle between “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy and “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. They both provide a formula on how to gradually improve yourself and your life through your daily small habits. I took many great tools and knowledge from each book and once I began to implement them into my life I saw a huge difference in the quality of my day to day regimen.
The Compound Effect gives a formula of small choices+ consistency+time=significant results. I can say that I was always looking at the bigger picture and studying how to make it closer. With that I was making crazy huge leaps of faith and in return some worked out, but a lot failed and hurt in someway, shape or form. Reading this book I was able to see that my everyday habits were the key to creating a the lifestyle I want to live freely. So my small choices such as eating a donut or drinking my freshly made green juice became easier to make because of the instant reward of knowing I just made the best choice toward my ending results. Knowing that if I continued to make the better choice within in my “smaller” choices daily aka the consistency part, that within in time they would begin to bring significant results.
Atomic Habits gives the formula 1) make it obvious 2) make it attractive 3)make it easy 4) make it satisfying. This formula took my being to simplifying a path of success to smaller goals that in return add to the bigger picture. Meaning I had to make my path obvious with the smaller goals. Next was make it attractive which was fun to do. This is where vision boards, playlist, collages and practices took place and my creative side was ale to take over. Then making it easy, don’t overcomplicate the process, don’t try to control whats out of my control, and seek solution not settlement. Lastly, make it satisfying and I took this as after each decision has been made make sure the results are satisfying all around. This has kept me going and continuing to use both formulas as how to navigate through my daily life with anything.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @private_artwork
- Youtube: @Dose of Ra
