This Message Is For All The Workaholics Out There…
For one year, the titan behind ‘ShondaLand’, the?television production company that produced Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder,?said yes to everything that scared her.
“It’s amazing the power of one word; yes changed my life, yes changed me,” says Rhimes.”But there was one particular yes that affected my life in the most profound way, in a way I never imagined.”
It took a question from her toddler to say yes to a new way of life for her family. “I made a vow that from now on, when one of my children asks me to play, no matter what I’m doing or where I’m going, I say yes.” The television writer reaffirmed?that saying yes to her children likely saved her career.
The award winning television producer and writer is regarded by many as a trailblazer, who has helped to change the face of prime time television in the United States and the conversation on diversity in??television. Rhimes is responsible for about 70 hours of programming to the world, with each show creating hundreds of jobs that did not previously exist, with a budget of an estimated $US 350 million a season.
She works alot, and she owns it, which is why she could go on and on with what she describes as ‘the hum’ “I?love working. It is creative and mechanical, and exhausting and exhilarating, and hilarious and disturbing, and clinical and maternal, and cruel and judicious. And what makes it all so good is ‘the hum’.”
But what happened when ‘the hum’ stopped?
The titan explains that it is okay to say yes to less?work and more play. “Play is the opposite of work, and I am happy. Something in me loosens. A door in my brain swings open and a rush of energy comes.” Her hum is not power, or work specific, but rather a joy and love that comes from being excited about life.
Image:?Marla Aufmuth/TED
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