"Everything is hard before it is easy" — Goethe.
Nneka Onuorah is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. From the surface, her inspiring career looks well planned: She was hired full-time at Viacom (BET) after a six-week internship, then she moved her way up at BET until she left to create the award-winning film The Same Difference — a festival darling that cemented her status as LGBTQIA activist speaking around the world.
In this episode, Onuorah shares the other side of the story: The parts that don't make it on the highlight reel.
From learning she was not quite where she thought she was as a dancer, to the failed Kickstarter meant to fund her passion, Onuorah has learned that failure can be a constant and painful reminder that you are not where you hoped you'd be. However, she also learned that when you go back and start at the beginning, you can always build yourself up again in order to deliver your full potential.
The Failure Project: Life isn't glossy; it isn't Insta-perfect. But at any given moment there are a million reasons not to feel like you are good enough, from being late to your hair appointment to your weight to your work to school to your personal life — and everything in-between. It becomes all too easy to look at the shiny perfections that social media offers us and take it as the real story. But it's not the whole story. We gathered some inspirational and aspirational people together to tell us the things that don't make it to social media. The moments they failed, the times it didn't work out, what they've learned along the way. Our goal? To start a conversation about failure, and celebrate the other side of the journey.