72: Amy Oestreicher on Being a Detourist, Being More Capable Than We Think, and Taking Risks

Amy Oestreicher thought she had her life all figured out. Ever since she was young, she felt she was born to perform. She was all set to go to college for musical theater when medical complications derailed everything.

During her senior year of high school Amy started having stomach pains. When she went into surgery to fix it, her stomach shot out of her body and she went into a coma for months. She spent years and many surgeries in hospitals trying to reach some semblance of normalcy.

During this trying time, Amy turned to creativity to help keep her busy. She started painting and she even developed her own one person play based on all of her troubles and overcoming adversity.

With one play in the books, and another on the way, Amy is the prime example of what it means to persevere.

In this episode, Amy talks about being a detourist, being more capable than we think we are, and how our creativity benefits from taking small risks.

Here are three things you can learn from Amy:

Become a Detourist

As we go through life, we often face obstacles that push us past our comfort zones. We face obstacles that scare us. Amy believes we need to force ourselves to take risks, to push past the comfortable. “Unfortunately I think we all get something that pushes us sooner or later but obviously, to prepare ourselves, I think we have to look for the scary… We have to take the risk. We have to go inside and ask that question… ‘If I could not fail, I would do this.'”

Amy believes we need to follow our curiosity. We need to stop feeling so comfortable and safe. We need to embrace the risk even in the face of the unknown. “My TEDx talk was about being a detourist, and for me, a detourist is someone who at least shows up and has this curiosity. I think that’s the best thing we can do with anything in life even if life seems settled and okay. Be curious like what if, ‘What if I went in this alternate direction?’… The truth is, it’s not so hard for adversity to find us but I think sometimes we do feel comfortable and safe. We do have to really go inside and ask ourselves ‘What is a risk I can take in this moment?’ And the truth is if it’s not, even if you’re not in a comfortable place, I say start with a gratitude list. That’s what I tell anyone.”

Being a detourist requires knowing yourself. And one of the best ways to get to know yourself is by creating a gratitude list. Your gratitude list will reveal what’s important to you, even if it scares you. “Those gratitude items on my list… were actually my values. And the more I did those lists, the more I realized what was important to me. So the reason I think anyone should start with that is, you’ll realize what’s really important to you and what you need to go for, even if you’ve been scared of it.”

We Are More Capable Than We Think

One of the things that you might realize over time is that we have the capacity to do great things. Even if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, you can create beautiful results. That’s exactly what Amy did when she got back into acting after all her surgeries. “It’s fake it til you make it. I feel like, just by acting, I was the actress back at work with the director. I felt like my mind was in such a better place.”

Don’t let your lack of experience prevent you from doing something you believe in. With the fake it til you make it attitude and the willingness to embark on new adventures you can make the impossible come true. “The truth is, I booked a theater in New York when I still had tubes and bags on me and I had never even touched professional theater after the hospital. So it was a big risk and it was an investment. So I think we were all very nervous cause I had never done anything like this in my sick or healthy life.”

Amy did not let her lack of professional experience dissuade her. She did not let the financial risk or her own nervousness get in the way. She went after what she wanted, regardless of the obstacles she faced.

That is why we sometimes need to force ourselves into uncomfortable situations. We need to push ourselves to the limits to see what we are truly capable of. “Sometimes you need to light a fire under you to get yourself in gear. You know why I don’t ever feel like a victim is because I think we are always more capable than I think we are or than other people perceive us as. And sometimes it takes saying ‘You know what, I’m going to fail,’ to see that we don’t fail.”

How Our Creativity Benefits from Taking Small Risks

We often believe risk is a huge commitment or step in our lives that will change our whole perspective on the world, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Even the smallest risks can take you in the right direction. “I like to ask myself ‘What is the smallest micro-movement I could take? If I were an amoeba… what is the tiniest thing I could do?”

That’s because risks aren’t an all or nothing proposition. Risks lie on a spectrum. You don’t have to quit your job to take a risk. Risk can be almost anything. “Risk is not an all or nothing thing. There are a spectrum of risks we can take. It doesn’t have to be quit my job and become a performance artist. It could be I’m going to make myself sit and write that opening paragraph I’ve been putting off… and I think that’s what makes it a little bit easier to start with. Not I’m going to paint a canvas. I’m going to take a crayon and draw a stick figure. So, there’s no excuse.”

One important lesson we can learn about creativity and risk can be learned from kids. Kids aren’t worried about embarrassing themselves or making mistakes. They embrace it in the name of creativity. “Creativity can feel really superfluous, you know, like why I have this to do or that to do. But kids own it. You see that it’s a priority to them.”

If we just allow ourselves to take risks and look at the world from a child’s mind, we can slowly create a world where risk isn’t such a big deal.

Read more shownotes from episode 72 with Amy Oestreicher