Today we’d like to introduce you to Ken Orman.
Hi Ken, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Like most people of a certain age, my story has more ups and downs than the New Texas Giant rollercoaster at Six Flags and is filled with struggle, surrender, gratitude, and love.
In 1992, I began my career in finance shortly after earning a BA in Journalism, which makes absolutely no sense, I know, but I was just fired from a band and was released from a modeling agency. I thought I needed steady work and finance provided exactly that.
I jumped from opportunity to opportunity and wound up a partner in a mortgage lending venture that operated from 2000 to 2007 and collapsed along with the U.S. economy. I ran for the shelter of corporate banking, where I traded freedom for the perception of certainty. A severe trade-off. I do not recommend this bargain, but I understand that sometimes it’s the only viable option, even if it’s counter to our nature.
In 2007, I needed a distraction from my career, and my daughter, Bailey, asked me to perform with her in a community theatre show at a small theatre in Highland Village, Texas. There, at 37, I discovered my passion for performing and storytelling. For five years, I did community theatre, and after encouragement from friends, in 2012, I began working professionally as an actor with Danette Linicomn as my agent. Fortunately, she still is. I’ve performed in hundreds of live-action shows, commercials, industrials, plays, musicals, print ads, television, and films.
In 2021, after 29 years in finance, I transitioned fully to the artist’s path, which has offered the humbling opportunities to work with Dallas Theater Center and HBO. I also write plays, teleplays, and screenplays. To help pay the bills and stretch my creativity, I am a content creator for small businesses, and I coach executives and entrepreneurs.
This year, my amazing wife, Morgana Shaw, and I started a production company, Owl & Elephant Productions, LLC, which will produce her one-woman show, “All About Bette: An Interlude with Bette Davis,” written by Camilla Carr, and has special narration by Hollywood legend, Robert Wagner, who was a close friend of Bette Davis. We run at Four Day Weekend Comedy Theater, in Downtown Fort Worth, Thursdays May 5 to June 30 and the last Sundays in May and June.
My life appears to be compartmentalized into my finance life, my entrepreneurial life, my family life, and my artistic endeavors, but I’m one of these people who likes a jumble of activities, so I mix it all together. I think it helps me keep active and growing. Although, at some point, I feel I’ll need to pour my energy and creativity into one of these areas to make it all it can be. I’m not quite at that point yet. I’m loving what I’m doing, although I still have some insecurities about it. It’s rough being human. LOL…
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My struggles are mostly self-inflicted. I grew up steeped in Evangelical Christianity, which was the fear and punishment brand, so guilt and shame are deeply rooted and have led me into life choices that weren’t aligned with my heart.
In 2011, after a divorce, I realized that I am the common denominator in my unhappiness and discovered the power of unconditional love, gratitude, forgiveness, acceptance, and surrender. The book, Love Is Letting Go of Fear, by Gerald Jampolsky provided the framework for meditations which helped transform my guilt, shame, and materialistic and fear-based thinking, into a thankful loving heart, which I believe is the core of our humanity. After all, we are born into this world through love, not punishment, shame, or greed.
I worked in corporate banking and felt very unsettled. Like, I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, at least not at this time in my life. It took 7 years to realize that I feared uncertainty more than I valued freedom. I didn’t want that to be my story any longer and set out to change that. Two years and a pandemic later, I now have freedom and a swirling tornado of uncertainty for which I am so grateful. I hope I don’t sound insane.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Professionally, I am a writer, actor, producer, director, coach, and content creator. I suppose I’m known as all of these things by professionals in those circles.
That said, the most fun I have professionally is performing live and having spontaneous interactions with the audience. One place I get this “fix” is the improvisation work I do with Keith & Margo’s Murder Mystery. I play a hardened, sarcastic detective, and the comedy flows from audience interaction. I just start asking questions and see where things go. The corners people paint themselves into astounds me, and I’m so grateful they do.
Personally, I like to consider myself a soft place to land and a resource for growth. I spent years letting go of guilt, shame, jealousy, and fear. It was a ton of effort. It took years.
And now, I want to pay forward the gifts, love, and grace that has been granted to me. I’m not an organized religious follower, but I believe we have an eternal nature and love is at the core. Our culture does a good job of shielding us from that loving nature through common stories about how we aren’t worthy and punishment, envy, guilt, and shame are the best ways to keep us in line and behaving to a certain societal standard.
Here comes the hippie in me… I believe it’s time to set those stories down and connect to love, acceptance, gratitude, and forgiveness. I believe we can solve humanity’s struggles, including hunger, war, global warming, and what have you, through love. Economics, logic, politics, religion, and collective power can be used as tools, but without love, we’ll simply get more of the same.
I guess I challenge myself and others, if they’re up for it, to believe and work on a different story. The stories we’ve been sold keep us looping in a pattern of despair and pursuing happiness, which we know that the surest way not to be happy is to pursue it.
Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Sure, I have a couple of thoughts. This is more general thoughts. I have lots of specific career advice, but without a rock-solid foundation, career advice will lead directions that will not align with the heart.
– Stay humble and root in gratitude. Meditate or pray every day giving thanks for all that you have and all that you are.
– Adapt quickly and without resistance. Our world is changing at supersonic pace and it’s only changing faster. Be flexible and embrace it.
– Learn as much as possible about any endeavor that you believe is worth pursuing. The more you know, the quicker you will discover if a pursuit is worth your time.
– Listen to understand with a heart of love, grace, and kindness, and pair that with speak only truth, including to yourself. Being honest with yourself is the best way for your instincts to guide you. I met Morgana while I was deep into learning this practice. It was amazing how differently I heard her, the world around me, and even the voices in my own head.
– If you want to know the true nature of a person, relationship, opportunity, or anything, give it unconditional love and pure intention. What it gives back is the nature of itself. You can avoid a lot of bad relationships by not judging and just loving. If fear, manipulation, anger, greed comes back, that’s its nature. Be careful to do self-check-in to make sure that you are not the manipulator. Even if we have good intentions, we can sometimes get lost in our own egos.
– Listen to your instincts. They aren’t there to be shushed. That said, don’t get carried away by them either. Strategic thinking is vital to a meaningful life, but don’t confuse strategy with rationalizing. We can talk ourselves into and out of anything. If you are honest, your instincts are sharp and you are self-aware, you can avoid a lot of wasted time. Pursuing enterprises, relationships, and opportunities that are not meant for you.
– Do your best to not talk badly about yourself. You’ll make choices that may lead to tough lessons, and that’s okay. Learn and work on the pieces that are worthwhile and let go of the rest, but be kind to yourself. You aren’t perfect, and you aren’t expected to be.
– Stay off of 24-hour cable “news.” Those shows are built to keep its viewers negative, judgmental, and addicted. Their viewers swear they are being informed, but they are being spoon-fed propaganda and stories that substantiate an agenda of power. Do your best to avoid them.
– Use social media as a tool for positivity, promoting your businesses, and love. It’s used by many as a place to fling opinions and judgment I got caught up in years ago. It doesn’t take long before it brings you down. The same way cable “news” does.
– I don’t have regrets, but I certainly feel like my life would have had more meaning and I’d be further along in my journey had I valued my instincts and intuition more. I rationalized career choices and allowed envy to turn into greed for a couple of decades. I discovered how fun and peaceful life is by letting go of those old stories, and connecting my passions to hard work.
I have many more suggestions. Reach out if any of this is interesting to you.
Contact Info:
- Email: ken.orman@yahoo.com
- Instagram: @kenbaileyorman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ken.orman.5/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsVh8YoVLj1BTZ27gqsVL8A
Image Credits
Bryan Chatlien
Voyant.com
