What Bryan Cranston Taught Me About Pursuing My Passion
7 lessons on work and life from Walter White.
I’ve always been a huge fan of Bryan Cranston’s work, and a while ago, I decided to pick up his memoir, A Life in Parts. Whether he was playing a man child on Malcolm in the Middle or the perfect antihero on Breaking Bad, he never failed to amaze. So when I saw a copy of his autobiography at my local bookshop, I was thrilled.
I had always wondered how Tim Whatley from Seinfeld ended up as Walter White. What does the journey of an actor on one of history’s most successful TV shows look like? What better way to learn more about the inner workings of a genius than from the genius himself.
The book did not disappoint. Cranston’s life is nothing short of a TV show itself. As I read through this coming of age story, I noticed little nuggets of wisdom peppered throughout this incredible journey. Here are seven important life lessons I found.
1. Take Risks While You Can
What do you do if you end up in New York, strapped for cash, when the Dodgers are about to go up against the Yankees during a World Series? Well, if you’re Bryan, you and your brother sneak in. As Cranston puts it in the book, they were all balls, no brains.
“The greatest thing about youth is that you’re not yet battle weary, so you’ll try anything.” — Bryan Cranston
Throughout our lives, we’ll have moments when we look back at a decision point and realize that we could have taken that risk, but we chose not to. Usually, we look back in regret, wishing that we had pushed ourselves. Decisions like these only get tougher as life goes on and we’re more established in our current patterns. Try different things and follow your curiosity while you can.
Aim big while you have the courage.
2. Keep the Right People Around You
Cranston knew the importance of valuable friendships. Early in his career, he realized that it’s crucial to surround yourself with people who lift you up. He only kept company with people who were willing to challenge and push him in positive directions.
Cranston recollects a moment when he was preparing for a scene about the artist Amedeo Modigliani. Having never painted, he wanted to know what it was like to paint something. His friend, James Kiberd, decided to help by hosting Cranston at his place so that he could paint all night.
“If people don’t enhance your life, you have to get rid of them.” — Marianne Williamson
We need such friends around us. As social beings, we often choose to socialize even if it’s not with the right crowd. We may go for quantity over quality when it comes to the people we let into our lives.
As humans, we are always striving to improve. Surround yourself with people who care about your growth and are willing to push you in the right direction. We may not be able to choose where we end up, but we can always choose the people we end up with.
3. Focus On the Process
In our goal-oriented culture, we often end up falling in love with the outcomes of our hard work rather than with the hard work itself. The moment we start focusing on the results, our minds begin to create expectations. We set ourselves up for disappointment before we even start. But remember, you don’t control anything except the effort that you put in.
In his book, Cranston writes:
Work, hone your craft, enjoy your successes in whatever doses they may come. But do not fall in love with the poster, the image of you in a movie, winning an Oscar, the perks, the limo, being rich and famous. If that “is what you’re falling in love with, you’re doomed to fail.”
It’s not about getting to where you want to go. It’s about realizing that you want to go somewhere and putting in the work to get there. The journey IS the destination.
Focus on the work that you do, and nothing else.
4. Be Open to Ideas
Cranston recalls a moment on Seinfeld’s set where he was playing the role of Tim Whatley:
“We rehearsed that scene, and then the other actors went on to do another scene. I stayed behind to get comfortable on the dentist’s office set. An electrician was adjusting a light, and he called down, “Hey, you know what would be funny?”
I was a bit confused. Was he talking to me? “What?” I asked. “It would be funny if before you put the laughing gas mask on Jerry, you took a hit off it yourself.”
I thought about it and realized he was right.
It came time to shoot the scene. We were rolling, and I said, “Cheryl, would you ready the nitrous oxide, please?” She handed me the mask, and I brought it up to my face and took a healthy hit. Jerry fell over laughing. Larry David was beside himself with joy.”
It’s easy to let ego come in the way of self-improvement. There’s always something to learn from the people around us, but we fool ourselves into believing that feedback from others is a personal attack. We choose to dismiss any criticism that we receive without understanding its nature.
What we fail to realize is that others have gone through their fair share of experiences. Those experiences bring lessons and those lessons bring ideas. And those ideas might be exactly what you were looking for.
“You never know who’s going to give you the gift of a good idea.” — Bryan Cranston
5. Don’t Be Afraid to Dream
“To achieve a dream would be great, but what was important was to have a dream. That’s where hope comes from.” — Bryan Cranston
In 1998, Cranston wrote and directed Last Chance, a movie with this theme at its heart. When we dream, we are preparing ourselves for reality. The ebbs and flows of life limit us from always being able to pursue what we desire. In those moments, what keeps pushing us is our dreams. Dreams keep us alive. No matter what we lose, we still have the ability to dream. And with those dreams comes the hope of a better tomorrow.
6. Do. Fail. Learn. Repeat
Cranston recalls Warren Buffet visiting him on the Breaking Bad set to tape a sketch for his shareholders’ annual gathering. During the break, Bryan asks him: What’s your secret? And to that, Warren simply replied — “Oh, it’s no secret. Just make more right decisions than wrong ones and you’ll be fine.”
It’s a simple yet profound lesson from the financial guru, and it’s a lot more than just financial advice. We all have and will make mistakes. Some of those mistakes will cost us dearly, but all of them are accompanied by lessons. Accept that you will make mistakes, and you will notice the burden of choice lessen. All we can do is keep trying.
Try, fall, get back up, and try again.
“I’m going to make mistakes. But the idea is to give myself the best chance to make more good decisions in the face of an overwhelming number of choices.” — Bryan Cranston
7. Follow Your Passion and Not Your Skills
We are wired to develop skills from the get-go. Many of those will be skills that we aren’t necessarily excited about but spend years honing. Once we have those skills, we construct our lives in a manner that allows us to use them to earn a living. What gets lost in the middle of all this are the things that matter to us. We forget the passions we once envisioned pursuing.
I am not saying skills are unimportant. We need them. Skills are integral to achieving what we set out to do. However, the important thing to remember is that picking up new skills is always possible, but passion is hard to come by.
Cranston realized he wanted to become an actor lying inside a tent on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. In one of the early passages in the book, he says:
“After being pelted by a week of ceaseless rain, my active mind had shut down and, at the risk of sounding overly — who cares? It’s true. Somehow my heart and soul had opened up. I saw my future. I saw it so vividly it was as if I’d had a conversation with my older self. At that precise moment I conjured a credo that would guide me for the rest of my life:
I will pursue something that I love — and hopefully become good at it, instead of pursuing something that I’m good at — but don’t love.” — Bryan Cranston
Reading Cranston’s memoir was a great look into the actor’s journey. It also served as a catalyst for an examination of my own thoughts about following my passion.
His life made me realize that everyone has detours in their journey, but that shouldn’t stop them from reaching their destination. Even when success looks like it was achieved overnight, it is seldom that way. The book reaffirms the notion of following one’s passion, whatever the path may be.
Whether you find these lessons relevant for you or not, the one key thing that I hope you remember is that it is never easy to take the path less traveled, but life is too short to be unhappy living a dream that isn’t yours.
Take at least one chance to follow your dreams. You owe it to yourself.
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