What’s Trending Today: Tyler Perry
What are his secrets to success?
One of my daily patterns is to read news feeds online and see what is trending right now. I don’t bother with the lists of what is trending that are offered by the BBC, Yahoo, Twitter, or Google since I know that most of these are paid ads or manipulations by SEO consultants. I do the work (or play) and take the half-hour to just review the stories.
Today I came across three different stories on Tyler Perry. Born Emmitt Perry Jr., September 13, 1969) Perry is an American actor, writer, producer, and director. I first came across his name in the early 1990s and early 2000s when he regularly staged plays he created. These were presented at the Beacon Theater, The Beacon Theatre, a historic 2,894-seat, three-tiered theatre on the upper west side of Manhattan. Originally a movie palace in recent years it has been a major venue for Rock Concerts, awards show,s and such.
In 2011, Forbes Magazine listed him as the highest-paid man in entertainment, earning US$130 million between May 2010 and May 2011.
Much of Perry’s success has been through the creation and performance of the Madea character, a tough elderly black woman. Perry’s films vary in style from orthodox filmmaking techniques to filmed productions of live stage plays. Many of Perry’s stage-play films have been subsequently adapted as films.
Perry wrote and produced many stage plays during the 1990s and early 2000s. Perry has developed television series, almost all that have been successful.
On October 2, 2012, Perry struck an exclusive multi-year partnership with Oprah and her Oprah Winfrey Network.
What are the secrets to Tyler Perry’s success? I will focus on just two here:
1. You have to heal, the traumas, betrayals, and the emotional baggage of your youth. This is never easy.
2. You have to think out of the box.
- Healing your traumas, betrayals, and emotional baggage.
When we are burdened by early trauma, it can greatly affect our decision making as adults, my making us prisoner’s of various cognitive biases. . Perry was born Emmitt Perry Jr. in New Orleans. Perry once said his father’s answer to everything was to “beat it out of you”. As a child, Perry once went so far as to attempt suicide in an effort to escape his father’s beatings. In contrast to his father, his mother took him to church each week, where he sensed a certain refuge and contentment. At age 16, he had his first name legally changed from Emmitt to Tyler in an effort to distance himself from his father.
Many years later, after seeing the film Precious, Perry was moved to reveal for the first time that he had been molested by a friend’s mother at age 10; he was also molested by three men prior to this and later learned his own father had molested his friend. A DNA test taken by Perry indicated that Emmitt Sr. was not Perry’s biological father.
Perry did not complete high school, but eventually, he earned a GED. Clearly, Perry came to appreciate the power of knowledge.
In his early 20s, watching an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, he heard someone describe the sometimes therapeutic effect the act of writing can have, enabling the author to work out his or her own problems. This comment inspired him to apply himself to a career in writing. He soon started writing a series of letters to himself, which became the basis for the musical I Know I’ve Been Changed.
There are many approaches to transcending early traumas. The one I have explored the most is called “Inner Child Work”. In emotional healing, the term inner child is an individual’s childlike aspect. It includes what a person learned as a child before puberty. The inner child is often conceived as a semi-independent subpersonality subordinate to the waking conscious mind. The term has therapeutic applications in counseling and health settings. The concept became known to a broader audience through books and PBS videos by John Bradshaw. I believe Bradshaw’s work is a great place to start this exploration.
2.“Out of the box” thinking
Tyler Perry is an “out of the box” thinker. Thinking outside the box (also thinking out of the box or thinking beyond the box is a metaphor that means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking. The term is thought to derive from management consultants in the 1970s and 1980s. This phrase can also be found commonly in the creative arts, as an encouragement to move creatively, beyond simple, techniques and their basic variations, to literally step outside the box into more complex patterns of expression.
To think outside the box, a way of creating that Perry seems to have mastered. On needs to look further and to try not thinking of the obvious things, but to try thinking of the things beyond them or even other than them.
For example. Perry’s TV show The Haves and the Have Nots gave OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) its highest ratings to date as of 2014 Here Perry mixed numerous genres into one neat package of a show, with its weekly dose of soapy fun, filled with the typical manipulations, affairs, betrayals, affairs and manipulations.
Takeaway
To achieve the type of success earned by Tyler Perry you need to be able to tap into your creative emotional well and be innovative in ways that transcend the ordinary.
Author: Lewis Harrison is an Independent Scholar with a passion for knowledge, personal development, self-improvement, and problem-solving. He is the creator of Harrison’s Applied Game Theory. His website is AskLewis.com
You can read all of his Medium stories at Lewis.coaches@medium.com.
“I am always exploring trends, areas of interest, and solutions to build new stories upon. Again, if you have any ideas you would like me to write about just email me at LewisCoaches@gmail.com”.
