Amy Poehler, star from Parks and Recreation, opens up in O magazine

I love AMY POEHLER, the star of Parks and Recreation, she is hilarious! So we’re sharing some lessons learned from the March issue of O magazine.

Here she opens up to O about goodbyes and lessons learned.

On always looking forward:

“I’ve always avoided goodbyes. I remember at the end of my senior year in high school, I wasn’t at all interested in attending my graduation. I just kept thinking, ‘I need to get out of here! What’s next?’ I didn’t see the point in looking back.”

Fear of the end:

“Really, when I think about it, the end of any good thing can throw me into a funk. Even the conclusion of a book will put me in a bad mood. I’ll get to the last 20 pages and think, ‘Ugh, this book stinks,’ even though I was actually loving it up until then.”

Aha! Moment:

“One day, as we were winding down on set, my costar Rashida Jones turned to me and said, ‘Wow. You seem really grouchy.’ I looked at Rashida, whom I adore, and started thinking about all the other great projects I’d worked on over the years and how every time one of them came to an end, I felt the same sense of frustration. I had never understood why I felt that way, and sometimes I didn’t even notice that my attitude had shifted. But in that moment it dawned on me: In each of those scenarios, I was angry and anxious because I was scared about what I was leaving behind. Instead of facing changes, I always wanted to skip over them.”

Wise words:

“Then I remembered a book I had read five years earlier called When Things Fall Apart by the Buddhist monk Pema Chödrön. She explained that the only thing in life we can really count on is change—to be fully alive is to be repeatedly ‘thrown out of the nest.’ But if we really experience the end of something, that thing will never actually end. The good memories and relationships will stay with you.”

Fear overcame:
“After that day, I stopped trying to jump out of the car while it was still running. I had real goodbye conversations with my Parks and Recreation friends. I told them how much I appreciated them and how much I would miss them. And I tried to savor whatever time I had left with them on set.”

This article information is courtesy of Hearst Magazine.