Hello and welcome back to the Aligned Actor Substack, podcast, YouTube video, wherever you have found this content, I welcome you.

I'm Amy Schloerb. I am a mindfulness and mindset coach and I help actors ride the roller coaster of being an actor without throwing up.

September is my "actorversary" — the anniversary of when I became a professional actor by moving to Los Angeles and starting my acting career — and so I always like to reflect at this time and look back at how far I've come.

A number of years ago, I wrote myself a letter, to my younger self, the version of me that had just moved out to Los Angeles, offering advice.

This year I decided that I wanted to go look at that letter, see what advice I had offered myself back then, see if I still like that advice, if there's things that I would change about that advice, or if there's stuff that I would add now as extra advice to pile on top of newly-arrived-baby-actor-in-LA Amy.

I had a lot of advice, apparently, for my younger self just starting out, and so this is just part one of a series of Substack-podcast-YouTube-videos that we're going to do because I didn't want any of these to get out of control long.

This is part one, "Success is a journey, not a destination" which I still really like this advice. This is great advice.

So let's read now what younger actor Amy had to say to even younger actor Amy and then older actor Amy — more mature, more wise, finely-aged actor Amy, "now" actor Amy — will chime in with extra additional thoughts as well.

Dear Amy,

“Success is a journey, not a destination”

I know, I know, you’ve seen this on magnets and sometimes you even think you understand and believe it. But there’s still something nagging at the back of your mind saying, “yeah, but once I achieve THAT, then I’ll really be successful.” Sorry, no.

If you believe success is a destination you’ll just end up hustling, striving, and holding yourself apart from happiness and a sense of accomplishment. You have success now. High School Amy Schloerb believed that success was graduating and getting into a good college. College Amy Schloerb believed success was, again, graduating and starting a good career. Now that you’ve arrived in LA, you’re thinking success means booking bigger and better acting jobs consistently and continuously until you’re the next Reese Witherspoon. Not gonna lie, I still sometimes think that, but then I remember the truth:

Setting goals is great, but continuously moving the goal post on what it means to BE SUCCESSFUL is soul crushing.

If you keep thinking, “yeah I did that, good for me, but now REAL success is up there” guess what? “Real success” will always be “up there.” Wherever the F either of those things are….

Instead, put the goal post of success inside you. What?! What the heck does that mean?! It means enjoy the process and the journey because, spoiler alert, that’s all there is: Journey. And then more journey, some more journey, a quick detour journey to a foreign country (oops! I’ve said too much!), followed by, you guessed it, more journey! It’s quite a trip! Bahahahahaha! Oh, stop rolling your eyes, you know that was funny!

There’s gonna be ups and downs, highs and lows, abundance and “slow times” - and the sooner you recognize that that’s just what this career IS, the happier you’re gonna be overall. You’re “in the arena” (look up the Roosevelt quote, it’s good) and that means you’re already successful.

I still really love this advice because it basically means we get to define success. I've talked about this before on Substack pretty recently and on YouTube.

It's a really important thing to think about, about how we define success.

The way that Google, and some kind of dictionary online where I looked this up before for a different content offering, the way that they define success is...

Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

I want us all to find a definition of success that allows us to feel good about ourselves. That's what I really think is important when it comes to our mindset about ourselves and how we're going to approach ourselves and the world.

If you define success as engaging in the journey of being an actor, then ta-da! Success!

Anything that you do that's you engaging in the life of an actor — auditions, taking headshots, submitting yourself for roles, meeting with your agent, getting a new agent if you need one, going on commercial auditions, networking — literally anything that you do that furthers your acting career all of a sudden becomes an act of success because you're just doing it, you're just being an actor and doing the things that actors do.

On the flip side though, if you choose destination-based success, then things get a lot trickier.

For the longest time I've had the goal of playing a recurring character on a fun tv show and that hasn't happened yet. I would really like to achieve that success.

But if I choose to define success overall for myself as "recurring role" then everything else that I've achieved in my career starts to kind of look like a failure, and I start to feel like I'm failing.

“I haven't achieved that, so therefore I'm not successful. I'm a failure.”

Why would I do that to myself?

Why would I view it like that?

It's a lot smarter to define success based on what I can control.

"Yes, I did that self tape. I played that character the way that I wanted to play them. I hit all the beats that I wanted to hit. I connected with my reader really well. I felt really present and in the moment, I really went after what I wanted in that scene."

Defining success that way, deciding that THAT'S the measure of success based on what I did, rather than success being based on what others do, the stuff that I can't control — how casting sees the video, what casting thinks of the video, which videos they choose to pass on to production, how production sees the video, what they actually need out of this role, the heights of the other actors and how I line up in terms of all of that.

I can't control that stuff.

I can't control what auditions come my way. I can't control what types of roles are casting. Maybe they're just not casting anything that works for me at the moment, and that's just how it is.

I have no control over that.

I can't control how casting responds to my work. I can't control how production responds to my work.

What I can control is how I show up in my work and all the actions that I take as an actor.

I can control how I show up in my self tapes.

I can control how I engage in my career as an actor.

This next little bit that I'm going to read to you, I found with the letter, and I think it was when I did a version of this on the podcast years and years and years ago, so I'm talking about the letter that I had written, but it's still really good stuff, so I wanted to share it with you now, but I wanted to clarify that this is also probably younger Amy as well.

So, the take-away here is that YOU get to decide what success means and I would encourage you to define success as the entirety of the journey of your career, rather than some destination - co-star, guest star, series regular, three-picture deal, paying all your bills from acting work, Oscar, Emmy, EGOT, whatever. Holding THE JOURNEY as your marker of success is so liberating and rewarding. Please, don’t hold yourself apart from happiness, fulfillment, and achievement. You can have it now.

The idea here is just engaging in your career, all of it — the highs, the lows, the twists, the turns, "staying at the table" as I once heard Henry Winkler say — that's the success.

"Success is a journey, not a destination" means success is what you do.

The journey — you walking your path, you taking all of the actions that you take as an actor — not where you end up.

And this is definitely a mindset shift because, oh boy, do we have a lot of messaging that we receive from society that says basically the exact opposite.

But I think this is a really important mindset shift and it really can help with your overall happiness, and your overall drive, and your overall motivation, and your overall inspiration for wanting to continue on in your career and keeping that fire, that ember, that passion alive in you.

And if you want help making this kind of mindset shift, redefining success for yourself so that you can feel great about yourself and great about your acting career, I can definitely help you with that.

But first, here’s your moment of mindfulness…

Let’s chat! ☕️

If you’re ready to transform your actor mindset, let’s connect in a complimentary session.

Rest assured, this is not a “sales call.” I’m not Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. In my world ABC means “Always Be Celebrating!” 🥳

This is a chance for us to connect and for you to walk away with some specific, actionable ideas that you can start applying right away to shift and strengthen your actor mindset.

Think of it like an audition where you are the production team. I’ll show you what I do in the role of “coach” by actually coaching you, and then you get to decide, “Does my production need a mindset coach right now, and is Amy right for this role?”