Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Amy Schloerb

Amy Schloerb shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Amy, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
So happy to be back! Thanks for having me. I love to start my day with about 10-20 minutes of mindfulness meditation. I find that it really helps me ease into my day gently and then has lasting, positive effects on my mental health and general mindset throughout my day. After mindfulness, I have some breakfast and take my dog out on a walk around our neighborhood, usually while listening to a funny podcast. My husband and I trade off parenting duties, so some mornings I’m also helping our son get up and off to school as well.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Sure! I’m Amy Schloerb and I’ve been a professional actor for almost 20 years, working primary in television and commercials. I’m also a mindfulness and mindset coach for actors and creatives. My company is The Aligned Actor and my mission is to help people strengthen their mindset so they can confidently ride the banana-pants roller coaster of a creative career with as much peace and calm presence as possible. Basically, I don’t want folks feeling sick to their stomachs over all the ups and downs, twists and turns that are just a normal part of an acting career.

All too often actors make normal, benign experiences mean something bad about them – “I didn’t book that role, that must mean I wasn’t good enough” – when really, not booking is just a normal part of EVERY actor’s career and usually is absolutely no reflection of talent. I feel uniquely suited to my work because I can blend my lived experience as an actor with the power, proven coaching knowledge and tools I’ve learned in my training. I love helping my clients become more aware and focused on making positive changes that help them relax and feel more confident in themselves.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
For sure my perfectionism, and I would imagine many folks can relate. I am grateful that it has helped me work very hard over the years and hold high expectations for myself and my work, but I see now how toxic it really is. I’m still on an imperfect (pun intended!) journey in terms of releasing perfectionism from my life, but in doing so I can feel myself relaxing and having way more fun with everything I do. My acting is more playful because I’ve stopped trying to control it so precisely. I’m also a lot kinder to myself and more focused on my progress with endeavors rather than berating myself for not doing things perfectly right away. The interesting and delightful twist is that in letting go of perfectionism more and more I actually think my work has gotten better rather than getting worse, which is the big fear that perfectionism tries to protect us from.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
I almost quit acting because of one audition. Amidst all the stress and chaos of the pandemic, I had a self tape that I tried to record right after my toddler had a meltdown. I thought I could just roll right into my work, but it was a nightmare. I kept messing up and I didn’t recognize that my nervous system was completely wrecked. I decided to do the tape later, but by the time I made that decision my inner critic was so activated and saying stuff like, “If you were a REAL actor, you’d be able to do this!” that I just couldn’t stop thinking about the audition enough to actually put it down and come back fresh later. I ended up passing on the audition, and that’s when my inner critic REALLY got loud and mean, “If you can’t do this audition, you shouldn’t be an actor at all! You should just quit!”

Thankfully, I noticed another little “voice” in my head that said, “This doesn’t mean anything about you as an actor.” It literally made me stop in my tracks, like a record scratch in my brain. That one thought saved my career. And it turned out to be completely true because about a week later I got another audition from the same show, so clearly passing on one audition literally meant nothing to them and like the voice said, meant nothing about me as an actor. Everyone has those moments where they just can’t perform for whatever reason and that doesn’t have to mean it’s all over. It doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” like that. We’re human and we need to give ourselves grace.

If I’m ever in a similar situation again, I trust that my mindfulness practice will help me head off the whole thing. One of the best benefits I’ve gotten from mindfulness is that it enables me to respond calmly when my kid is having a meltdown. I no longer get caught up in his “big feelings” and try desperately to “fix” them. And when I do get swept up in the feelings (hey, I’m human), I know how to calm my nervous system back down so that I can actually be present for my acting work.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
I think I’m pretty much, “What you see is what you get” and I certainly aim for that kind of authenticity. I’m very open about my journey and use myself for most examples that I give on how to approach mindfulness and mindset work. Of course there are ways that I present in public that are more “on” than I am in the quieter moments of my life, but it’s still always “me.”

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
No one ever told me, “You must be an actor!” so I’m definitely doing what I was born to do. And beyond acting, I also think I was born to help other actors deal with all the challenges that are just part of the acting career. This desire comes very naturally to me, and although it took me some time to accept this “calling” I’m so glad I did because talking to actors about mindfulness and mindset work lights me up similarly to the way acting does.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thealignedactor.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyschloerb/
• Other: The Aligned Actor on Substack – https://thealignedactor.substack.com/

  My Linktree – https://linktr.ee/amyschloerb

Image Credits
The professional headshot is by Tandem Photo. All other images are my own.