Meet Michael Gurshtein

We were lucky to catch up with Michael Gurshtein recently and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your lessons with our community today. So, let’s jump right in – one of the most essential skills for unlocking our potential is self-discipline. Where does your self-discipline come from?

I have been interested in spirituality on and off throughout my life. As a six-year-old, I asked my parents while we were still living in Russia about the Russian Orthodox church, but that idea was shut down quite quickly. Then in high school, nominally as part of being on the knowledge bowl team but really also for my own development, I researched all the major world religions. That journey left me with a desire never to engage with organized religion, something I feel passionately about to this day.
After I had exhausted religious avenues, I turned to philosophy, and found resonance with the ancient Greeks. By the time I left school, I was quite interested in Stoicism, though it would not be until my mid-twenties that I started practicing as a Stoic regularly, consistently, and coherently.
The core tenet of Stoicism is that the world consists of things we can control and things we cannot control. All the things we can control are internal: state of mind, goals, desires. Anything external or dependent on others is outside of our control to a greater or lesser degree. This one big idea lends itself naturally to self-discipline. Since all the controllable things are internal, actually controlling them requires discipline. So that’s what I have been working on for about fifteen years now. Counterintuitively, this involves practices like feeling all your feelings (contrary to popular opinion of Stoicism), but listening to them as advisors rather than as rulers of your actions. I have also learned to manage my anger, something I struggled with as a young man, which I think is an all too common experience for boys and young men around the world.
I don’t believe that any one religion or philosophy is the end-all, be-all for everyone, but I firmly believe that there is some set of ideas and practices out there that will work for every person, and the hard part is finding that philosophy. Stoicism works for me, and I recommend it to others.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Theater has been a part of my life since I was a little child. From attending plays in Russia since before I can remember, to participating in high school drama, I have always been around actors and techies. I accidentally slipped into a nine-year hiatus after high school, but in 2011 I came back to the theater and have never left since. For most of my life, acting was a hobby, though one I thoroughly enjoyed. Cue the pandemic: one of my partners and I hiked a long section of the Continental Divide Trail in 2021 – three months walking in the wilderness of the American West with nothing but time to think. During that long ramble, I realized that I desperately wanted to stop working as an engineer and instead would like to make acting my full-time vocation.
Since returning from that fateful hike, I have been working diligently towards that dream, even though I realize how lofty and difficult to achieve it is. Over the next two years, things did not move fast enough for my liking, so I took a drastic step and started applying to grad schools for acting. The result being that I will be moving to Los Angeles in the fall of 2024 to study at the Stella Adler Art of Acting Studio in West Hollywood. I already consider myself a good actor, but I am hopeful that this next step in the journey will turn me into a great actor and that I can focus on my career as I look to enter the fields of film, television, and voice acting.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Don’t take things personally – this comes out of Stoicism, certainly, but also many other philosophical traditions. In any field, but especially in the creative fields such as the performing arts, you will encounter and have to work with people you don’t like, or disagree with, or think they are egotistical, etc. You will also hear NO far, far more often than you hear YES. I consider myself lucky if I get cast once in ten auditions; typically that ratio is much lower. You cannot take this personally or you will burn out very quickly. Getting creative work relies on so many factors that it is virtually never about you. And the challenges that other people face in their lives that might spill over onto you are also not about you. Everyone is just trying to make the best life they can for themselves. So don’t take things personally.
Collaborative teamwork – tying into the previous skill, almost no creative endeavor is a solo undertaking. Some more than others, to be sure, but even writers need editors, agents, publishers. In the theater world where I have grown up, nothing is possible without teamwork. Besides my fellow actors, I need to work well with the director, AD, stage manager, costumer… all the people you don’t see on the stage when a production opens are just as important to the creation of a good performance as the actors. And all those people come from different walks of life, different backgrounds. Many of them might feel alien because their experiences are so different, but that doesn’t change the fact that a good working relationship with them is required for a positive and productive experience. Find ways to work well with anyone.
Remain curious – the Stoic Epictetus said “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” This attitude has served me well as an actor. I have worked with actors who don’t hear direction well, or simply don’t make adjustments when they do hear it. Those actors are frustrating and unpleasant to be onstage with because they are not trying to create the best performance they can. Curiosity allows an actor, or any creative, to hear input and feedback and adjust their creative flow to get an even better result. Taking the advice of others is not selling out, when the advice is reasoned and comes from a trustworthy source. It also allows for a back and forth dialogue between (in my case) actor and director that spurs new ideas and elevates the performance even further. Always stay curious and be willing to listen.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

For condensed Stoic wisdom, there is no better book than the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius. The book was written as a private journal by the most powerful man in the world at the time, but you see over and over the same day to day problems that all of us face: getting out of bed in the morning, dealing with difficult people, coping with grief and loss, figuring out how to do the right thing. Just knowing that the emperor of Rome could and had to admonish himself to be a better person gives some comfort. And also inspiration to do the same.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://michaelgurshtein.com

Image Credits

Brian Landis Folkins, Hannah Richards, Kirsten Jorgensen Smith, Steve Rausch