I sat with my husband as he soaked in the reality of the present moment.
We had flown out to Los Angeles from New York City for a meeting with his boss, and we’d been hoping for good news—a promotion, a raise, a new project. Instead, he’d been fired.
And he was devastated.
We were sitting in a hot rental car on Sunset Boulevard, that iconic place where dreams come true—or come crashing down—for so many filmmakers like Stephen and actors like me. Outside, the sun shined down like it always had. Sunny LA, where the weather is great, and the people are rich, glamorous, famous.
But beneath all the glitz were so many people like us. Scared.
I looked at Stephen and saw something I hadn’t seen often from my good-looking, driven, and (until that moment) successful husband: panic.
Our daughter, Kaya, was six months old. We relied on his income. I had transitioned from my career as an actress and soap opera star to live out another of my dreams as a life coach. But I was newly certified, which meant I wasn’t making money yet. We had both experienced fame and success in an industry where such things are insanely hard to come by—but now, we were about to be broke.
Did I mention we had a six-month-old?
“What are we gonna do?” he kept saying. “How are we going to make money?”
The gig he’d been fired from was a “first-look deal, ” which, in the film industry, is where they pay you to generate story ideas. A lot of people crumble under such intense pressure to be creative, but Stephen thrived. He can see stories and plotlines where other people see chaos. But that day, sitting there in the sweltering car, he only saw failure.
My heart broke for him. I felt panicky too, but the situation wouldn’t allow both of us to panic. I took a deep breath. I was a newly minted coach—I could handle this.
“It’s going to be okay, ” I said. “We’ll figure something out. ”
I could almost hear his eyes roll, but I persisted.
“Maybe you can go back to writing scripts. I’ll get a job. We’ll be fine, I promise. ”
“I’m screwed, ” he said, holding his head in his hands, the universal gesture of Oh, crap. “This business is impossible. How do you make any money in the entertainment industry, let alone a million dollars?”
Stephen is a driven guy. He has always had goals and worked hard to make them happen. This may sound a little crazy, but for as long as I’ve known him, he’s had this deep-seated belief that to survive, he would have to make a million dollars. Maybe it was his family history. Maybe it was the artist in him, afraid he would never work again. Whatever the cause, it was the benchmark he’d set for himself, and it was non-negotiable.
“It’s impossible to make a million dollars in this business, ” he repeated. “There’s just no way. ”
“Well, someone’s done it, ” I said, “so it can’t be impossible. ”
“They must be lucky. ” He let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t see how it could ever happen. It’s so freaking hard. ”
We’d had similar conversations before. But this time was different.
This time, one little question changed everything.
Been Here, Done That
This wasn’t the first time one of us had faced failure in Hollywood. Like Stephen, I had come to Los Angeles, broke and scared yet determined to succeed. At 19, I’d moved there from New Jersey, gambling my whole life—my savings, my relationships, my education, and career—to become an actress. No, not just an actress. I wanted to be a star.
I got to LA, and I did what every aspiring actress does: I got a waitressing job. Soon after, I signed with an agent and a manager, and I started auditioning as much as I could. And that’s when I learned: in this business, you get rejected a LOT. In order to survive, I knew I needed a strong mindset.
So, I began to study mindset as much as acting, and put the mindset tools I learned to use. I visualized myself succeeding. I learned the tools of manifesting. I set milestones for myself and reached them. I repeated affirmations like, I can do this; I’ve got this. And then one day, I got the call I’d been waiting for. I landed the starring role of Lucy Cooper on Guiding Light, one of the most popular soap operas on TV.
Fast forward to a few years later. I loved working on Guiding Light; I loved my role as Lucy. But I knew that if I was ever going to do something different, now was the time. I decided to take a chance—and I left the show.
A lot of people thought that was crazy, and I don’t blame them. Leaving a stable acting gig meant returning to the world of auditions and rejections and unemployment. I’d done it before, so why not do it again? But this time, I made a big mistake. This time, I took a big, heavy bag of dark beliefs with me.
I’m not good enough. I’m never gonna work again. I’m gonna lose everything. I carried those beliefs everywhere I went…and guess what. A year and a half later, I lost everything. My relationships were a mess. I was flat broke. And I hadn’t worked a single day in eighteen months.
Then one afternoon, sitting on a bluff over the Pacific (I was turtle-sitting that week, trying to earn $25 for groceries), it dawned on me: I had done this to myself.
I’d used all the same tools that I used to create my success—but this time, I used them to create a big whopping failure.
See, before Guiding Light, I did a TON of work on improving my mindset. I visualized myself succeeding. I asked myself powerful questions like, What can I do to improve? How can I make this work? I used positive self-talk like, I am strong. I can DO this.
And it worked! I became the confident, successful actress who was cast as Lucy Cooper.
But this time? I did the opposite.
I visualized, all right. I visualized my bank account at zero. I asked myself crappy questions like Why won’t anyone hire me? My self-talk consisted of thoughts like: I’m not good enough. I’ll never get another acting job. I’m going to lose everything.
Suddenly I understood why I was failing so badly. And I knew I had to turn things around—fast.
The very next morning, I decided to try something radically different. I brought back my trusty old mindset tools and used them while running up a canyon in Santa Monica. As I ran, I visualized myself nailing my auditions and landing more roles. I repeated affirmations. I asked powerful questions that gave me powerful, positive answers.
And when I got to the top, I realized the canyon would echo back anything I yelled into it. So, I yelled things I wanted to hear: “You got the job!” “You got the job!”
I was so excited that I jumped up and down, feeling all the amazing energy that comes with success, even though nothing had changed yet—externally, anyway. I even started calling that place my “Bridge of Success. ”
I did that every single day.
Every. Single. Day.
While feeding a turtle so I could eat dinner.
This is the life of a Hollywood star? Yep.
And I kept at it.
It didn’t take long for me to notice changes in my physical movements, in my body. I carried myself with more confidence. At auditions, I stood proudly and stepped into them fully, giving each one my all. At the same time, my mindset began to shift. I began to believe I could succeed.
And you know what?
Three weeks later, I landed a role in a national commercial.
Three months later, my phone rang as I was running down from my morning-run-slash-motivational yell into the canyon. It was my manager.
“Guess what, ” he said. “One Life to Live called. You got the job. They want you to star as Psycho Nurse Barbara. ”
(That’s not typecasting, by the way. )
I had done it again. I’d beaten the odds. Succeeded in a place almost no one succeeds. And it wasn’t because of luck, or looks, or connections, or money.
It was because of the changes I made in my mind and body.
It was a special blend of mindset and movement.