Meet Candice Lam: Fear, Freedom & Finding Community

milanwomennetwork
Jan 25
7 min read

After a decade working as a model, actress, and producer across three continents, she'd built an impressive creative career. But when she moved to Milan in 2024 and took a break from performing, she finally faced the question she'd been avoiding: “Who am I when I’m not one of my job titles?” This journey led her to many realisations around identity, worth, and alignment - which led to The Candice Lam Way. This is her new venture helping creatives, artists, and purpose-driven people navigate uncertainty, money stories, and bridge the gap between external and internal success. She shares her story with us.

Written by: Candice Lam (Actress, Model, and founder of The Candice Lam Way)

“I believe real success begins when you stop performing who you think you should be, and start listening to who you truly are.” -The Candice Lam Way

For a long time, I thought I was afraid of failing.

Later, I realised I was just as afraid of succeeding. They’re actually the same thing. Two sides of the same coin.

Failure means I’m not enough. Success means I’d have no more excuses. I’d have to fully show up.

When I finally stopped trying to fight or suppress that fear, but instead, allowed myself to sit with it, something shifted.

The fear calmed down, my inner world transformed into a quiet peaceful place. I started to see the beauty inside the darkness.

There, I found my source. My creativity. The part of me that doesn’t need to please, or perform, or hustle for approval. The part that doesn’t need to be impressive to be worthy.

I’ve learnt that fear isn’t the enemy.

It’s information.

Most of us don’t fail because we’re incapable. We struggle because we’re disconnected from ourselves. But fear or any negative emotions are gold, they’re a sign post to a place that needs honesty, and safety.

Leaving Home As A Young Teenager

I grew up in Macau, China, in a household where money equated to security, and success was measured by salary, property, and titles. From a young age, I knew I didn’t fit into that mindset. I felt suffocated by it.

I wanted freedom. Expression. Space to exist without constant judgment.

At sixteen, I left home to study abroad in Canada. Officially, it was for education. In reality, I needed distance from my family’s expectations to hear my own voice.

That was where I discovered acting, which at first was just to improve my English. But then, I found something else entirely. On stage, I could be vulnerable, exposed, truthful.

It felt like freedom in its purest form.

When I told my mother I wanted to pursue acting, she warned me I’d be a starving artist.

That sentence stayed with me longer than I realised.

So I did both.

I chased art and approval. I got into a prestigious university in Los Angeles. I earned my degree in Theatre Arts. I built what looked like a respectable career in LA then in New York.

And still, the feeling of not enough never went away.

The Next 10 Years - With No Roadmap

Creative careers are built on instability and uncertainty. And there are no rules. No clear path where effort equals reward. Your degree doesn’t guarantee job offers. Talent doesn’t always open doors.

I’ve spent over a decade working in fashion, film, and theatre, as a model, actress, and producer across New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Europe. I joined SAG. I traveled. I became the face of campaigns and magazines.

I did what people call “making it.”

But behind the scenes, the work teaches you things no one prepares you for.

You learn cash flow the hard way, booking a job, then waiting months to get paid while stretching every dollar you have. You learn time management when everything is last-minute. You learn to regulate your nervous system in a profession built on rejection.

You become the CEO, CFO, and COO of your own career, because you are the business.

And somewhere along the way, it becomes very easy to confuse being chosen with being worthy.

I didn’t realise how much of my self-worth I had outsourced to agents, casting directors, brands, audiences, and even my family.

I was always chasing the next thing. The next booking. The next validation. It was as if I slowed down, everything would disappear.

The Rat Race, The Pause & Milan

In March 2024, I moved to Milan with three months of savings.

People call that brave. I think it was survival. I didn’t want to stay in New York, and I couldn’t go back to China. A new beginning felt necessary, symbolic even at the time.

Whenever I met someone in Milan and they learned I was an actor and model who had lived and worked in New York and Los Angeles, their eyebrows would wrinkle in confusion. They’d ask, Why the hell did you move to Italy?

I’d smile and say, Because I wanted a life.

During the pandemic, stuck in my Brooklyn apartment, I suddenly had more time than I ever had before. I joined a Buddhist study group. A writing group. I went to therapy. I started asking questions I’d been avoiding for years.

New York had always felt like a rat race. Always striving. Always measuring myself against someone else’s version of success. I even developed chronic neck and shoulder pain from the stress of balancing a career that was full of uncertainty and a marriage that no longer felt aligned.

The first six months in Milan were challenging. I wasn’t acting. I didn’t speak Italian well. I had no real community. My current partner became my emotional anchor which isn’t fair or sustainable for anyone.

One afternoon, sitting alone, I asked myself: If I strip away the labels, the credentials, the identity I created, who am I?

What do I really want? And why?

I paused acting and took a short-term role at the American School of Milan in project coordination and sustainability fundraising. It grounded me in ways I didn’t expect.

For the first time in my professional life, I had steady income. Structure. A sense of contribution that wasn’t tied to being seen or chosen.

Pausing didn’t mean I failed. It meant I finally stopped running long enough to ask better questions.

Sometimes clarity doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from creating space.

Community Changes The Shape of Fear

Milan Women Network entered my life at the exact right moment.

I found mirrors in the women I met, who weren’t pretending to have it all figured out. Women building, breaking, and rebuilding honestly.

I found inspirations and motivations among these wonderful people where we shared similar life journeys:

Some of the most meaningful opportunities I’ve had in Milan, including my role at ASM, came through this community.

More importantly, MWN gave me a space to share. To share my vision, my doubts, and imagine something new and have the courage and resources to execute.

Around this time, I noticed a pattern.

People came to me when they felt stuck. Creatives asked me how to navigate uncertainty. Women talked to me about money, fear, self-doubt, career confusion, identity shifts.

And slowly, something started to brew.

Everything I learned emotionally, practically, spiritually had value. I began sharing more of my experiences, my reflections, my lessons. I was helping people ask better questions.

I realised I could help others find their own version of success, by helping them understand why they want what they want, and showing them how to move toward it in a way that feels honest.

That’s when I knew I wanted to create something of my own. A service that felt aligned and that combined my creative background with my desire to be in service. Something rooted in lived experience.

Essentially a way to help people see their options more clearly, like a navigator pointing out possible paths, while trusting them to choose what’s theirs.

The Soul Of What I Offer

What I do now is often called “consulting,” but that word doesn’t fully capture it.

At its core, my work is about alignment.

I work with creatives, artists, and purpose-driven people who are capable but misaligned. People who are good at what they do, but feel disconnected while doing it. People who are transitioning, questioning, or standing at the edge of something new.

Because whatever you’re building, your fears, values, money stories, boundaries they come with you. Always.

Humans are driven by emotion, desire, and fear. Fragile things. As creatives, we have to protect our intuition and our values, not override them in the name of productivity or approval.

Most creatives aren’t born with a business mind. And most business minds aren’t deeply creative. Vision needs execution. Creativity needs structure.

I happen to live in both worlds. I’m deeply creative, and I also think structurally. I see the big picture, and I know how to move something from point A to point B, without losing its soul.

There is no one path. The path exists when you take the first step.

That’s how The Candice Lam Way began.

Launching The Candice Lam Way first within this community is my way of showing appreciation for the inspiration and encouragement from all the women I encountered along the way.

If there’s one thing I hope you take from this, it’s this:

You don’t need to have everything figured out.

You don’t need to fit a mold.

But you do deserve a life and career that feels aligned with who you really are.

And sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is to take the first step before you feel ready.

If you’d like to share this community experience, please join us for an exclusive cocktail evening on January 29th as we celebrate and support Candice with the launch of her business.

And you can discover more of her personal stories & philosophy on Substack.

Proofread & Edited By: Ché Maria Milani

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