directors cut | David M Masters

If you take a look around you, at the life you’re living, this is of your making. You have perfectly designed the life you live every day, as it is the result of your challenges, choices, and consequences.

If you are not liking your life so much, then all you have to do is change it. You. I know, you can find 100 other people, circumstances, or things to blame, but the truth is, you’ve allowed all those things to be present and have power over you.

Nothing can have power over you unless you allow it because you are a mighty child of God, with all the rights of sacred royalty bestowed upon you, all yours for the asking, but you continue to play small. You think of yourself as a victim of life, when all the while you are the child of the Creator. What if you create your world?

As a child of the Creator, you have all the power to create anything you want. Your world, the world you step into every day is of your design. You have chosen the geographic location of your life. You have orchestrated all the players, invited them to play in your world, and have settled into the character you play.

In this role that you have set up for yourself, you face certain challenges and make decisions based on your character’s profile. You enjoy the results of the choices your character makes, or suffer the consequences, and this is all the result of you, and the part you chose to play in your terrestrial play. Your life is the result of the choices you make.

As the playwright of your life, you can choose a new life, rewrite your part completely, if you so choose. You can change the set, the geographic location, and all the players to better suit the life you’d like to live.

Will it be perfect? It depends on what your definition of perfect is. To me, the perfect life is not too safe or stagnant. It comes with plenty of opportunities for growth and expansion (challenges), for myself, and the other players in my world. I want to experience the full spectrum of what this life has to offer.

What’s in your movie?

Every now and then, you need to make adjustments to your story and the cast. Some cast members which you had faith in to play out their roles provided lackluster performances. Just like in any long-lasting teleplay, sometimes you have to change the cast up a bit to breathe new life into the property.

Ask yourself, is it time to sit back and review a vulnerable and honest director’s cut of your project?

You will know when it’s time to change it up, and if you’re not paying attention, your viewers and sponsors will let you know. They will either start complaining or start pulling away taking their resources with them.

“Fine,” you might say, “Who needs them,” because you’re committed to your project the way it is. Another challenge, followed by your choice, which may come with consequences.

Sometimes, you’re so focused on the details of your life, the interaction with the cast and crew, all the necessary details, lighting, locations, props, and shots, that you forget to take a look at your project from the lot, or better yet, an aerial view.

Getting a different perspective of your project from another point of view, reviewing the stats, reading the reviews, getting input from outside sources about your project, maybe even considering new sources of funding, could set your project on an award-winning trajectory.

It’s amazing what little adjustments can be made which can change everything drastically. A one or two percent change in straight-line trajectory from Seattle’s airport will result in landing in either New York or Orlando. That’s a huge change from a small adjustment.

When you make adjustments, some will be small and less significant, while others may include a total re-write and all new characters. And the time may come when you walk away from a project altogether because it does not serve you. This may be the case if you’ve allowed yourself to play small in someone else’s project.

I know what it feels like to have your character overwhelmed with thoughts, like, “My life has been so awful,” when you think, “Things couldn’t get worse,” then they do. When you’ve lost all hope and nothing seems to go right.

You know what if feels like to face insurmountable odds, to feel like you just can’t take one more…

No one is more keenly qualified to step into your role as the sacred director of your own life. Make yours the best story ever.

If stepping directly into the director’s seat is too much to ask, then maybe just reviewing your life as a 2-hour YouTube video might be a good start. You might discover that you are the reluctant hero in your story.

If you need a hand, we are here for you.

Challenges, choices, and consequences? Your life is the result of the choices, challenges, and changes that you make.

Start making changes.

You got this.

Up ’til now, you’ve seen the theatrical version of your life. Maybe it’s time for another look at this work for the new expanded, vulnerable and honest director’s cut.

If you desire to grow and expand into the best version of you, you need to take a look at what lies beneath the surface. Like a tree, the condition of your soil, the vastness of your root system and vital nutrients (fertilizer) all contribute to what is realized topside. Beneath the surface is the dirty work of self improvement, exposing our vulnerabilities.

Tracing our hidden root system with honesty and transparency can be frightening, looking the ghosts and demons of our past in the eye, studying our less than honorable moments and connections, opening old wounds, administering healing is the deep work.

Let’s face it, no one’s perfect, especially me. But this digging deep, working with the fragile infrastructure of my life, helps me to take out the trash and preserve, honor and cherish the antiquities that I treasure, more precious than diamonds. Left buried and un-treated these hidden wounds fester, leading to disease, deterioration and death. Tending to them openly and honestly, risking the sensitivities or our most vulnerable self allows us to turn them into energetic nutrients encouraging massive new growth, expansion and the juiciest fruit you’ve ever imagined.

This no-holds-barred approach to the deep work helps us find the beauty in what we may have discarded or buried as trash, while maximizing the nutritional elements of each buried experience that otherwise promotes rot and decay. This work allows us to look back at less than favorable moments in our lives with gratitude and joy.

We all are imperfect; yet hold ourselves to unbelievable levels of perfection, often punishing ourselves for missteps and failures. An honest review, looking at our darkest moments, broken dreams, betrayals, denials, punishments (of ourselves or others), denials, sacrifices, suffering and despair can be the most difficult work, but little else is so effective. On the other side of this work is an embracing of life as it is, with all of its jagged pieces, which if held in the light of love, sparkles like diamonds in the sky.

We live in a world with a forced set of parameters that are all imaginary. We are raised and forced to believe we are restricted by limitations imposed by nothing more than invisible self-policed thought processes, effectively imprisoning our experience in this life. These life restraints are challenged and the chains broken as we are set free to explore our untethered possibilities.

When you are able to break open all those tender wounds and face your demons with vulnerability, you can endure the entire process and look back with a sense of frivolity. After all, from an alternate high perspective, someone, somewhere, our higher self or God is looking at all this from a completely different point of view. And from this perspective, we are able to see things as they are and even laugh at ourselves as if watching a slapstick comedy.

Being able to find the humorous moments in the tragedy of our life can be as easy as changing the soundtrack. The background music can change most any scene from dark drama to lighthearted comedy. When you are able to look back on those moments, with respect, honor and a smile (if not a full on laugh), you are finding joy in a life that is. This is the key to true and lasting happiness.

Lightening up and loosening our restrains, allows us to find the joy via our newfound lighthearted approach to life. There is no need to make life so hard.

Aren’t we all in this together? We are all just actors playing parts in each other’s life teleplay.

Though some are born with an innate ability to play out their parts, most actors have trained and honed their skills, to learn how to take a fall without hurting themselves. It takes the same skills of agility and strength to be a death-defying stuntman/stuntwoman or a physical comedian. The soundtrack determines whether we gasp in fear, or laugh our ass off, watching the scene play out.

You’ll be surprised how much valuable story line was left on the cutting room floor. You can re-edit the theatrical version by filling in between the lines, enjoying new camera angles and changing the soundtrack in your Director’s Cut of your life.

Get ready to approach life with a new sense of vigor for all the fun that lies ahead on your enlightened journey.