Tag: life as a film

Challenges Choices and Consequences

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.

What’s in Your Movie?

Imagine you’re a genius filmmaker who has been assigned a very special project challenge. Your film company has made all the arrangements. They have found a town to use as your next film’s location. All the arrangements have been made. The local government has received signatures from every person who lives and/or works in the town authorizing you to make any film you like using local talent, any naturally occurring events, and locations to make your movie.

All the releases have been signed and you are allowed to use anything and anyone in the town as long as you do not disrupt anything that might have (or have not) occurred naturally. The residents have been charged to ignore your presence and that of your crew as much as possible and you may use and/or bring in outside talent as long as they have not been on film before. This motion picture is to have an incredibly natural feel to it, and you have no script, but your mind’s already swimming in ideas.

You accept the challenge.

Day one. You and your crew arrive in Astoria, the location of your film. Immediately, you and your crew drive around the town and scope out potential sets. Any home, any building, any location is yours for the choosing. You take some basic reference shots of potential locations for you to refer to later.

You decide you’ll start shooting tomorrow at a restaurant and lounge called the Crab Pot.

Next up, you have time to select your key players, so you and your crew head out to downtown to see what the locals look like. The local supermarket seems to be the place with the most foot traffic, so you settle-in there, posting up where local Girl Scouts usually are outside the store selling cookies.

At first, a crowd starts to develop around your area outside the store. Local law enforcement arrives to break up the crowd because they’ve pledged to ignore your presence unless you reach out to them. They apologize profusely and you recruit two of the officers, Jason, and Kelly to be talent in your film.

By five o’clock p.m. on your first day, you’ve selected the location where you are going to shoot, and you have a cast of eight locals selected to start filming. You’ve called a dancer from Las Vegas to appear in your film, and she’s on the bus right now, headed for Astoria, she should be arriving tomorrow. You’re thinking she will play your love interest.

That night you’re up all night plotting and scheming as your intention is to start shooting first thing in the morning.

The next morning, before the break of day, you and your crew set off to the Crab Pot to better acquaint yourself with the location and to get some establishing shots. Wait-a-minute… What are all those lights and emergency vehicles doing down the road? You tell your crew to start filming from the limo.

What? You insist they shoot anything and everything. Maybe you will find a way to fit the footage in later. They agree and comply. As you get closer to your location,

Well, I’ll be damned.

Sure enough, the Crab Pot suddenly burst into flames in the middle of the night, and it looks like you’re your location is a bust. You’re frustrated, as you rip out the sketches of your storyboard which relate to this location, as you tell your crew to get out and film everything, getting the best shots they can.

You start sketching-out the events which are currently being recorded, maybe you will find a way to write them in later.

Unfortunately, Eli, one of your cast members was in that fire. Although severely burned, he was rescued by firefighters, treated by EMTs and transferred to the hospital. You send half of your crew to follow him to the hospital while the other half continues to cover the fire. Eli died after being put on life support at the hospital, so now you’re down to a cast of seven, with one en route on the bus. You scratch-out parts you had intended Eli to play in your film.

By three o’clock p.m., you have footage of the fire, emergency response, and hospital footage in the can, as you film the arrival Tasha, the dancer, as she steps off the bus. You take a shine to her, thinking she is going to play a significant role in your reality-feeling movie.

By seven o’clock p.m., the dancer is being handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a police car, kicking and screaming. In four hours, she had gotten drunk, high, lifted the wallets of eleven locals (two from your crew members), stolen three cell phones, had sex with the mayor and his wife (unbeknownst to each other), and was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, theft, and destruction of public property. (Which you have documented and “in the can.”)

You send two cameramen to follow the police car and document whatever happens to the dancer.

You don’t know how this is going to affect your script or if any of the footage collected from your second day in town and first day’s shoot will appear in any of your movie at all, but you will be thinking of ways you can use it for your best advantage in upcoming script revisions.

There’s still hope for the scheduled “chance” encounter when you lightly direct and passively shoot the meeting of Alex and Mandy at the Pig & Pancake, while you and your staff grab a bite out of the camera’s view.

At nine-thirty you get a call from the pair covering the dancer. It appears she has outstanding warrants in Las Vegas and will no longer be a potential cast member. You call the videographers back to “The Pig” to join the rest of the crew.

And so it goes, day-in, day-out, every day after day, just making the best film you can out of the footage you get. You have your plans and ideas, and stuff happens. You readjust and keep shooting.

Just like real life.

What’s in your movie?

Vulnerable and Honest Director’s Cut

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.

What If You Create Your World?

Let’s say for a moment (I’m not expecting you to fully embrace this concept at the outset, only proposing that you follow along and consider the point of view momentarily, to think about it) that you have 100 percent control of your life. I’d expect you to immediately respond with a Scroogesque, “Bah! Humbug.”

What if you create your world... every detail of it?
What if you create your world… every detail of it?

But just for fun, let’s say there is a person in a massive control room who can orchestrate and influence every detail of your life, not unlike The Truman Show.

the-truman-show-jim-carrey-movie-or-reality

If you’ve seen the film, it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to consider the possibility that in some ways – in this life – that you are playing the part of Jim Carrey unaware that you are participating in a sophisticated, “reality show.”

Only, it’s not quite as simplistic as all that. This is merely an introduction. What if we kicked it up a notch and made it much more sophisticated, along the lines of The Matrix.

THE MATRIX, Carrie-Anne Moss, Keanu Reeves, 1999. (c) Warner Bros./ Courtesy: Everett Collection.
THE MATRIX, Carrie-Anne Moss, Keanu Reeves, 1999. (c) Warner Bros./ Courtesy: Everett Collection.

Ugh, “thanks a lot,” you think, but the main component in this scenario is to consider that you could be in two places at once. There could be two parts of your self running concurrently, one on-camera and one off-camera so to speak.

Either way, you are living out a dramatic life somewhat scripted (if not completely scripted) by a director who is manipulating all of the players and scenarios with whom you interact. All the people, nature, coincidences, personal achievements, surprises, pain, suffering, accidents, random events, natural disasters, all carefully played out before you for someone’s viewing pleasure.

Now (just for fun, keep playing along), let’s say it occurs to you that this might be true, you, like Keanu Reeves’ Neo, are becoming more aware. So much so, that you start challenging the capabilities of the sets, equipment and energies that create the construct of the world that you’ve come to believe is “real.”

What if there was a way to breakthrough to the other side to see who is running the show behind the curtain.

wizard-of-oz-frank-morgan-the-man-behind-the-curtain-running-the-show

Via some magical adventure, you find a way to approach the control room, like Judy Garland’s Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; only in this pivotal moment you discover it is not Frank Morgan behind the curtain at all.

Oh, you might have expected some gray-haired deity pulling the strings, manning the levers and programming the computers, though there is something oddly familiar about the person who instructs you to, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

It is not a cast member from your set, back home… No, it is you.

From this perspective, it is you orchestrating every minute detail of your life, the way it plays out and how you integrate with others as you travel along your life’s journey. All in an effort to fully experience everything this life has to offer.

Not for a viewing audience, exposed to advertising and commercial interruptions, but for you. For without you, there would be nothing. None of this would exist.

Yes, you are surrounded by the largest cast ever. Some are extras, but most are individuals, just like you, living out their own “reality.”

This is the scenario I play out whenever I am overwhelmed or unable to make sense out of events playing out in my life. You might even catch me breaking character, looking into an unseen camera off-screen and ask, “Who writes this stuff?”

Sometimes, I fall to my knees, look up at the sky and dramatically query, “Another plot twist?”

Other times, full of gratitude, “Oh, thank you. That was a good one.”

Most of the time, I am thoroughly enjoying every experience I can think of to throw at myself.

My hope for you is that you find a way to enjoy the journey as much as I do.

Have a nice day

Free Full Length YouTube Video 2 Hours

Let’s take a look at your life. Let’s see what it looks like if you reduce it to a 2 hour video on YouTube…

Free full length youtube video 2 hours you are the star best movie ever

I find it so interesting in hearing clients’ responses to:

If you could live this life anyway that you want
And could reduce it to a 2 hour YouTube Video
What would your life’s movie look like?

Granted, I don’t propose this idea to everyone that I meet. I am inspired to suggest this process when someone has mentioned dissatisfaction with this life, or has intimated that this life is just too hard.

One of the YouTube Videos that comes to mind:

I win $150 Million in the lottery. Buy a large house on 40 acres with my own private lake, surrounded by great walls with a huge garage filled with all my favorite automobiles, a plush indoor theater, where I can watch TV – all the channels throughout the whole world 24/7 if I want – or films on demand all on the biggest screen ever. All my meals – anything I want, anytime I want – delivered any time. All my bills are automatically paid, and I don’t have to deal with people. I can enjoy my life and do whatever I want whenever I want. And if there are people outside the walls clamoring for my money; too bad, they have to win their own lottery.

I asked, “What about your family?”
Response: “What about them?”
“Okay,” I queried, “What about love?”
Response: “No such thing. You can’t trust anyone, and I don’t need anyone.”

Well, there you have it.

And you might find it as surprising that I do, when I discover that most of the YouTube Videos that someone would reduce their perfect life to, would undoubtedly be

The Worst
Most Boring
Movie Ever

Who would even want to watch such a film?

Two hours of watching a film, like that, would not be far from brutal torture, and I’m pretty sure, that even though people might click on the YouTube Video to voyeuristically tune-in to see what someone’s life looks like, I doubt anyone would want to watch such a film for the whole two hours.

I’d click it off, and look for something a little more entertaining.

The greatest stories – the best movies – are ones full of excitement, ups and downs, unexpected twists and turns, a good soundtrack, special effects and good editing.

When you’ve watched a film that takes you on a journey through all your emotions – where you identify with the hero or heroine, having tearful empathy in the hard times and cheering joyously in the good times – after two hours, you’re fulfilled, your soft drink and popcorn tub are empty, and you’re satiated, a clear indication of the best stories.

Maybe, you want to see what happens next, asking:

Is there going to be a sequel?

My life has been the most amazing journey and I wouldn’t change one scene.

My wish for you, is that you can enjoy your life’s film as much (or more, if that’s possible) as I do mine.

The good news:
When something happens unexpectedly
I look off-screen and ask,
Who writes this stuff?

As I continue to ad-lib and play-out the scene to see what the director has in mind.

I didn’t have the chance to read ahead in the script, but who knows? Maybe this scene will be one of the best performances in the final cut.

Or it could end up on the cutting room floor, or at viewable in the DVD extras as outtakes. Who knows?

All I know, is that I am having so much fun and feel so blessed to be in the cast of – what I believe is – the best film ever.

When Things Couldn’t Get Worse, They Do and then…

Just when you’re at your wit’s end and you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, they do! What?!

Are you kidding me? I couldn’t take one more thing! God must hate me!

Here I am, in the prime of my youth, lying in my death bed! Hello? Is anybody out there? Does anybody care?!

As darkness falls, exhaustion extinguishes the last ounce of resistance the caterpillar has left.

It is hard, when we’re in the throes of change of life circumstance, when we’re caught off guard with seemingly no place to go. There are times when we are utterly lost, without resources and consider that eternal sleep might be a better option to all the conflict, struggle and pain…

Then, when things seem like they couldn’t get any worse; they do. And you’re ready to release that last thread of hope dangling from your heart.

What then?

Well, there is hope; hope that flows like an endless river with no beginning and no end.

But in the moment, when all is lost… that river seems so far away and unimaginable to fathom.

Authors have written about those darkest moments and their recoveries and we relish the stories, remember them well; yet it seems any inkling of hope seems so distant.

We can look back at 10 films, like

  • When Things Couldnt Get Worse They Do and then butterrflies emerge from caterpillarsSuperman II (1980)
  • E.T. (1982)
  • Star Trek II (1982)
  • Robocop (1987)
  • The Crow (1994)
  • Alien Resurrection (1997)
  • The Matrix (1999)
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
  • The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

When there was no hope and all was lost, by some miraculous intervention, the breath of life is breathed into the darkest hour…

And the caterpillar awakes only to find that it emerges a beautiful reincarnation with amazing abilities that could not have been imagined previously.

Two thousand years ago, two women sharing the same name were in that time and space – when and where – there was no hope and all was lost; one of them the mother of the Son who had been dead for three days.

Imagine; your son’s been dead for three days, and you’re going to his graveside for the third time to lay flowers at his grave. You just cannot imagine why a God would let this happen to you; to Him! It’s just enough to make you want to…

And then you see Him – your Son – not sick, hurt, beaten or bruised, but healthy full of life. As a matter of fact, you’ve never seen Him look so amazing. The most incredible, tearful embrace ever felt.

Yes, there are countless similar themes in stories that remind us that in those darkest of moments, hope’s river is flowing and just the tiniest drop can get us through to see what lies on the other side.

I have seen much tragedy in my life and though I may not have been able to see it in the moment, one verifiable truth remains:

When things are at their worst, when all hope is lost… It is those moments that have always led to something more amazing and greater than I could have possibly imagined.

So, now (more quickly than before), when things appear to be their most bleak, I start to look around; anticipating that something incredible is in store.

Start looking for that good thing; the best ever!

If you only knew what’s in store for you… (You are SO gonna love this!)