Changing Gears and Paths
- Breathe 5X
- Read goals twice a day. Micro and Macro. 1–10–100–1000
- Create a Morning Ritual to anchor yourself into the person you need to be to accomplish your aims.
- Use the MAGIC formula to be sure you have all pieces of your puzzle
- The Three Gates protect your inner and outer world
- The Three Centers insure you are balanced, and don’t get lost in your head.
- The Hero’s Journey provides a perspective on the overall process. Engage constant learning and evaluation to turn this into an upward spiral: DON’T REPEAT THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE.
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You guys are watching me use these tools to become a writer-director. The experiment is underway, and the results will be easy to find. There’s no place to hide.
So the first thing I’d say is to get those first three steps in place: breathe, read goals, create morning ritual to become the person who can perform the daily actions that will walk the road. The 1–10–100–1000 structure.
What can I accomplish in 1000 days? Three movies COULD be made, and carefully chosen, could be an ultimate statement of my life’s artistic purpose.
What can I accomplish in 100 days? I can finish the short, and begin pre-production on the feature.
What can be accomplished in 10 days? A “friends and family” rough cut of KEEPER that can finally get raw feedback.
What can be accomplished today? Strengthening my body, dwelling in my heart, clarifying my mind.
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Stories, novels, screenplays are all different forms of the same thing: storytelling. Poems and songs are the same. Just as beginners think there are vast differences between different martial arts, the masters see the similarities: different paths up the same mountain. The same of storytelling.
There was a breakthrough yesterday. The Kalahari “Num” concept of universal humanity:. “one soul looking out through many eyes.”
But an insight suggested this is true of both macro and micro: the different aspects of our personalities CAN be seen as individuals (the “parts party”) notion, or as different expressions of the same human drive to escape pain, gain pleasure, and serve humanity.
All part of the struggle to find love. To connect with the sense of peace found in the womb, or perhaps with the Divine source. “Num” indeed.
When you can see ALL human action through a single clear lens, you will also see all of YOUR behaviors as part of this process. And of course the reverse: when you really see ALL of your actions through this lens, you will also see ALL of the behavior of others.
No matter how brutal. How venal. How “toxic”: everyone is just a child looking for love.
So…this drive from survival to love to releasing the ego (which is deeply connected to “service”: seeing yourself in others, such that serving them is serving yourself) has a trillion complexities…but a single root.
The daily task of meditation is to find this simple root in ourselves, this divine spark. To the degree that we feel fear, complication or confusion, we’ve not connected.
So…I find myself in this new space, and it is confusing. Why? Because all of my efforts, through all of my life, had been to navigate this Pain →Joy → Service path as a WRITER. But since writing is just one aspect of “storytelling” if I back up just one step, I have the core emotion that created the drive, the “why” and “what”. Writing was a “how”. And so is “writing-directing”. I just never thought about it.
So the WHAT is clear: to take this amazing opportunity, one that lights Tananarive up like a Christmas tree. The WHY is because I’m a storyteller. A griot. A healer, using metaphor as medicine. This is me.
The rest is the HOW. And the “how” is EASY when you are crystal clear on the “what” and the “why.”
The first step is always the same: get those basic three habits together, to win the individual day in service to the long-term goal.
The next is MAGIC: Find people who have accomplished the goal. Study them. Set out a pattern of closing the “gap” by 1% per day. Break your goal into pieces until you have one small enough that that 1–10–100–1000 pattern makes sense. Start every day with GRATITUDE, as that is the antidote for fear.
I am definitely afraid. But fear isn’t toxic. FEAR OF FEAR is toxic. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” suggests this to me: fear used to drive proper action is POWER. Most successful people know this as their ONLY power. The most fortunate discover that LOVE can and should be used the same way. But ultimately you want to do what you do not to avoid fear, or gain love, but just because it is who you are.
The hope is that you will select some transformative goal in your own life, something that would change or progress EVERYTHING, then look at it through these different lenses, or those you find yourself. Know EXACTLY how today BOTH move you along the “thousand mile road” AND has great meaning and significance in and of itself. Tomorrow is promised to no one. But we have to live both ways simultaneously.
WHAT: To be a successful writer-producer. To make three movies in the next 1000 days.
WHY: The fulfillment of a lifetime dream. To support Tananarive in HER journey. To create opportunities for Jason and Nicki to express THEIR dreams.
The ‘HOW’ is what we’ll be exploring. But please, I beg you…as you read these words, look for whatever crumbs you can apply to your own life. “Take what is useful and discard the rest.”
In this way can we all escape suffering, embrace joy…and be of service.
Momento Mori…
Steve
www.lifewrite.com