Write the Script of your life- Then Star in your own Movie

Most people are living on autopilot and can't figure out why they are in a tailspin most of the time. They don't have time or energy to do something different or to try something they want to do.

It is important if you want your life to feel free and harmonious to take a few steps first. You must take out some time for yourself to plan your life strategy. Life is not something you should plan on the fly. If you fail to plan you plan to fail. Period.

If your ideal life were a movie what would it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Taste like? Sound like? You need to think like a movie script writer, producer, director, pre-production, editing, and post production staff does. To get your ideal life you will need to write your movie script then generate your life around you to support the lead character in this movie- YOU!

Generate your movie (preproduction and script writing = figure out what your perfect life looks like then PLAN IT on paper not in your head!). You will then generate the sets for your movie, including location, location, location, which will be the environment around you that will support you in making the change easily. Then we will go in and figure out what parts of your rough draft script (your current circumstances, internal dialogue scripting, and actions) need "editing".

Some things will be cut out, others added, others still will be on the editing floor to be put together into a life affirming "gag reel to make you laugh about your mistakes not live in prison worrying about them". A lot of changes will have to be made so that everything flows perfectly. Your environment is incredibly important to making this happen. The finished movie will be your masterpiece.  Success is your Emmy!

Once you have the movie written, edited (once you see how it will be you will be able to contrast it with your new life plan/script experience) and ready to "shoot the first take", then you will be ready to put the whole thing into action. Therewill be many takes, changes, and edits to get it right and it will take some time to do this, patience is a must.

Once you get into the movie and it's about to wrap up you need to do post production which involves generating the next steps- Your goals, new dreams, or cultivation of your current dreams through planning. This movie will have many sequels so plan for that by creating a script that can continue even after reaching your goal to evolve the story line.

To get your life script in order you have to sit down and make a list of things you want, how you want to live and what your dreams are. You should write your dreams down in intricate detail so you can visualize it in every way. Sometimes this process helps you to edit out things that you thought mattered but once you see them in detail relative to how they affect everything else, and discover they were not important at all, in fact they hindered progress a bit.

If you want a different living environment what does it look like? How does it smell? What kind of food will you stock in the refrigerator? Will you have an espresso machine? Will you live alone? Do you want to be in love?

Figure out first what you want in your most ideal life. Don't think about how you will get it, don't worry about money or how possible it is, believe me anything is possible.

Take a day to write this list, or you can even generate the list, tag it to your refrigerator or wall in your room, and add to it every day for a month as things come to you. Think and meditate on the question all day "What do I want in my idea life" as you experience your day things will come to you, write them down. Don't take for granted you will remember because you wont.This list will also serve to help you crystallize what in your current "film" is not working, or making the things you want not manifest.

When you've compiled a list that is so exhaustive you could practically build a movie production of your dream and ideal life then you're ready for the next step- Lifestyle change.

If you're not bursting with fruit flavor about your current life then you're not living your ideal lifestyle. If you continue to do things as you always have this is going to be your continued result. Nothing will change. If you want something better, more liberating then you have to change everything to a script that will make the other life happen. It will take time and work, but you can have it.

Think about things like do you want to work for yourself or someone else? Do you want to be a freelance writer or author, or would you be stoked to write blogs for a living or is that tedious work you do right now to get by (to figure out the difference ask yourself would I do this free or only if I got paid for it, then how much pay would you require?).

Try to nail every part of your life in your "production script" for your new life. The first step is essentially that, you're generating a movie of your new life and you want to treat it like you're writing a play by play script for a movie. You're the Executive producer of your new life. You have to be able to see it in detail so you can generate the next step. Action!

Make sure you till the soil and plant the seeds that will grow around you and give you access to your perfect future. Tilling the soil is going out and playing around with things you like like what kind of work would you enjoy, find ways to do that work. Make friends who work somewhere that will give you access to it somehow.

Start networking people to help you reach your goals but most importantly help them reach theirs! Helping others is crucial to having them help you later.

When you're done designing your life your movie is ready to play, only to play it you just have to act the part, get into character then fake it till you make it. Once you are playing the part of your future dreams, the world will fall in behind and around you to nurture you. Taking "action" is the most important step. If a movie was made in its entirety but nobody yelled action, the film never rolled, then we wouldn't have a film would we? We might have a book but it would be obscure without the action of promoting it right? Good Luck, All that's left to do is figure out what you want your movie to be about!

Food for thought, Wrapped in a metaphor. 

I wrote this article around 2010 when I was starting to put my own life back together from what I came to see as the chaos of working online for years and how that can disrupt it if I didn't create some sort of routine, balance- script/plan of action.

In writing this my next step was to create films (actual films) using Jib-jab as the raw material. I would go in, find as many videos as I could add my head-shots to (and others in my life as "supporting actors") and would record the video on the screen to later use to create a full length film I would use to visualize myself where I need/want to be.

I ended up with about 40 3-5 minute long movies (those joke jib jab ones) and had created a bunch of short films out of them as if I was handed a film in all the "cuts" from filming and told to make it into a nonsensical movie. The results are personal so I won't broadcast them here but below you can see an example of one I created for fun to depict the life I was starting with Michelle (my fiance' now) and her family (the other actors/head-shots in the film).

I built this using kid rock's song depicted in the video below but due to copyright issues on Youtube, I switched the sound track (all that song and a few others) to one of the free/copyright free, etc... tracks they offer (of hundreds of thousands)... and it matched up even better than the one I was going to use.

This is an example (the video below the kid rock video) of how you can use Jib-jab  some skills in windows movie maker and camtasia software (I was very green at the time, knew practically nothing about editing and taught myself to pull off this project and some things at work).

Thanks for reading!