***Life is a Movie and You’re the Director!

It’s that time of year again.

It’s time to size up your last year, and take a look at the prospects for your New Year.

What do you want your New Year to look like?

One thing is for sure, if you want your New Year to look different than this year, you must decide to do something different. Doing the same old thing, gets the same old result. We’ve all proven that to ourselves.

The Lesterizing Goals retreat in Vail a few weeks ago was a bang-up, over the top, off the charts hit. Those who were in Vail came away with a toolbox for goal achieving, and supercharged momentum to create breakthroughs in their lives. Everyone learned and experienced that we are the boss of our movie theater. We own the projector, and we put the pictures into the projector that play up on our big screen.

Most people don’t know they own a movie theater. What’s more, they don’t know they are the producer, director and actor in the films they run on the screen in their movie theater.How does it work? You put pictures into the projector, and the projector runs your pictures on the big screen in the theater called your life.

Someone could be wondering, “If I put the pictures in the projector, how come my life doesn’t turn out like I want it to?”In other words, what’s wrong with this movie?

Well, let’s see. Is it the projector? Well, no. Let’s check the projector. It’s operating just fine. It’s projecting pictures up on the screen just like it’s supposed to. Well, if it’s not the projector, what could it be? How about the pictures you are putting into the projector? Check it out. I bet the pictures you put into the projector pretty much match the pictures on your movie screen, right?

An old friend of mine used to like to say, “Truthie time.” It’s not always so easy for us to admit that the pictures on our screen match the pictures we put into the projector. But if we call truthie time, and really get honest with ourselves, we can see the movies we run match the pictures we put in. The unit that rests on top of our neck, called our recording and playing back unit, likes to tell us what pictures to put in the projector and run on the screen. It dictates to us, and obligingly, if innocently and unconsciously, we put the pictures in the projector and up they go on the screen. Before we learned to release and discriminate, we didn’t even know that recording and playing back unit was ordering us around. It happened automatically without our noticing. And that can result in movies playing that we don’t like.

Many of us spend our lives playing re-runs on our screen. We re-run old, and not always very pleasant, movies over and over again. When we take a close look, we find out that we are putting pictures in our projector out of a habit we’ve practiced for a long time.

For example, out of habit, we go into our mental scrapbook and pick out pictures of what’s wrong in our life, what’s missing, and what we don’t have. If we’re not paying attention—discriminating—we put those pictures in the projector and run them on the screen of our life.

Make a decision to switch that around. Every time a picture pops up on the screen about what’s wrong, replace it with a picture about what’s right in your life. When the picture is about what’s missing, replace it with a picture of what you have. When the picture is about what’s bad, replace it with a picture of what’s good. Put pictures into your mental movie projector of exactly how you would like your life to look. It’s your life, it’s your projector and it’s your pictures. Take over the movie theater and run the pictures you prefer rather than the ones you might be playing out of habit. You have to prove it to yourself, but it is just as simple as that.

Your recording and playing back unit could be shouting out a couple of objections. It may be saying that you don’t know how to do it. Sure you do! You put in all the pictures that you are running right now. If you’re not so thrilled about those pictures, turn it around. Put in the pictures you would like to see.

That recording and playing back unit could be objecting saying it’s too hard to do it. Wait a second! You put in those pictures that are running on the big screen. How hard was it? It was so easy, it was so effortless, you didn’t even realize you did it. It’s just as effortless to take charge of your projector and put in new pictures of what you would like to see projected up on your screen.

The objections about whether you can do it or not are also just pictures. Do the same thing with the objections. Decide you can do it. Decide it’s easy and effortless. Put in “can do” pictures.

What it takes is decision. Here it is: I am going to be the boss of my movie theater. I decide what pictures to put into my movie projector. I decide what movies are playing on that screen.

Next, it takes an intention to constantly pay attention to what pictures you are putting into your projector and playing on your screen. That way, when pictures are playing that you don’t like you can replace them with pictures that you like.

Look at successful people. Let’s take the example of successful athletes. Rich Furlanic, a former world karate champion and Release teacher, points out that champion level athletes run the pictures of their success so many times on their mental movie screen that when they win the gold medal or achieve that world class victory, they often take it almost matter-of-factly. They’ve seen it happen so many times in their mental pictures, when it happens, it’s exactly what they expected and knew would happen. They have been running the mental movies of what they want over and over again.

Watch golfers or tennis players. Watch what they do. Before they serve or hit the ball, they put the picture of the shot they are about to make into their mental movie projector. Then they hit the shot that matches their picture.They say they picture what they are about to do, and then they play into the picture.

You can do the same thing the champions do. Play the pictures of how you would like your life to be on the movie screen of your mind and then just live the pictures.