What Are the Books + Movies that Completely Changed Your Life?

What are the movies and the books that completely changed your life? That is what this episode, the Big Leap, is all about. This time, Gay and I are going to both share the big books and the movies that change our lives. And as my friend Brian Tracy once said, the books we read and the people we meet are the things that change our life most. Or your life is changed by the books you read and the people you meet. But, Gay, how. How about you? What do you want to talk about for this episode before we get things underway?

Well, I think that one of the reasons we chose books and movies this time around is that the movies you choose and the books you read say a lot about who you are. And also, listening to other people talk about the books that have moved them gives you a whole new window to yourself and a new opportunity to learn. Like, I will frequently even ask people, what's the best book you've ever read? And I've gotten some of the best books I've ever read from simply asking people that.

Yeah, it's a great strategy. Well, you can expect that and more. And we're really going to get into the why in this episode. So we'll be back in just a moment.

All right, here we are. Gay Hendricks, let's dive right into it. I know one of the reasons why I wanted to do this with you is to think about who changed your life, who do you admire?

And.

And you have a great story that you're going to open up with, though, and it's something that happened to you in an elevator in Cairo in the 80s. So let's open with that because this actually makes this episode even more interesting and fun.

Okay. Well, my wife was teaching in Europe in somewhere around the mid-80s, and I was over in London with her because I'd finished a seminar and I was waiting for her to finish the one she was teaching. So I had four days, and I said, okay, what can I do in four days? I thought, hey, I'll go to the pyramids. So I got on a plane and flew over to Cairo, and I was just going to stay there three or four days. And so I had a room in. I forget the name of it, but it's a very swank hotel that's right on the Nile, and it's kind of round. It's where all the dignitaries stay. And so I splurged, and I was staying there. And I was on my way down in the elevator, and this gentleman got on the elevator with three other men, and they were all wearing black suits. And white shirts and ties and carrying briefcase. But this guy was this huge Black guy, probably six, six, maybe 300 pounds, who was dressed in the most beautiful blue ro I had ever seen. I mean, it was a stunning work of art. And I was just. I just looked at it, and my mouth just popped open. And I said, where did you get that robe? And I. I heard the myth, the men, which turned out to be his entourage, they kind of go, you know, and, like, I wasn't supposed to be saying something like that. And I soon found out why, because he said someone made it for me. And he had this real deep voice and James Earl Jones type voice. And I said, where? Where? He said, togo. The country of Togo, which is a little further down in Africa. And I, in my naive way, I said, I'm the king.

That stopped me in my tracks right there. And so that became just part of my life experience. And I got off the elevator and never saw him again.

Hold on one second. We missed the punchline. Okay, you froze up for a second. I want to make sure we get it. So right at the moment of the coughs. So let's go. Let's go back just a little bit because I saw a little glitch here. So I want you to go back and get us up to the punchline.

Okay?

Well, you said, where did you get that? And you said, it was in Togo.

Then what happened in Togo? And so then I sort of vaguely knew where Togo was. And I said, well, what do you do down in Togo? And he said, I am the king. And that was the reason the guys that had kind of freaked out a little bit when I just sort of said, hey, buddy, you know, where'd you get that rope?

But here's the interesting 30, 40 year later punchline. Mike, this is what really blows me away. Very recently, maybe even a couple of weeks ago, I think it was now.

I came across an article in the international press somewhere.

That a man had been apprehended, arrested because he was going around Africa pretending to be the king of Togo and getting people to invest in different projects and applying for grants and things like that. And he'd actually made some deals, I guess that he'd made a lot of money from doing this con, because the guy, he wasn't even the king of anywhere. You know, he was like a car salesman from Nigeria or something like that. And so. But he had gotten himself in this incredible robe. So I don't know what the punchline of the story, the moral of the story is, but he sure. Convinced me. Maybe don't fall for.

A fancy robe.

Well, I have a moral of the story that I think is relevant to books and movies that change your life and give you your biggest leaps. Because A in a previous episode, one of the things that we really dove into is how to turn your life into a movie you'd actually want to watch. And you really went into crafting and creating characters, alter egos that may represent you in this notion of trading donkeys or smuggling donkeys, rather, and what that means. And I'm not going to. If you didn't listen to or watch that episode, you got to go back and check it out because it's so good. I'm not going to give away what happened, but how it's relevant now is how I truly do believe that life imitates art and movies and books in particular, especially in the modern pop world, where things happen so quickly and people emulate what they see. And I remember in the 80s with music, Madonna completely drove fashion at the time, and so did Guns N Roses did for a period of time. And you could go and look at how metal did that. And the grunge era was driven by musicians. So what between the previous episode and this episode, crafting a narrative, amplifying your superpowers, this can all be done through books and through movies. But also who you are is definitely a reflection of the books you read, the movies you watch. And when I go back to what. What you were just talking about now, it's like, holy cow. A, that would be a great movie to watch. I'd love to watch a movie about the King of Togo, who wasn't a King of Togo, who just pulled this off. But there's so many ways to craft messages that entertain, that educate, that allow you to connect with folks, and they're standing right in front of you all the time. And how do you tune your brain to think through the lens of being a storyteller? Because your ability to influence and persuade is amplified dramatically. So that's my takeaway from this whole thing. And what I'd like to drive into now is let's talk a little bit about the books and movies that.

Inspired you and completely affected who you are as a writer, as an author, as a man, as a creator, as a big leap.

And a conscious luck creator as well. And then I did prepare some of my own. But do you want to alternate? Go back and forth? You tell me how you'd like to take the San Gay? Sure.

How about if we start out by I'll tell you a book that changed my life and you tell me when it changed yours and why it did. Okay, great. The first one I can think about was I was checking out of a bookstore in Palo Alto, California somewhere around 1970 and there was this little gray book on the next to the cash register and I remember it cost 95 cents and it was called the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. And it caught my attention and I picked it up and it just changed my reality. It's only probably 80 pages long, but it's 80 pages of some of the most rich, amazing, life changing ideas I've ever run across. I think that's probably the first, first place where I ever saw formally someone talking about the power of love to transform something. And basically the whole premise of the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment is basically save yourself a lot of trouble, just love as much as you can from wherever you are. Don't make it any more complicated than that. And that became kind of a touchstone for me because as I worked more and more with people, I came to see that a lot of what gets us stuck is there's something in ourselves we haven't learned to love yet. And that's what made me write my book, Learning to love yourself way back also later on in that era. But to this day I see that love is often the only dimension that needs to be changed. That if you can love something more or love the essence of something more or get more love around a particular issue that you have, that's the single most powerful, efficient, life changing thing you can do. And so the, the book, you know, there's a great saying that.

Says if you ever admire a really good, if you, if there's ever a really good book you admire, don't go meet the author.

And I can testify to some of that because I've, I've gone to meet certain authors that I met. You know, one I found in the middle of a knockdown drag out with his wife. And another one I found was about three Bloody Marys past the last exit he should have taken. And.

I always strive to lead the kind of life though that people would be, would think I'm integrated with my work.

Yeah, you want your life to imitate your art.

Yeah, exactly. So I think that for me the why that's underneath the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment is that I'm always looking for something that can move people the most, the fastest. And I've witnessed from thousands of viewings of my clients over the years, there's nothing that can move people faster than learning to love something that they had previously hated or held at a distance from themselves, learning to accept something they've never been able to accept before. So that's why the lazy mans to. And Thaddeus Golis, who is now passed on. I got to know him a little bit over the phone primarily. He lived way down in Florida, so I never actually met him in person, but we would talk on the phone sometimes, and he was a real character. So that was. That was my book, though, for many, many years that I highly recommended to people.

All right, so I'm going to give you.

I'm going to actually give you a couple of them here because it's easy for me to go down a path. So here's the backstory back when it was in the mid-90s, really. So prior to this story, the people who affected me most were, like, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, I thought Kurt Vonnegut, like Breakfast of Champions, Venus on the Half Shell. His books with satire and humor and a unique way of looking at the world completely changed mine. So that was a big stepping stone in developing. My character is just being really comfortable with satire and being able to say absolutely hilarious things, but crafted in a way that wouldn't be totally offensive. So it went beyond poopy and potty humor. But still, there are some of his old stories that. And there's little drawings that he had. For example, in Breakfast of Champions, there's the beaver story. And I'm not gonna give it away for anyone who hasn't read the book, but it's so damn funny. And.

Just like, holy cow, changed my life. I laughed so hard, my stomach hurt for, like, days. And that's what was so great about Kurt Vonnegut, is his unusual way of looking at the world. But if you fast forward a little bit. I was in a very, very dark place when I had my company, Digital Cafe. I'd gone through a very painful divorce from my high school sweetheart. My business was $250,000 in debt. Nothing was working right, and I was living in illusion. I had to maintain the illusion for the company to survive. Truth was, I was broken. Broken. And along came a good friend of mine who introduced me to Tony Robbins. And I ended up doing some Tony Robbins events and reading all of his books and really getting immersed in his material. But then Tony Robbins had something called Power Talk, which were cassette tapes or CDs or whatever. They were cassettes, and you'd listen to them. And he interviewed Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer that sent me on a path to get a book called Manifest yout Destiny by Wayne Dyer. Now what was important about that particular piece of work is I started out with the tape and then I went to the book because I was in the middle of a huge breakup, completely shattered, and I had kind of gotten my life back in order by then. It was a couple years after the divorce and I was down in Florida and I drove to the Florida Keys with this tape and I listened to to the series at least four times on the road. And the big takeaway from the book that still to this day resonates deeply is.

The question and the big idea of who do you.

What do you desire? Who do you need to become in order to receive all that you desire? And it came down to taking responsibility. And also manifestation occurs where everything you've ever desired already belongs to you and you belong to it. And the only thing separating you from it is time. And so it's the exercise in the book has to do with becoming attractive to that which you desire. It's not about getting things, it's not about having things, it's not about buying things, it's not about manipulating. And that changed my life so dramatically that if you fast forward a couple years later, I was at, I think they call them whole life expos? And there was a gentleman there who since passed, but he used to lead journeys with these big authors. And there in front of me was an opportunity to travel to Egypt, to the Great Pyramids with Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra. And by then I had immersed myself in so much of the material. And that specific trip changed the course of my entire life. So much so that because of it, I wound up meeting my wife. I met Ariel Ford. That trip is actually responsible for you and I knowing each other indirectly because on the trip Ariel Ford was there with her husband Brian and a whole bunch of other big named authors from the Woo Woo space. You know, those who wound up being in the Secret and all from that whole conscious community and a lot of Oprah guests. So it was like about half, maybe 60% of them were Woo Woo people and seekers. Another chunk were relatively famous authors or famous authors and speakers and that kind of thing. But and more importantly, I got to meet Wayne and Deepak. And if you fast forward, it turned out that at the time, even while that was going on, my wife was working with and for Deepak. And we met a year later in Greece on another kind of Woo Woo trip. So the point of the story is I think I got my sense of humor and character and my willingness to be a jackass and a fool, but also be a humorist and satirist and, and love comedy. It all collided through Kurt Vonnegut's works and I'm going to just say all of them, but then the woo, woo. And the moment that mattered most, it's really, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give Wayne Dyer all the credit, even though it was the Deepak, the conversations with God, the Tony Robbins, that whole mix, because it was right at the time when there was a lot of movement going on in consciousness and it being popular. So that's my story for you.

Great. You want to switch over and do a movie? Maybe?

Let's do a movie. So why don't you start. Can't wait to hear yours. And maybe just rattle off either the biggest ones and the why. And I'll do the same because I made a list here of the ones that I know shaped who I am. And again, if, if life imitates art, which I believe to be true, this shaped a huge part of my life and my world.

My favorite movie, and probably my wife's favorite movie too, goes back to the 1980s and share Nicholas Cage movie called Moonstruck. And if you haven't ever seen Moonstruck, I highly recommend it. It's a wonderful, warm hearted comedy. But the why of it is that it touches on a couple of powerful relationship principles. And the crux of the problem in the relationship between the Cher character and the Nicholas Cage character is that he has been deeply wounded in physical sense.

By something that happened in his first relationship and where he had his hand maimed in a bread slicer because he was talking to his brother about something else. And so that caused this flinch away from relationships and then income. Cher, who, his husband had been hit by a bus many years before and she was closed down to relationship. And so I think for me, the joy of that movie is watching people shed their old beliefs about how much love they can let into their lives. And that's, to me, a theme that I work with it all the time because Katie and I, because we write books like Conscious Loving and the Conscious Heart, we've seen many, many relationship folks here for relationship counseling. And that's actually how we came to fame on Oprah, was with our book conscious loving back 30 years ago. And so I can tell you from the area of relationship work with a whole lot of people that one of the main things that gets people stuck is they're still being run by a program in the past that's keeping them from experiencing love in the present. And so Moonstruck to me shows that in an amazingly humorous, wonderful, warm hearted way. And also just I've written movie scripts before and I would have to say as a script, that is probably the most perfect script that I've ever seen. And so kudos to the writer, John Patrick Shanley of the movie script too.

Great, great. Anything else pop out that you want to. You want to share?

One other one really. And this is totally not about self help or getting better or improvement or anything like that. But there was a Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson movie in the 70s also called.

The Missouri Breaks. And the Breaks of the Missouri is this particular place where the Missouri river starts and that kind of thing. But also the play on words. The Missouri Breaks really is a great key to the theme of the movie.

But why I love that movie so much, I've probably watched it.

20 times, is it's right up there with another movie that's in an odd genre, a crime movie called Heat with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. And those two movies have something in common for me, even though one's a western and one is a sort of a cop movie in the modern era, is that both of them have complex characters that are coming to terms with themselves, that are learning about themselves. And the difference between tragedy and comedy is it's tragedy if you have a problem and you don't wake up in time to figure out how to move through.

Gets to be a comedy though if you get to a place where you move through your stuff and you can let more love in. Well, the Missouri Breaks is profound to me because it kind of shows both sides of that. The Marlon Brando character can never get out from under his.

Programmed version of himself. And the Jack Nicholson character finally at great lengths, breaks through into a whole new version of himself. And so you don't see that very often, that kind of depth in Westerns. I think I have a little bit of affection of westerns left over from when I was a kid, John Wayne movies and all of that. But you don't see them too much anymore. But it's probably the finest Western I've ever seen. And to say a word about Heat also is probably the finest crime movie that I've ever seen. But it's kind of irrelevant that it's about a crime because what it's really about again is two people to the late characters coming to into harmony with who they are. One in the not so good way and one in the good way. But it's very complex and it reminds me so much of life itself. You know, it has so much powerful life in it. Also the key scene between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino happened in real life. I mean an actual criminal and a cop had that conversation and the, the cop involved told the story of it to Michael Mann, the writer and he turned it into a movie. So very powerful work and a couple of master actors at the same time. I've had the pleasure in my private work of working with a number of well known actors. And they are very fascinating people. Often very different than what you would think they are in the sense that the difference between their acting selves and their at home selves is often about 192 degrees different each other.

Yeah, sometimes that's the carrot. You like the characters more than the person. They're so flawed and damaged and. And yet that's what gives them the ability to have that empathy, that compassion and, and be able to do what they do it. That really fascinates me. We should definitely explore that in another episode. So I'll give you mine. And.

So we have similar, but such different ways of processing these. So I'll tell you, growing up, you know, I grew up with Sesame street, for example. It started when I was probably three years old. I think the first broadcast was in 1969. And so it was on as I grew up and the Muppets really affected me. And I'll say that the Muppet Movie was one of my favorite movies. And by then I was. I don't even remember how old I was when it came out. I was a little bit older of a teen. You know, it would have been kind of a baby movie movie. But the Muppet Show, I love that. And I used to make Muppets string puppets and Muppets and little. I'd make my own shows using a cassette recorder. My dad had a little reel to reel recorder, eventually got a cassette recorder. And I used to emulate and create a lot of. Create a lot of crazy voices. But it was the Muppets, it was cartoons that really shaped that part of me. But if you fast forward. I am a product of, you know, I was 11 years old when Star wars came out. So Star wars hit and then the movie that changed it all for me was Blade Runner.

Philip K. Dick original was the book that created it. And I loved everything about it. I loved how I felt. I loved the darkness, the dreariness. I loved the Harrison Ford character. And I love the idea of the artificial humans, the replicants and what that meant, meant. And at the time they took on so many complex issues because it dealt with slavery, it dealt with of. Of soul and these beings who are trying to decide what would happen to them after they die. So there was incredible complexity in the. The movie. And I thought they did it so well. And if you fast forward a few years later, the guy responsible for all the Blade Runner designs is a guy named Sid Mead, who just passed recently at 86. I wound up becoming friends with him. And every time I used to visit Hollywood, I always stopped by his house. He was this very effeminate gay man who smoked Virginia Slims. Virginia Slims, Lights. And he was just so delightful and creative and interesting and out there and so Hollywood, you know, so West Hollywood. But it was just so fun to spend time with this guy and be able to get into. And he loved talking about his work, you know, it wasn't what we talked about, but he loved art. And at the time I had my agency, so. And he was doing gaming, which really interested him. And then finally these are all lumped together, but really summarizes what I love is the Matrix.

A movie called the Fifth Element by a French director, Luc Besson. And then Interstellar and Contact. But another one that I love and I love the director is Arrival by Denis Villeneuve, who I know I'm butchering that he is the guy who is producing the new Dune movie. And I love the way I feel when I watch these films. I think right now we're in a beautiful time. Like the Pandemic has messed with Hollywood horribly. But the caliber and quality of sci fi that's being produced, especially after anyone who experiences or goes to our Plant Medicine episode, the level of depth that's being drawn from deep wisdom, deep connection with spirit, soul, God and source energy that's done and reinterpreted is. It's just fascinating. And I think Interstellar, it wasn't loved by a lot of people. One of the greatest movies of all time that dealt with time and sadness and death.

And interstellar travel and just the conflict that we experience in dealing with that. Especially if time moves at a different rate depending on where you're located. So all of those have just really, really affected me. And I'm going to stop chatting now and turn it back to you and get your interpretation here.

Well, also, I wanted to mention that Dune was one of my favorite books. I was just lost in that book for probably a year.

I'M rereading it right now. I'm actually reading it for the first time. I never had fully read it, but it's very drawn to it right now, especially after our Plant Medicine. Plant Medicine episode. Plant Medicine episode. I think there's a lot of parallels.

Totally. And I'll tell you also, as far as. The first Dune movie was such a disappointment to me. The one with Sting in it, I remember being just sort of, you know. And so I can hardly wait for the new one, though, because I know some of the people involved with that, and I predict it's going to be the Dune movie we've all been waiting for. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you haven't seen the trailer yet. Oh, it's so good.

So good.

They're, they're gonna capture that essence. And I, I'm actually, I didn't hate the first Dune movie, but I wasn't a reader of the book, so that, that makes up for it. And I, I, I sought for what it was and appreciated for what it was. And I know it was deeply flawed, but also, I think when it came out, I was, I love that era of filmmaking and science fiction filmmaking, so I have a soft spot in my heart for artistic liberties taken during, during that era. But I totally get it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's.

Go for it.

I love movies. I mean, I love books and movies where it takes you into a different world, you know, and you, you learn the dynamics of some whole different world. And that was fascinating to me about Dune. The book was that every page had something that I'd never. Some unusual custom or some unusual way of looking at the world. It was really like being in a different world. And so things like that really appealed to me. Another book that I just love and reread constantly is the book by.

George Gurdjieff called Meetings with Remarkable Men. And Gurdjieff was a spiritual seeker and teacher in the first half of the 20th century. And this book is about his travels in the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century around Central Asia and going to all sorts of different.

Places looking for wisdom and enlightenment. But the why of the book, what it really speaks to me about is that I think.

We all need to make this lifelong commitment to learning as much about ourselves as we can and learning as much about the Creator force in the universe, God or spirit or whatever you want to call it, but the larger forces in the universe, learning to make your life a quest for learning more and more about those kinds of things. Same Thing I think we need to turn our lives into a lifelong quest to find out how to increase the love in our lives. What can we do to make our relationships more juicy and intimate? And so I think that meetings with remarkable men.

Inspires me so much because here's a person who basically spent his whole life on such a quest and made many amazing discoveries, but just the discipline it takes because he lived in a time when it wasn't like going to a seminar in Esalen, it was like going on a 3,000 mile journey by horseback to Egypt to study with somebody or sneaking into Tibet to study with somebody. So there was a lot of work that you had to go to. And it takes dedication, which I think we can still, we need a lot more of in our lives. How to be dedicated to the things that are really important and matter.

I agree completely. Once again.

It. It comes down to how these things shape your brain and shape your life. And I know there's one other thing that you wanted to add because as a mystery writer.

Something that really defined you. And we've talked about a previous episode. Why don't you talk about your relationship with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes?

Yes, well, Sherlock goes with me everywhere when I go on a trip, as he has since I was 12 years old. I fell in love with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I was in junior high school. And I became such a zealot about it that my English teacher started calling me Sherlock, because I was always would arrive in class with the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes under my arm. So it was kind of an obsession of mine for the better part of a year. But what I loved about Sherlock Holmes, and still do to this day, was the way he went about solving things and that extremely great use of logic and observation. And.

You know, it was just. And also so beautifully written too, the eccentricities of this character. And so my eternal hat is off to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his invention of this character that also later on inspired me to invent my character, Sir Errol Hyde, who's a humorous version of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is not funny at all, but my guy is. In fact, I try to have a laugh on each page of my mystery character, Sir Errol Hyde.

I love that. That's a great goal too. And that's very, very cool. So that's really all I have because I covered all my books all at once. I thought that I'd just bang them out. And I liked your journeys. And so let's get back to the original theme of this again. Is this the books and movies that changed your life and gave you your biggest leaps. One of the things that I'd love to hear and I'm going to pop them up right now on screen. Gay and I would love to know what movies, what books affected you. And if you text BL the letters BL to 858-434-5316, you'll be able to have a conversation with Gay and I there. Also, you can feel free to download the Big Leap app from the Apple Ice or the App Store or from Google Play. It's available for both platforms. You can communicate with us there and of course you can head on over to bigleappodcast.com there you can connect with Gay and I, you can leave a message or better than that, if you would like to work with us and create your Big Leap year, there's an application button there and Gay and I are committed to spending one year working with you. And a group of abundance minded individuals who want to turn your life into a movie will help you discover what your superpower is and amplify it and grow it. Or if you're already there and you want to reach a new level of your life, that's what we're here for. And Gay, you want to talk just a little bit about that before we wrap this episode up?

Yes. It's a one time only event. That first, last and only opportunity to have a full year of connection with me and Mike. A full year of dedication to bringing forth your true genius. To bringing forth and living in your genius zone. And having done that now for 20 or 30 years, I can tell you it's a delicious way to spend your life doing the things that you most love to do and doing them in a way that gets you maximum impact from doing them. So if that appeals to you, apply for our Big Leap year and join us for a real year of miracles.

Yeah, absolutely. If you're not as blown away with Gay as I am, you're probably not listening to this. And I think but seriously.

We love working with each other and creating and that's really what we're committed to doing. When we talked about doing this podcast in the first place, that was one of our outcomes and our goals is to create together, to innovate together, and do it with people who resonate with the message that's embedded inside this program. So with that, as usual, if you know someone who should be listening to or watching this podcast, please share it with them. And also.

Head on over to itunes and rate and review this because the best way to grow it and help us is to share it with the world. We don't charge anything. We don't have advertisers or ads on our podcast because we want to have a relationship directly with you. So with that Gay Hendricks, anything else you want to add before we let everyone get on their merry way?

Turn your life into a movie that you'd want to pay money to see. That's my movie. Reflection of the Day.

Right on. All right, well, thank you so much again for watching, listening, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Bye.