A book a year in a sentence a day

Hello, Steve here. I'll be getting started in five minutes. Got this nice little countdown timer. Welcome, everybody. Meanwhile, I am chilling like a villain, sitting back, drinking some soylent chocolate flavored, ready to drink food. Finally breaking my fast today. I try to fast almost every other day. You know, I cannot promise that I'm good at that, but I do give it a shot. So. Hey, Edward. Hello, Ellis, Francisco. Ni. And Roshan and Nita. Hello, people. Welcome, everybody. Hear me? Can you hear me? Let me know if you can hear me. Send me some hearts. Send me some likes if you can hear me. Just want to make sure that the sound. Everything is working. Oh, good. Oh, good. That's all I wanted to know. All I wanted to know. Yay. I get to see the hearts. Oh, wow. Loud and clear in Puerto Rico. Oh, Michael Roberts, how are things in Puerto Rico? You okay? Everything okay down there? I see hearts. I love you guys back. I. I'm so happy to do this. You know, when I do this where I'm not appearing on screen, I get to really kick back and relax. I don't have to get all dressed up or straighten my office or anything. And since my office is out almost in the garage, it's an attached room. It's also the gymnasium. Oh, God. I could probably survive if I wasn't married. If I was a bachelor, I could probably live in a cardboard box. But what of rewrites? Hey, it's all part of the process. All part of the process. And so you're just gonna have to hang on, Tim. A book a year with a sentence a day. I'm as serious as I can be. So anyway, I get to just really. I get to really kind of kick back, relax, talk with you guys, share. And this feels really good to me. It feels really comfortable and like, I'm just kind of talking to friends, which is the feeling that I like, because, like, yesterday I got to go over to Larry Nivens and work on this book. We're almost finished with the last Jerry Pornell novel. An entire period in my life coming to an end, and wow, love that, man. Very challenging mind. But, you know, thinking about what it is that I want to do next with my life and my career. I want to work on nothing but the books that I have the chance to be. I don't want to work on any project that doesn't have the potential to be the best thing I've ever done. You know, you can't ever be sure about things like that, but. Hello, Andy? Hello. Hello, Sarah? Gabriela. Yeah. We'll get be getting started in just a minute. So this is Edward Forrest. Frank. Hello, Edward. Hello. Jerry. Thomas. Meredith. Mmm, ice water on a hot day. If there's anything better than just ice water, I don't know what it is. Robert Monroe Jr. Joined. So we have all sorts of fun people on here. And please, if you, if you're enjoying this, be sure to share it to your pages. You know, if you, if you share, that's how other people can find out about it. There's going to be a lot of really meaty content here today, as I always try to do on my, my broadcast and God, I can pretend I'm on the show. 24. Boop boop. All right. Oh God, there's Vic Whitlock and then Roy, Sean and. Oh, that's so great. And just hi everybody. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. This is great. Ah. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And we are live five minutes. Yes, yes. Look at all those smiles. Couple of angry faces. What are you angry about? Why are people mad? I don't understand. I'm here and you're here and we're going to have fun and I don't understand why people would be angry. However, you know, I can't tell you how to live your life. This is Steve Barnes. I'm here and I'm going to be rotating between different 5 minute life every week. This is what I think I'm going to do. I'm going to primarily between writing and taking care of your body, you know, martial arts and taking care of your relationship, taking care of your heart. So I'm going to choose little slivers of the overall program and go into them. So I'll be repeating material, but I'll also be rotating between it. I got a lot of reasons for that and hopefully we will get into that as we go. So anyway, I see no reason whatsoever to waiting longer. The subject of today's symposium is creating a lot of, you know me through, probably most of you know me through my writing. I've done a lot of stuff there. And we're going to be talking about one little sliver of how I've published over 3 million words. 32, 30, something like 32 novels. I actually frankly stopped counting really after about 28. And I've done about five books since then and you know, television work and the radio work and other stuff like this. And it all boils down to a way of approaching this. So what we're gonna, we're gonna be Getting into that. And what I wanted to do was I wanted to invite you to stay all the way to the end. If you stay all the way to the end, I got something special for you. I'm going to tell you about a time when a snob basically tried to put me down for being a science fiction writer and what I said to him about this. So you might appreciate that, because I'm sure that some of you guys got some science fiction writers. Yes. You got. You understand that? Yes, absolutely. I love you, too. I really do. I enjoy this. So. But look at all those hearts. You are making me so happy. You're making me so happy. This is just so great. So I'm going to get to share with you and we're going to get to have some fun and I'm going to tell you all about what I said to this gentleman. So let's see, what do we got coming up? So the question of what is it that makes this program different? What is it that I'm trying to give you guys? A lot of other people? Look at all those hearts. I love you. I love you. I love you. Love you. Kisses to everybody. Just, if you are watching this with a friend, give each other big hugs. Life is short, and the only thing that makes it worthwhile is love. That is it. That is it. I love mine. I only got three things in life that I love, by the way. I love writing and things connected with that. I love martial arts and things connected with that. And I love my family and friends. And you guys are my family and friends. You help keep me alive. I wake up every morning wondering what I can do to help you. So what we're talking about with the 5 Minute Life Hacks program is that it's an actual workable plan to take anyone to the limit of their ability, starting with only five minutes a day. Committing only five minutes a day. You do that. If you can give me five minutes a day, I will get you on the path to having the life that you want. And this is a picture of me. And that's Stevie. That picture was a couple years ago. I have to get a new one. I'm not that much more weathered. I think I can still get a good picture out of myself. So my chief goal in life is to help 1 million people become awake, aware, adult human beings. I'm going to do that by showing the massive change that can happen in only five minutes a day. This is something I absolutely believe. I am not kidding. I'm not bluffing. You're going to, oh, look at all that love. God, you people. You're the best. You're the best. I wake up every morning wondering what I can do for you. And just seeing what you posted on my posts to see whether or not there's any questions, anything that you need from me. So when I see all that love coming back, it feels wonderful. It feels wonderful. So there are three things that I'm going to share with you today. The first is to clearly define writer's block. The second is what I call the one thing. And the third, once I've set up that foundation, will be the secret to writing a book. A year and a sentence a day. When you see it, you'll understand it perfectly. The first thing is the question, what is writer's block? What is this stuff? What is this thing? That feeling of not being able to function? So what I want to do is I want to say that there is a process. There is a chain of action from coming up with an idea, to developing the idea, to writing the first draft, to creating a final draft, to rewriting it, getting opinions on it, sending it out to the market, and when it comes back, sending it out again, and then continuing that process again. I say that that is a chain. That is what leads you to excellence. And a break in any one link of that chain is writer's block. Anything that stops you from coming up with ideas, writing them down, developing them, writing your first draft, polishing, going on and writing additional drafts, finishing sending it out, and then continuing that process with your next project. Anything is writer's block. We're gonna leave it at that. So Nita Price said hi, and we got other people. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, all kinds of people saying hi and sending me love and stuff like this. So this is great. It's great. So anything. I think we can agree that anything that stops you from being the best writer you are capable of being, we're gonna call it writer's block. If you're not researching, if you're not studying, if you're not writing, if you're not rewriting, if you're not sending it out, in other words, if you write it but don't finish it, if you don't start it, you don't finish it. If you don't polish it, if you don't send it out, if you don't try again immediately with your next project, we're going to call that writer's block because I want you to succeed. It's as simple as that. If you have the heart to be a Writer, then you are just where I was 30 years ago. And these broadcasts are made for a younger version of me. So you want to write, you want to have love, you want to be a successful martial artist, whatever that is? This is what. This is what we're going to focus on here. So what is writer's block? Well, people will say that writer's block is a bunches of different things. Sometimes, you know, are you angry? Is it anxiety? Have you got a plot hole? Is it performance anxiety? Again, anxious about a deadline? Anxious about whether or not you can do it? Lack of inspiration, stress in life? Are your expectations too high? Whatever the thing is that's stopping you, it's that situation, feeling in your gut that stops you from being able to function. And I think if you have experienced writer's block, if you have felt that, let's see some hearts or maybe some frowns. But I want to know, are you guys like me? Have you experienced this? Because I'm going to tell you about a time that it just about killed my career. And so I just want to know. I mean, I'm going to embarrass myself. I want to be sure that you guys are out there and you've had. Yeah, there's a heart. You know exactly what I'm talking about. The inability to climb the. I call it a positive spiral of action where you are constantly performing, you're constantly getting feedback from your environment. You're constantly making adjustments so that you can learn and grow and change and have the life that you deserve to have. And that feeling in your gut of not being able to create or not being able to finish, I can't find the time. I don't have any ideas. All that stuff that gets in your way, you. Every single one of those pieces, what we're going to call writer's block, and our intention here is to destroy it once and for all, is to put the power in your hands. Now, I've got a bunch of different tools for this, but this single tool, we're just going to go into one little sliver of an overall program for body mind development and writing development or whatever it is you want to do. And we're going to go deep enough into it that you can start seeing. The beautiful thing is that once you understand this one little piece, you can apply it to other aspects of your life. It really is. It really is beautiful. So I have a friend, his name is Tim Peering, who said that you can accomplish anything in the world if you have a clear plan expressed in continuous action, especially Clear written plan expressed in continuous action and the ability to take action despite the voices in your head. The voices in your head. Now, if you think you don't have voices in your head, I want you to stop for 15 seconds. 10. 15 seconds. And listen. So we're just going to count, All right? You hear that voice that said, what voices? I don't hear any voices in my head. There are no voices here. That's the voice. Hindus call it the drunken monkey. Now, George von Wegener said, tons of ideas. The problem with focusing on one idea to completion. Ideas are cheap. Implementation is always the hard part. Yes, it is. Which is one of the reasons that I say write short stories instead of novels. Because you can write a short story a week. Some people have written short story, a short story really seriously short story every day. You got too many ideas. Just Write them on 3 by 5 cards. Choose one and work on the. On the discipline of finishing it. It's the discipline of doing it. So you can identify clearly that the problem is I can't discipline myself, which is essence. I have a problem keeping my word to myself. Because once you've said you're going to do something, you either do it or you don't. That problem will crop up in other areas of your life. There are. We can talk about that later, trust me. But this is an important point here. You're not the voices in your head. You are the one listening to the voices in your head. You get that. You get that distinction. And then you realize that the core philosophical question. There are only two core philosophical questions to ask in life. Who am I? And what is true? What are human beings and what is the world that they see? So a lot of meditation is about trying to ask the question, who's listening to the voices? Okay. And once again, that's a completely different subject. My God, we could go there. I could teach you for a week just on that. But whatever it is that's stopping you, including just, you know, putting things off. There's an expression that I have, and it is that perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control. In other words, the part of you that what makes the difference is taking the actions. Taking actions, not getting it perfect. Thinking that you have to get it perfect. Will kill you, will kill you. Nothing is ever perfect. What matters is do the work, do the work, do the work. That's the whole thing. I went to a martial arts event about three weeks ago, and I'm pretty advanced at this point in my life. I Mean, I should be. I've been doing it for a long time. But all the people wanted to know there was, who am I working out with? You know, what am I doing? That they understand that mastery is a verb, not a noun. It's a process, not a position. So the question is, what are you doing? What do you do day after day? If you do martial arts, every day you're a martial artist. If you write, every day you're a writer. You know, if you share love with your family every day, you're a family person that you are the thing that you do to a huge degree. So worrying about getting it perfect before you do it or before you send it out is just another way of procrastinating. So don't worry about getting it perfect. What matters is getting it done. So what do we do about that? I mean, I want to tell you that when I wrote my first Twilight Zone episode, the first thing I ever did for television was called Teachers Aid. And it was about an inner city remedial English teacher who gets possessed by a demon played by Adrian Barbeau, who had acts, who played Maude's daughter on the show, Maude, while I was working as a tour guide at cbs. So that was a very nice sort of completion of a life cycle. But I wrote a. I wrote a short script. It was only like 15 minutes long. And Phil DeGuerre, who was the producer on Twilight Zone, asked, said they liked it so much they wanted me to flesh it out to a half hour. I froze. I couldn't do it. I listened to what they said. They said it was the best first draft script they had ever seen, and I could not get back into it and change it. I was terrified to. That is just the truth. I was just too young. I was too scared. I wanted it too badly. And my urge to get it perfect just froze me. The same thing happened with the second novel that I wrote with Larry Nivett called the Descent of Anansi. We'd done Dream Park. It had been a huge success, made a lot of money, sold a lot of copies, spawned an entire fandom of its own. People loved it. And I was terrified. I could not do anything as good as come up as the follow up. So we did a novel concerning the hijacking of a space shuttle. And yeah, there was orbital mechanics and there was this and that, but the truth is I was going through a lot of emotional chaos. I was scared and I froze. And it almost ended my collaboration with Larry Niven right there. I'm not sure I ever told this story publicly, but it was terrifying. It was just. I. It was heartbreaking because I was going through a major relationship shift with my girlfriend, who later became my first wife, and I was living by myself. I was lonely, I was depressed, and I let all of those things get between me and the writing. And I knew some things. I knew, for instance, that there was going to be a way through this, but I didn't know whether or not I'd be able to find it in time. So the question I had was, how do I survive in the business long enough to be able to define what my problems are and then find the ways through them? You know, it was really a. I want this. I want this career. I want this life more than roses need rain. But I was just running into my own emotional walls, and I was running into the limits of myself. The voices in my head were killing me. They were just tearing me apart. I managed to fumble my way through that book. It's probably my least favorite of any of the books. I've never reread it. And the Twilight Zone episode, well, there were other things that happened. The Twilight Zone episode, unfortunately, it was running up against one of Harlan Ellison's episodes. And, you know, you don't fight Harlan for screen time. Let's just put it that way. I love him to death, but you don't. And so the first time I saw that first episode, it was at a Norwest con up in Seattle. And I had a room full of people watching it. And because I had not been able to perform properly, it looked terrible to me. It was just butchered. And I just. It was all I could do not to cry right there in a room full of. Room full of fans. It was just awful. So I knew that in order for me to get to where it is I wanted to go, I had to break this pattern. How do I break it? I didn't know now, but I had to survive long enough to do it. So that takes us to the next secret. The next secret, which is the one thing. What's the one thing everybody remember? City Slickers who saw City Slickers. Remember Jack Palance Is Curly saying that you got all these different things to do in life, but the secret to life is to find the one thing that means something to you, and you focus on that. And that was what these city sleepers needed to hear. There were all these different things going on in their lives if they could find the one thing that was meaningful, the one thing that gave them joy, the one thing that gave Them happiness, they could build their entire lives around it. And what I needed was to focus on something. Something. I wanted my writing career so badly. And something saved my life. There was a movie that actually saved my life. I don't have a picture of it here right now, but it was the movie all that Jazz. Who's seen the movie all that Jazz? Who remembers that? With Roy Scheider playing the. Playing the choreographer who's the womanizer, you know, drug addict who's just basically works himself to death for people who don't care about him and ignores the people who love him. A man turned inside out, just destroyed himself trying to be excellent. And I looked at that movie, I walked out of that movie and I realized that movie was me. That was me. I was 100% capable of destroying myself trying to be the thing that I wanted to be. And if I was not careful, that was going to happen to me. So I asked myself a very serious question. How do I keep from sliding down that hole? How do I save myself? Because excellence requires fanaticism. Fanaticism throws you out of balance. Being out of balance means you can just destroy yourself. Destroying yourself means you don't get to appreciate, enjoy the fruits of your own success. I did not want that to happen. And that was the moment in which I got an insight that changed my life. And that is that the only thing that it was safe to be obsessed about was balance. And so that's what I decided to do. I decided to become balanced. I mean, I had to have my body, I had to have my career, I had to have my love, my family, my self esteem, my sense of being a whole human being, that if I could have those things, that I could survive in the field long enough to learn the lessons I needed to learn to solve the problems that I saw. The problem not being able to write, not being able to perform, not being able to perform consistently, not being able to summon excellence and creativity on demand. If that makes sense. If you keep going long enough, if you keep learning, you can get the things that you need. So what I realized is that most people are never really good at much of anything because they kind of radiate in all directions. Here's a picture of a light bulb. It's kind of compared to a laser that's going to come a little bit later, but an incandescent light, this sends its vibes in all directions and that's the way most people are about their lives. At best, what people have is focus that they can actually focus their attention on. One spot. And you know, that can burn a hole in a piece of paper. That's really great. But what happens, the thing that's better than that is, once again, compare that with a laser where all the aspects of the laser are moving in the same direction, the same amplitude. Okay? It's coherent light. And a laser can punch a hole in a diamond. And that's what I think happens to human beings when they find the one thing, the one thing that allows them to focus all their energy on one point to do something. You do that, you find the one thing that is the most important thing and that becomes the focus of your life. If you do that one thing every day, whether that's a thing that has to do with your body or your relationships or your career, you do that one thing every day and you've got it nailed. So the question then is, if you could put everything behind one thing in the arena of writing, what is that one thing? Now, let's move on. Let's get to the secret. Let's get down to it. Secret number three. A book, a year and a sentence a day. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's impossible. A book is a hundred thousand words. A sentence a day is only 365 sentences, about 10 pages. Barnes must be crazy. Yeah, I am crazy. But I'm not wrong. I can be crazy and right at the same time. Sometimes, you know, crazy works, sometimes crazy is nice. Now, you guys know that, you know, martial arts is an important part of my life. And one of the greatest martial arts masters of all time wrote a book called the Book of Five Rings, which basically is about how can you be excellent? If excellence is the difference between life and death, what are the things that make the greatest difference? And if you. I've read that book a hundred times more, five or six different versions of it, and what comes out of there is that the core of the concept of mastery is available to anyone who walked the Thousand Mile Road. That the secret to mastery, the secret to success, is a daily walk, is taking actions on a daily basis, not just sprinting occasionally. So the idea of writing on the weekend, writing here, writing now, that's letting yourself be stopped, waiting for inspiration. That's all interesting, but that is not the path of mastery. So let's go back to that question of what are the most important questions to ask in life? Those questions are who are you? And what is true? Those are the two questions that will set you free. Who are you? If you say to yourself, I'm a Writer, let's say that. That's what you say. Then you get to say what is true about writers. Writers write. If you were to ask yourself, what does it take to write a book a year? It takes a page a day on average. Ask yourself, what stops you from writing a page a day? You might say, lack of ideas, time, energy, focus. Pain associated with being unable to perform. Because once, you know, once you start feeling pain associated with something, it gets much harder to motivate yourself to do it. Let me tell you a story. Back when I was studying kickboxing, I knew that I had to get my running up to. I had to start running. And I needed to run about five miles three times a week in order to be fit enough to get in the gym and not be tired when I should be learning skills and keeping my aunt from getting knocked off. So. But the idea of running five miles was dreadful. I mean, it was just awful. And so it was right about then that I asked myself a question. If I cannot motivate, because I tried for a couple of weeks, I could not motivate myself to run five miles. So I asked myself the question, what was the smallest daily action that would accomplish my goal? The smallest daily action. So what I realized was that I might not be able to motivate myself to run five miles or anything close to it. But what would happen if I said I have to run one lap, just one lap? What was necessary to run one lap? Well, I had to get out of bed in the morning. I had to get dressed, put on my shoes, put on my gym stuff. I had to walk down to the track. I had to stretch. I had to walk around a lap one time just to get warmed up. And then I would run a lap. And I realized something. That the process of running a single lap took me about 80% of the way to running a couple of miles. That most of the difficulty was overcoming the inertia and then having the voices in my head that said, you didn't do it, you're not worth anything. And in order to develop discipline, you have to believe you're worth it. You have to believe that you're worth it. If you don't believe that you're worth it, why are you going to bother trying? So, I mean, if you've ever been on a diet and failed on the diet, you broke the diet and then heard that voice in your head saying, why bother? You're not worth it. If you've ever tried to stop smoking cigarettes, if you ever tried to stop doing any Number of different things. You broke your agreement with yourself and then heard that voice in your head excoriating you so that you weakened your will to keep going. Give me some likes. Let me see if you. If you have experienced that cycle of trying to do something, setting your goals too large, failing, and then beating the hell out of yourself, and that very beating yourself up weakened your will to keep going. Absolutely. We have all been through this, brothers and sisters. Take a look at all these people getting hearts and anger that that is the normal human condition. We have all failed to do that. So the question that I ask is if it was true, if it was true that getting down to the track with the only thing I had to do was to run one lap and then I could go home and feel perfectly good about myself for the rest of the day. And all I had to do was do that three times a week. And I was doing everything that I was required to do. That changed everything within a couple of weeks. Well, actually, the very first time, I couldn't just run one lap. I had to do more than that. I couldn't let myself stop. So the pain of guilt motivated me to do nothing more than run that first lap. But after that, it was the love, the joy of, I can make myself do this. I'm disciplined. It was so cool. That was where I realized that I could apply that same idea to my writing. I asked myself, what was the minimum I could do? The minimum I could do that would move me forward. The minimum unit of writing that would move me forward. All I had to do was do that minimum and I was done for the day. If that's all I could do, I was done. I could feel perfectly good about myself the rest of the day. And that minimum was one sentence a day. If I could do one sentence a day, I could feel good about myself for the rest of the day. And what happened is that once I had done one sentence, I had my juices running, that I could not do all the things I needed to do to get in position to do one sentence without feeling like, well, if I can do one sentence, I can do more. I mean, there are days when I was so busy that, yeah, all I could do is one sentence, but those were very few and far between. I'm like rushing to get to the airport. But usually I end up doing a paragraph, two paragraphs, sometimes a page, sometimes a few pages. And the instant I got to the point where my creativity was the door to my creativity was open wide enough that I could just flow, I was Averaging a thousand words a day, that's 300,000 words a year. 365,000 words a year. That's plenty of time for rewriting everything else. And the minimum, the basic thing I had to do, I never had to do more than one sentence a day. Anything more than one sentence a day was what I chose to do, not what I had to do. And that made a fantastic difference. So what I'm saying to you is, is you try this for the next year. Make a commitment. I will write one sentence a day. Just one sentence a day. You do that, and you will either write, you know, 12 stories, you know, 12 to 48 stories that year, or you will write a book. And if you are willing to commit, if you're willing to give it a shot, give me some hearts. All right, this is good. This is good. I'm telling you. What you're learning how to do is how to tap into your creativity. How to be gentle with yourself, kind with yourself. Writing should be fun. Writing is what you love, remember? Why in the world would you want to beat yourself up over something that's supposed to be fun? There's just no. Makes no sense at all. But that's what we do. I'm sorry. I'm moving around my office. I'm getting the plug. My battery was getting down to 23%. Sorry about that. But what I've got here is a plan that will allow you to tap into your creativity and begin to align your discipline with the kid inside you that comes up with the ideas. The kid only has one homework problem to do. Give me one sentence. That's all the adult will demand of your kid after that kid gets to play. And if you're a writer, and I think you are, if you're here, if you're still watching this now, you're writers. You're people who love the idea of creating stories. So let me show you what the full program is. The full sentence a day program, okay? So as a minimum, you're going to write a sentence a day on your project. That's it. Sentence a day, seven days a week. You're just going to write one sentence. When you're writing, you go through the exact same ritual every day. If you can. You know, that's where you write. When you write, what tools you use, dress very, very similarly. If there is some particular music or food or drink that you use. No drugs, except possibly coffee. Drugs are for after, before going to sleep. So that's the whole thing. You are programming yourself to perform. You're programming yourself to perform very carefully, very gently, very lovingly, that you're going to deal with that kid inside you with affection and respect. You don't beat them up. Suspend all negative judgment. That kid inside you is doing the best she knows how to do. Love her. This is play. Then before. First of all, do you understand what I'm saying? Where you write, what tools, how you're dressed, you begin to program that. If you understand that. Good. Give me some likes. Good, you got it. You got it. All right, now, in order to make a deeper connection with your creativity, before you go to sleep, simply ask your subconscious to give you the next sentence. Just one sentence. That's it. One sentence. Turn the work over to your unconscious mind. Every night you go quietly insane. All you have to do is learn to tap into that chaos, to tap into that creativity, and you will have a flow, a flood of ideas like, you will not believe everybody every single night. Then the adult part of you has to be disciplined to choose the one idea you're going to use, and you're going to do it as a matter of discipline. Doesn't matter. If you come up with a better idea, you finish it. And if you have a problem finishing it, then what you have done is you have identified a weakness in your program. So you can literally go out and start looking for those resources. How do you develop discipline? Well, discipline in any area of your life will propagate over to discipline in other areas of your life. But remember, the core thing is that little kid inside you only has to do one sentence a day on the project that you're focused on. Only have to do one sentence a day. All right? Now the last step in the program is that when you first wake up in the morning, before you move, before you begin to move as soon as you are awake, think about the answer. Think about the sentence that you're going to write. So you're bracketing your dream time. You're letting your unconscious mind, you're letting the deep wells of your wisdom give you the creativity that you need to perform. This process of connecting your will, connecting your program to that deep well of consciousness with the discipline of writing a single word a day. That's the old all the discipline that the adult part of you has to have. The rest of it is your kid getting to play. Okay, you can work on a dozen other projects, but on this one project, you write one sentence a day. You are working, you're pushing forward on some one project. Project. Okay? That is, that is, that is your tool that's the doorway. You do this and you will begin to have a completely different relationship with your creativity. A relationship that will take you to writing and publishing as long as you're doing the other things that you need to do. Like this is like one step of the five or six steps of the writing process, the life writing, writing process. But it is the most critical one, because if you don't write, nothing else happens. So the question comes up, what's the result of this program? What do you get out of it? Well, it's some really nifty things. First of all, no guilt. Zero guilt. You don't ever need to feel guilty about not doing your writing because one sentence a day is all you have to do. So the voices in your head that try to stop you from writing, try to stop you from changing, are going to start running out of legitimate excuses not to write. There's never a day you can't make progress. You will associate pleasure rather than pain with the process of writing. It becomes play. You are creating a powerful positive spiral because when you start anchoring pleasure to something, it starts getting easier and easier to do it. So by identifying the minimum piece that you have to do to move forward and putting all your attention on doing that minimum piece, what you have done is you have learned the power of leveraging all your attention on one thing, burning away all the obstructions. And by choosing something that is that small, there are no rational, reasonable, logical excuses for not doing it. All that stuff goes out the window and it's like flipping over a flat rock in your head. What happens is your demons are exposed to light. All of your pretender voices, all the things that try to tell you that you cannot accomplish the things you want to accomplish. If you've got those pretender voices in your head, if they have deviled you, if they have kept you from being who you're supposed to be and accomplishing what you want to accomplish in life. Show me some love, give me some likes, let me know that we're on the same page. Because it took me 17 years to earn my first black belt. I was dealing with so much pain, so much, you know, so, so many, so much guilt, so much doubt. This is absolutely what happens to human beings. Let me tell you another story. Tananarive was working on a project that has turned in her book called the Reformatory. Personally, I think it's going to be the best book she's ever done. It deals with the criminal justice system. It deals with the children in reformatory being abused her own great uncle was one of those kids. I think you may remember, it was on cnn. The school in northern Florida where they were abusing those kids and possibly murdering them and burying them in unmarked graves was just horror show. And because of all the negative emotions associated with it, it was very, very difficult for her to get started. She kept telling herself, I need to research. I need to research. I need to research. And literally years went by and she would not work on that book. And I finally told her, one day. All right, one sentence. Just one sentence a day. You're going to pay honor to your family. You're going to pay honor to your. To your great uncle. You're going to pay honor to the dead and also going to enlighten the living. And all you have to do is one sentence a day. And she could not come up with any reasons. Yeah, she's teaching a class at ucla. Yeah, she's busy raising our son. There's this busy, that busy, this busy that busy. But she could not lie and say she didn't have time to write one sentence a day. And what happened was as soon as she gave herself permission to do that, she was looking at all of the fear, all of the hesitation, all of the doubt that she wasn't good enough to represent this important work. And she began writing. And every day she would. All I'd have to do is say one sentence a day. One sentence a day. And what happened is that turned into pages and it turned into chapters, and it's turning into a wonderful, wonderful book. I cannot wait until we get to share this with you guys. And it's because she gave herself permission to open the doors to her creativity. She ran out of excuses. So Regina Lawson said, I leave all my writing projects unfinished, which makes me feel like a failure. Even finished short stories sit unsubmitted. And here it is fear of being imperfect and being rejected. Well, here is the thing, Regina. This is why I teach the different tools I teach. It's the kid part of you that's afraid of being rejected. And that is the most precious part of you. It's the adults part that has to stand up and stand between your child and those rejections, those bad grades, those boos, whatever it is, love that little girl inside you with all her heart. Protect her with everything you've got. Like a mommy tiger. You create a safe space for your little girl, and you surround yourself with nothing except people who will either support you or it's just you and your little girl. But if you can find people who support you, who also need that kind of help. And you say, I'll support you if you support me. You put your back against their back or your back against the wall with that little girl inside you hiding behind you, saying, mommy, will you protect me? Mommy will you create a safe space? And you say yes. You just give me one sentence a day. And you start with very short stories. You just choose one and you go through it. And if you have trouble finishing it, you ask for help. You look at the reasons why one sentence per day. You focus down to the smallest unit and you put all of your force behind that tiny unit and you do that. You fix that there. If you need additional resources, then you get those resources. Google is your friend. So there it is. Here's the program again. It is the sentence a day program. Write a sentence a day on your project. Minimum. When writing, go through the same ritual every day if you can. Where you write, what tools you use, what are you listening to, how you're dressed, everything, so that they all become anchors for your excellence. Before going to sleep, ask your subconscious to give you the next sentence. And when you wake up in the morning, before you move, it's called the hypnagogic state. It's a state where you're half asleep and half awake, where you have some control over your dreams. You think about the answer, you think about that one sentence. And all you have to do that day is write one sentence. That's it. One sentence. And your little girl, your little boy gets to play for the rest of the day. But you know what? When you make the writing that much fun, you make it that easy to succeed, that little boy, that little girl will come creeping back to the typewriter and will start writing for you. And it is an amazing thing to see. Now, even though I try to just give you a sliver of a sliver of a sliver, I think you can agree that the implications here are huge. There is just a lot here. And just to back up for a second, some of you might be feeling like you've been drinking from a fire hose. And you might ask the question, can the idea, the whole five minute life hack system, can this work for things other than than writing? And you better believe it can. I've used in every aspect of my life, with my relationship, with my kids, certainly with my writing, with my martial arts, identifying the smallest components, the thing I had to do every single day in order to keep moving forward. And I taught this to people. Some of them are writers, some of them are Not Vic Whitlock was one of the people who I worked with who had stress issues, fear issues, pretender voice issues in her job working in the technology field. And so we came up with little tiny interventions, little five minute interventions to deal with the stress, to help her create clear outcome, to create a daily ritual of action where all she had to do was just focus on the daily ritual. She did that single thing. If she did that single thing, she could consider her day a success. And the result was weight loss, finding the love of her life, and career advancement. It just flat works. So what I want to ask you is I want your permission. You know, how many of you would like to know how to. How to play with me more? How many of you, first of all, have you enjoyed this? Has this been good? Has it been worth your time here? Can you feel that I have given you everything I can and that I am just totally committed to your success? Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Because you guys are my people. You're my people. If you want to be writers, you want to be artists, you want to change the world, you want to express your dreams. This is why I live, this is why I get up in the morning, is to play with you and give to you. And I would like your permission to talk a little bit more about what this is and how you can take this idea of the minimum investment of time and turn it into steps that can transform your life. So it is only with your permission that I can do this, because it is critical that you understand that your life is in your hands. And I've got ways that you can find that out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your permission. Thank you for your trust. This is what it's all about. I am so grateful for the teachers that I have had. The only thing I can do is pass their knowledge on. So what I've done is I've created. Over the course of my life, I've created, I've gathered huge amounts of information on success in relationships, in working on my body, working on my career. And what was always the most interesting thing to me are those things that felt like magic. But it's like, oh, my God, why didn't somebody teach me this 20 years ago? Things that deal with fear, things that deal with focus, things that deal with the voices in your head, on and on and on. I mean, some of these things are so powerful. It's like you spent your whole life pushing at a door and somebody comes along and says, you know, you're supposed to pull that door. And you realize that, you know, you might be strong enough to rip that door off its hinges with a push, but it's so much easier once you pull. Or it's like knowing the combination to a safe. There are things like that with your own consciousness, with your own mind. And I collected 10 years ago, nine years ago, I collected 100, one of the best of them and created a course. And I shared that course with people and I tested it. I listened to what people said and I refine it. So this program has been tested for 10 years. The basic life writing program has been tested for 30 years. The 101 program has been tested for 10 years. And what I did was I'm taking those and I'm boiling them down to things you can do in just five minutes a day that are as powerful as just doing a single sentence. So what I've done is I've created a situ. I've created three months of daily coaching. If you would like to have me whispering in your ear, me talking to you, me sitting on your shoulder and talking to you every day for the next three months, reminding you of what small changes can do. Goal setting, fitness, emotional health, finding your soulmate, managing money, losing weight, loving yourself, tripling your daily efficiency, it's so much more. I really can't get into all of it, but I would say, judging by my life, when I was doing life coaching, that easily the total value of all this would be about 1,400, $1,500. On the second day of this program, it's going to be, there's the five minute stress buster that deals with stress forever. On day five, you're going to get the ancient secret to the fountain of youth. On day 18, you're going to get a single exercise that in five minutes will work your entire body. On day 31, there's just one of the best secrets I've ever seen I which is called the fear removal exercise. Literally, you can remove phobic responses that have been bothering you for years. I don't care if you've been in therapy, I don't care what's going on. If you can do this one exercise you can literally use. It's an undocumented function of your central nervous system. And this would be worth 1497. Now, I had years to put into this, but the question you're asking is, does it really work? Does it really work? Well, luckily over the years, I've been able to work with people and get comments back to be sure that this actually worked. So Like Andy Duncan said, Stephen Barnes has given me tools and understanding that have taken me from being a struggling filmmaker to make, to become a better storyteller, father, Internet marketer, film producer and business building coach. That command, five to six figures up front, he's that good. And thank you, Andy. Well, let's just say my teachers were that good and I listened. I've tried to be the best student I can be. So what you're going to get is that entire system over three months. I don't know how long it's going to be, but I promise it's going to be over 100 days and I'm going to be playing with you. And then they're going to be bonuses. And one of the bonuses, it's only for the first 30 people who join. It's the full Ancient child system. That's the thing that gives you access to your creativity, allows you to heal emotionally, and also taps into your discipline and your wisdom so that once you do that, you can go internal. And because we love children, when you tap into this in the right way, you will gain a kind of discipline you've never had because you're not doing it for yourself, you're doing it for that little kid inside you. And I'm going to. That is just my gift to you. The second bonus is the full Fear course. F E A R Fear Mastery, Turning Fear and Energy. A fountain of energy for Active Response. That's what that acronym is. And I worked on that for years. And there's tremendous stuff in there. And once again, the value. I've sold it for $197. But my commitment is to giving everything I've got to the people who need this giving. If you're a writer, all the tools that you need to be a writer, remember that you have to have balance in order to survive long enough to stay in the field to deal with disappointment, deal with fear, deal with the lack of discipline so you can grow and accomplish the things that you were born, that you were put here to do. So you're going to get the full 101 course, you know, the five minute life hacks course. You're going to get the ancient child mp3 and you're going to get Fear Master. Be able to deal with your fears. Total value, $1791. The fact is, the truth of it is that you'd have to spend, you know, 20 years and half a million dollars to get all this stuff that's in here. Some of the information has never been revealed publicly before. And this is all about you and your family and your dreams and being able to have the kind of life that you want. So I ask yourself, I ask you the question. What are your dreams worth to you? Are they worth a month of work? Are they worth 5,000, 10,000? 25 more? How much would you pay to be healthy, happy, loved and successful? If I. If I really could point out secrets that are as powerful as running west, not east. If you want to see a sunset, how many of you feel like you've been running east looking for a sunset? That you put in the work, you put in the energy, but somehow you've just never quite gotten it. I have felt that way in my relationships, in my career, with my body. If you felt that way too, you are not alone. There are secrets. And those secrets are worth anything. Now, this would be a good deal at 1791. And once I finish polishing the entire system, it's gonna be close to a thousand dollars. It's gonna be about $791. I figured once I'm finished doing it. But you guys are part of my proof of concept group. You're actually helping me understand what sequence these things need to be and helping me polish it, telling me what it is that you need to succeed. So if you get started Today, it's only $297 and the sign up is there. @liferight.com we even have a new time payment arrangement so that it is available to anybody. Liferight.com we're just trying to make this available to people. We're doing an additional bonus. People are worried about how do you sell your writing once you've done it? Well, the question of marketing. A lot of people feel that marketing is almost like prostitution. It's. It's hucksterism. The fact is, if you know that you've got something that is of value, then offering it to people is almost a sacred obligation. If you are in touch with your heart and you know there's something precious inside you and you have learned to put that out into your work, into whatever it is that you do, whatever product or service you use, and you offer that as a benefit to the community, you have the obligation to share with them with pride, with integrity, and to trust that they are adults who can make their own decisions. I have a friend who is a Sufi master and he told me stories about how the Sufis could be successful in business and spiritual at the same time. And they used a tool. They use a lot of different tools, but one of the tools that they use that is not very well known is called the Enneagram. And the Enneagram is like a computer on paper. And it was only taught through oral traditions. There is a very tiny sliver of the Enneagram that is taught. It has to do with personality. In other words, it's a lot like a horoscope. What the Enneagram really is about process. It's about how to take anything that you're trying to do and do it more efficiently by looking at the internal structure. And so my friend and teacher, Mushtaq Ali Al Ansari, we did a dynamite interview walking you through this process, making it simple. It would take months to teach you how to use the Enneagram. We created a questionnaire. We created a simplified system so you can take a look at whatever it is that you're creating. If it's a good or a service, especially if it's writing. Find the people who need it the most and communicate with them ethically, honorably and without stress. This is fantastic. This information has never been put out there before and it's only for the first 10 people sign up. So, you know, we're, we're just doing everything we know how to do. We can get started today for $297 at liferight.com Once again, we have time payments now, so there's no excuse not to do it, if you're feeling me. So there's a 30 day guarantee signed today. And if for any reason you don't like what we're doing, I don't care if it's 29 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes from now, just let me know and we'll give you your money back. So the real question is, what's important to you? What's important to you? I know what's important to me. What's important to me is living my life in alignment with that little boy inside me who looked out at the world all those years ago and said, is there a place for me? All I want to do is share my heart. All I want to do is have a family to love and a writing career and to be a martial artist. Those are the three things I wanted. And I got all three of them. And the techniques I use to create all three at the same time are exactly what I'm offering you. I'm sending a message in a bottle down the time slip to a younger version of myself. Because that's what I think some of you guys are. You're younger versions of me and you would like to be Martial artists, you would like to be writers, you would like to have love in your life. And I'm going to give you the tools that teachers from around the world gave me. I was the kind of person, I would drive a thousand miles to spend 15 minutes with someone who would give me an answer. And I did. And the answers, the best of the best of the best of everything I got over all those years are in this course. One day at a time, every day, another conversation with me every single day for at least 100 days. Now. The most. The thing that I love the most about my life with Tananarive is that we're on the same page about wanting to share, wanting to give, wanting to give back to the world. You know, I just. That's a fuzzy picture. I have to get a better picture than that. But, my God, I love that woman. I adore my baby. She is my princess. She is my queen, and she saved my heart. And we love each other like crazy. And I am willing to do anything, anything to protect my family. But I also have this commitment to take care of you guys. Anyone who's on my Facebook page knows that I give away as much as I can every single day for free to everybody. Anybody who's listening. The only reason that I'm charging for this course is that I cannot put the kind of time and energy into supporting it and taking care of you guys, taking care of my students and answering the questions and refining it, making it better and better. Without that kind of investment, I just can't. I'd go broke. I couldn't keep a roof over my head. And remember, one of the things that is important is, are you taking care of business? Are you taking care of your body? Are you taking care of your creative stream, that child inside you? Are you taking care of your relationships? I take care of my stuff. I handle it. And I feel totally good about myself. Connect with it. And if you would like to feel that way, I've got it for you. I've got it for you. Tia and I are building. You know, we have no. No ambition less than to change the world, but also to love each other and take care of each other. And finding my soulmate was the most important thing, most important step. I could not do it alone. I adore that woman. I would like for you, I'd like for everyone out there to find the same kind of love. We're talking about finding love. We're talking about having health, we're talking about having your career. And all you have to do Is, is give me a shot. Give me a chance. You go to www.liferight.com, we talk about all the different stuff you're going to get now. It's the Ancient, it's the full five minute Life Hack system. The Ancient Child Fear Mastery course, the spiritual entrepreneur. The total value of over $2,000. And you know, here's the truth. You know, there's nothing special about me. I'm not good at cooking or balancing my checkbook. Like I said, it took me 17 years during my first black belt. But I've now got all of those things because I took a step every day. No matter how badly it hurt, no matter how scared I was, no matter how ashamed of myself I was. I did the things I had to do one day at a time every day. And that's what's available to you, starting with just five minutes. But it's easier to do this if you have somebody else with you. So the first 10 people who sign up are going to get a free copy of the entire program to share with a study partner, a writing buddy, somebody who will help watch your back. So take a look at what we're doing now. It's the complete five minute Life Hack program. It's the Ancient Child, it's Fear Mastery, it's a spiritual entrepreneur and it's a study partner copy the program. Total value over $4,000. I don't know what else I can. Oh, wait a minute. Yes, I do. We've got a social media group. We're going to be doing monthly Teleconferences starting on November 5th where you can ask any questions you want. We're going to have a six part webinar that you'll be able to attend for free coming up in 2018. And there's going to be even more as you tell me what you need to succeed. So, you know, that's, that's it. That's what I'm trying to say. That's, that's why I get up in the morning. That's why I do this. You see what I give away for free. Join me. Let me whisper in your ear for three months and I'm telling you I can change your life. Sign up here www.liferight.com join the I've taught thousands of students and hundreds of students personally, and I just want you to be next. So thank you for your time. And now I'm going to fulfill that promise I gave you. Remember I told you that you stuck to the end. I tell you about that snob that Science fiction snob. Well, here's the story. It was years ago at ucla. Linda Venus, who was in charge of the writing program out at ucla, had me teaching there. And they did. They did sort of a cattle call, cattle call where all the different instructors would meet in the auditorium, and all the students were gathered in the auditorium, and we would give a short pitch for what it is that we taught, you know, just so the people would know whether or not they wanted to come to our class. And I talked about how I could help people break writer's block and help people, you know, create and stay on track and so forth. And after the class was over, I'm walking out and two people approached me. First one was a woman who said, why did you tell students that you could help them with writer's block? It's not possible. And that was just sad because what she was saying is that she was blocked. And that was the story she told herself to keep from having to feel bad. So she's teaching people, but she's blocked. That's sorry for her. I felt even sorry for her students, quite frankly. But the problem was the other guy, tall guy. I'm in an elevator going down, and we're in the elevator together. And he looks down at me, kind of sniffs and says, science fiction. Science fiction. Well, tell me, do you think you'll ever publish anything substantive? And I looked at him and I said, do you think you'll ever publish anything at all? And he had no answer. I had read him perfectly. There are people who will try to tear you down. People try to laugh at you. But remember, every second someone spins tearing you down is a second they're not spending making themselves strong. They are pitiful. Do not let them hurt you. Do not let them distract you. You are the one. You are the one. And that little girl, that little boy inside you, that little kid who used to dance in front of the family and everybody would applaud, is looking at you, saying, help me, Mommy. Help me, Daddy. I have a story to tell. I have a dance to do. Help me create a space in which I can do it. And if you can help that child be healthy, happy, strong, and loved in only five minutes a day, what I promise you is that all the love, all the hope, all the happiness, all the passion that you've been looking for in your life, still inside you, that little boy, that little girl, has everything you need. You don't need anything else except to be true to that part of yourself. I'm going to thank you so very much for joining me for this time, for being my friends, being my family. You know, give this a chance. You know, I promise I'll be here every day, sharing as much as possible, answering all the questions I can remember. We got a payment plan now, so you can get started. And I'd like to close this with a Sanskrit expression that says that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. I love you all. Take care.