Firedance 1-13-24

Lights and trying to get rest. That's the part that will have me leaving a bit early. I stayed up a little bit too late reading the Star wars book last night and then had to get up early for my event. And my body is like, what are you doing? So I'm going to rest. But you can see the palm tree. Wait, can you? Palm trees? This is where I am. So that you can all mentally bring yourselves there too. And I'm sure it'll be a great session.

Yeah. So listen, let's just get started, you know. Welcome to Fire Dance. This is Steve Barnes, the creator of the technology. And, you know, David Bowie recently was asked what the greatest accomplishment in his life was, and he said it was marrying his wife. That is a level of clarity that I aspire to, because it is absolutely true that being partnered with Tananarivedu has been the adventure of a lifetime. But I don't always have the kind of clarity that David Bowie has, which is one of the reasons why I'm not David Bowie. The clarity of what's really important in life is one of the things that is critical. So I just want to say before my baby disappears, that you are a carnival ride. I wouldn't have missed. You missed this journey and who you are and what you've brought for anything in the world. And I would be a fool not to both understand that, see that, know that, and let everybody in the world know that you are the treasure of my life. Sweetheart. Now you're. You're. You're muted, but I don't want to hear what you have to say.

No, but you know.

Yeah, go away. No, no, no.

That's all I'll say.

Right back at you. So listen, we are here and tonight was talking about a real shock that we got this week. And then, you know, so we had a real shock career wise. Jason had his first day of college. I had to get into position where I can. I can honestly feel like this book is happening because I have to push the button on it on Monday. On Monday, people. So, you know, once again, I'll just show this. This is the Mace Windu novel right there. And it's working. You know, when I finished. Speechify has a variety of voices, and one of them is. One of them is Snoop Dogg. They actually licensed his voice. So having Snoop Dogg read the book to me has been so much fun. And I got through the whole thing, and I actually, you know, teared up a little bit at the end, and I it that there is a spark of real Emotion that I've been able to create in there. So what I have to do now is it's just a spark. So I have to fan it. I have to find out how does everything that I do in the book amplify that or help pay that off. If there is real emotion, then that means that the situation is. Is close enough to a real life thing. There is enough simulation of reality that you can't see the puppet strings all the time. What you want is for people who suspend. No, we are colder then. Who suspend disbelief to be able F. He's a third 23. Okay, let's see. Mute. All the people who suspend disbelief are able to feel the emotions of people who don't really exist. You know, it's a puppet show in a way. But if. If the puppet show is done sincerely, then you will react to it just like. Can you have emotions in response to cartoon figures? Of course you can. Actors playing roles. Of course you can. You know, the question of if you're watching a movie about talking dinosaurs, what is it that you could do to make those dinosaurs? You know, if it's land before time or something like this so real or the empathize with them enough that the audience would cry if. If Mommy dinosaur sacrifices her life to save baby. Trying to understand what that magic is. And it is a form of magic. This is what artists do, dancers do, and writers do. And I'm so grateful to be part of that tradition and I'm so grateful to know so many masters in that field. And so if you're looking at the magic formula, for instance, the M and magic formula is map or model. Be sure that you have people who you can think of, who you admire, who started where you started, or with fewer resources and got what it is that you're looking for. It is by studying them that you'll be able to figure out, well, how did they use their minds, how did they use their emotions? How do they. What actions did they take? And those are the three things you have to look at this week. I had the book, Tananarive had the trip. We had a career upset. We had to get Jason to college. And Tonatari was going out of town. I was originally going to be going out of town with her, but then when we realized that his 20th birthday, because he just had his 20th birthday on Thursday and then his first day of school on Friday, there was no way I was going to be that we wanted him to have that, to do that by himself. There was just no way that that would have been appropriate. So I missed the chance to go to the Florida Keys and play around on the beach with my baby because my son is more important and had that clarity. And Tananarive knew that she could represent. She could go and do what she had to do, and I would be dad, and she would be able to set things up so that we're. We're represented, so he is safe in terms of the career shock. So we put. We've tried to get this book done for decades, and we finally got ourselves in the best position we've ever, ever been in with. With executives that. That we can actually talk to and actually get us and a team that we're building that was actually working. And it's like, wow, this is fantastic. This is great. And then we got a call on. Was it Wednesday? We got a call on Wednesday.

Yeah, Wednesday.

Saying that his entire department was fired. Everything just blew up right there at this. At the same time that I'm.

Oh, no, I'm just enjoying what.

Same time that I'm trying to focus on this book. At the same time that Tonari was getting ready to go out of town, at the same time that we're trying to get Jason ready for college, we're. It's like the rug was being pulled out from underneath us. So you, sweetheart, especially while you're here, you gave me a list of the things that you did. Why don't you talk through. Can you remember what you said, or would you be willing to recreate?

I can refer to my newsletter, too. Hold on. Let me spotlight you and spotlight me so we're both on the screen. Hey, everybody. So, you know, I think the first thing was just the shock. Really, really good news. Like on Monday, hey, this polish you're working on, we're gonna send this to your favorite actress and maybe try to get her, you know, and then Wednesday is like, guess what? I'm fired. This is basically dead at this company. And that led to a spiral of negative thinking. And the first thing I was thinking was how weary I am. You know, if you read my newsletter, this has been a long process. The. The president of Fox Searchlight Studios looked us in the face more than 20 years ago and said, I will make this movie. And then did not make this movie the last time it was at Sony. We were promised a chance to pitch a take and be the screenwriters attached. And they never invited us in the pitch a take. The producer never even told us who the screenwriter was. We never saw a draft. So when I say we were shut out. I don't mean we were just shut out 20 years ago. We were shut out four years ago. Never get. So this was an ideal situation. We've had so many disappointments. My first thought was, you know, who is it? Is it Lethal Weapon? Where was it Danny Glover always saying, I'm too old for this?

Or was it, yeah, no, it's Danny Glover.

It's like you're feeling like, how much longer can we get kicked in the teeth? Like, and. And I'm too old for this. Like, I, I. That feeling of running out of time, that feeling of getting so close and then it's yanked out of your hand was very, very strong. A negative thinking spiral. And I had made some assumptions that weren't true, also about payments and things that we were owed. And so that helped.

But.

But mostly it was trying to come out of the spinning grief and the spinning negative thought patterns by, first of all, staying focused on gratitude. And one of the things I did not say in the newsletter is that this particular executive was so proactive in moving us to write a pilot even before it set up, which is unusual, before the writer strike, that unlike a lot of screenwriters in Hollywood, we were not struggling for money over that strike because of this man and that decision to. To do something pretty radical, frankly, you know? And so we had that. We had that peace of mind. We've gotten a beautiful pilot script out of it, probably the best we've ever done because I had the input from him and from a director, which we've never had before. So I was grateful that we have a great writing sample. I was grateful that he kept us from. From having to scramble for money for several months last year. I was grateful that Jason was going to college. I really started to focus on Jason turning 20 years old, taking his first college class, the fact that things are good with me and my baby. If we're good, then, then. Then I'm good.

We're better than good, sweetheart.

And that's how I felt about it. So the gratitude help breathing. You know, sometimes you have to have a good cry, and I don't believe me. I did that. But then I was pretty much transformed by the time I got here, and I felt empowered. I'm looking for creative solutions. I have a sense of faith that we're going to find a way to make it work. And I can't explain why I have that sense of faith, but I do. And that's enough right now. It's enough to just have a sense of faith.

Gratitude is why? You have faith?

Yes.

If you are grateful for what has happened in the past, you are creating a structure inside yourself, whereas you can believe that maybe things will be good in the future. You know that if you're walking across a bridge and there is fog and you can't see more than 12ft ahead of you, by the time you walked a couple hundred feet across that bridge, you start having faith that there's going to be more bridge, even though you can't see it. That if we were to take a look at what you did, one of the things we would take, I would say that the first thing was breathe. That was the first thing that I did. You know, it's like when I heard about this, that was the first thing I did. Okay, Steve, breathe. You know, so that I don't. Because under stress, you'll hold your breath. It's like you'll start breathing properly and you'll go into cardio respiratory distress as the CO2 climbs in your blood, and you'll literally start, you know, seal. Cardiorespiratory distress and fear are basically the same thing. It triggers the same thing. So if you know, and what is true is that you could be the most depressed or angry or suicidal, and if somebody stuck your head in a bucket of water, you would fight for that next breath of air. That's simply. That's simply the. The third rail back into your head. So if you. The first thing you do is breathe, then you are telling your body that all is right with the world. And if your body is all right with the world, then nothing that is impacting survival has the same kick to it. And that's, you know, this is a career thing. It's not just a matter. We're not, you know, we don't have $100 million sitting in the bank. So it's not like we've got that kind of safety. We're actually working raiders. So if something falls apart, there is the risk of, well, how are we going to support ourselves? Where's that money going to come from? You know, how are we going to the fear of the back of the head? How are we going to keep a roof over our head? How are we going to eat? How are we going to pay our bills? That's the.

Yeah. And then what if this was our last chance? Which is a fake voice, it's a liar voice, but believe me, that voice was in there. What if that was your last chance?

So what I'm saying, sweetheart, is that the most critical thing is to ask yourself About a fear response. Is there a survival component to this fear? You know, and yes, it is. You know, we're literally worrying about paying bills, you know, paying medical bills, doing this, doing that. Then it's the emotional content. And you're looking at, you're looking at people who've been trying to get this particular movie or particular story to the screen for over two decades.

Yes.

So the emotionally just on the level of self expression. Even if we didn't need the money at all, there would still be grief and pain and thwarted ambition and authority. Sense of doesn't anybody love me? Doesn't the world want to hear my stories? That that stuff is real. So the survival thing first you interrupt what she talked about, the negative spiral. The first thing you have to do is interrupt the negative spiral. And that is done by breathing. So when we talk about how the buy in in fire dance is 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing once per hour, this is what we're talking about. That's not only does it have positive effects, but it interrupts negative effects. It actually gives you a chance to ask yourself the question, how bad is this? And I knew that this was going to hit Tonnery more deeply than it hit me because it's her project. So I knew that it was my job to be her rock. It was my job for her to look at me and know that my attitude was we are that bitch. We're going to get. We are going to handle this period. We're simply going to handle this. And so, you know, as soon as you're finished grieving, you know, do you need to be cuddled? You know, any grieving, we're going to start thinking about how we're going to solve this problem. So first grieve. Let me deal with the emotions. And I have not always been smart enough to do that. There have been far too many times in the past when I went directly to trying to solve the problem. And I take responsibility for that. You know, if I feel like she's being very emotional, I can be a machine. Thank God there's both of us.

And yeah, I just needed to sort of snuggle up against you on the sofa and watch the Outsider and forget about it for a little while. You know, that's right. You know, it is interesting and this is something to remember that disappointments feel like a death because grief is the same emotion that we experience when we have a loss. Any kind of a loss can initiate grief. The only difference is the degree of the grief and the length of time that you're grieving. But the emotion of grief is the same. If it's a broken relationship, if it's anything that is changed from. From what you thought it would be, something that makes you happy, something makes you comfortable. When you lose that or where there's a new element that has changed that, it is perfectly natural to feel as if someone has died. Because grief, that is what grief is. So I'm just really happy that knowing that we have another payment step enables me to kind of escape into the script. Because unlike with prose, with screenwriting, someone else owns that. It would have done me no good to be working on this script that somebody else owned if I could not then do something more with it. So that's the end of the line in a screenplay. You're just, you know, done. We still have a couple more steps. So I get to play in that world a little bit more. I get to feel my connection to those characters. And if you're writers, you understand the act of writing can carry you through so many storms. And that's the same thing the director said when she reached out. You know, I told her, listen, I'm just going to spend this weekend writing. That's the only place I can put my head right now. And she said that's exactly what she does. Because you can't control so much, but you can control that page, you know, the.

How many of you have had that experience that when you don't have a job, you can't get a job until you've got a job. And then suddenly people are coming to you with job offers. When you don't have any money, you can't get a loan. But as soon as you've got money, banks offer your credit cards. When you don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you can't get one. And then as soon as you've got one, people looking at you saying, oh, you're kind of cute. There is a phenomenon, and maybe it's just the a watched pot doesn't boil, but maybe there's something else to it. I think that, that when we think that the external world is responsible for our emotions and success, that we give away power. That when we take responsibility for our actions, we take responsibility for our emotions. It's almost as if we gain mass. And if you know what gravity, you know, some of the pictures of gravitational wells. Gravitational wells sort of bend time space. So it isn't magnetism in the usual way. It's literally that objects go down into the gravity well. They can't get back out. The magic formula is called the magic formula because it seems to be a way of increasing luck that the map or model things like, well, how do we behave when we're dealing with fear? What is fear? How does fear hit us? You know, we need to have confidence. We need to take a breath. We need to have confidence in each other. We need to shift into, you know, to cope with the emotions, honor the emotions, shift into problem solving mode. We have models of people who have dealt with this. Studying people who have been successful in the arts, you will see that they have been through the kind of thing we went through last week or this week, over and over and over again. This is just what happens. The actions that we take, you know, are critical. Let's take little actions first. Action was just, let's just cuddle each other. Let me just be my. Just be the rock. Let me be sure that I, you know, find the place inside myself that feels totally comfortable. Confident. We can deal with this. Like I said, our catchphrase. We are that bitch. You know, that is. That is. You can't say that and not smile a little bit. Which is an antidote to the fear. Gratitude. What do we have to feel grateful for? I'm grateful for a loving wife. I'm grateful for a healthy mind and body. I'm grateful that my son is about to enter college. Grateful that I'm almost finished with the Star wars novel. Grateful for opportunities for friends, for this, for that. So the gratitude then is an antidote for fear. The clear intention is that no matter what, we're going to have a fantastic year. And that means that our marriage is good, our health is good and career things are working well. And the c. Is that confidence. Are you. Do you believe that you are the person who can and should do this? Well, that's what you know, we are that bitch. It's all about that. We, you know, it's like, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will feel no evil because I'm the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. It's that. Do you define yourself as the kind of person who can do these things? Map times action times gratitude times intention times character. Conviction. Confidence equals luck. We had no zeros. If each of those categories, we had at least a one. And I, I tried to get my level up so that I was as close to 7 or 8 as possible so that she'd know that even if she, you know, that it's okay for her to take the time to grieve, because I am watching the front door. I stand at the mouth of the cave. You stay in the cave and cry if you need to. I'm keeping my eyes out for the wolves. Daddy is home. It's totally okay. We're going to do this. And the next day, we got our manager calling us. Tanana Reeve was in the airport in Houston, and he did a conference call with the three of us, letting us know that the way the contract was set up and the way the business works in Hollywood, it wasn't that bad a situation at all. They had an emergency session with our agents, and he communicated to us. Because a manager, in some ways, is like a professional friend. You know, he cares about you. He cares about your goals, your hopes, your dreams. It's not. He's not just looking at this contract or this job, but the scope of your career and your emotions. It's his job to care about us. So it was great. His conversation was great. He actually was coughing. He had the flu or something like this. But he's on the phone to us just like he would with a friend or family to let them know that it's okay. And what he let us know was that there were ways in which this situation was going to work to our advantage, that we're okay. We need to have faith. We need to trust the process. And Hollywood is a game of relationships. It's not about companies. It's about the people you're working with at those companies. And jobs change all the time. And we had an excellent. And have an excellent relationship with a gentleman named Quan who sees us, who sees his project, who believes in this project. He got the rug pulled out from underneath us. He needs. He's going to find another job someplace else. But he remembers us, and he loves working with us, and we love working with him. Which means that if we find another home for this project, we can bring him on board as our producer. And now instead of us working for him, he's working for us. And now all of that brilliance that he has, and this is a good man, a brilliant man who saw the heart of Tenananaria's project. Now we get to be closer together. We've been through the wars together. There are ways in which, if we have faith, if we do our part, life is just what it is. Things are going to work out. But the most important thing at the base of it, Tanari looked at me and she said, as long as we're okay, I'm okay. And I said, we're more Than okay. I adore you. You know, if our son is okay, he's more than okay. He is starting to hit his stride. Yeah, there's going to be problems. He's hitting a completely different level. He's 20 years old now. He's out of his teen years now. The game is really beginning on a different level. But what I've told him, I love you, I believe in you. You could do this, and I will be with you every step of the way, and you will have a safety net with us as long as I'm alive, period. He needs to know that he has all the time. He needs to find his brilliance, to find his genius, his way of employing the magic formula or whatever version of that he's going to use. Because we handled our stuff. The universe said yes, because we were ready. If the universe said we were going to be okay, universe say no. We're going to bear our teeth and fight this. This is what we're talking about. I'm afraid. I've been afraid for months with the book project because I was writing it in such a way that there was no part of it that was ever completely polished. It was all lumpy and primeval. So I was primeval soup of a story. And I had to kind of trust the evolutionary process. I had to trust my unconscious mind. That back behind you, you'll see Steve Martin's comment. Let me get out of the way. The conscious mind and the editor and the subconscious mind is the writer. The subconscious mind. I talk about it like, you know, it's the child part of me. The adult part of me is the conscious mind. It was the child who had to play. So the adult is looking at the demands of time and energy and A Runaway Train called, you know, the biggest. One of the biggest. One of the. One of the largest. Not genres, but franchises in the world. In terms of Star wars, the only thing that's bigger is the mcu, which is having its own problems right now. To be able to do something that touches my heart and therefore engages my mind and therefore does the job in terms of career and also fulfills what the franchise needs for me and also makes the fans happy. Those are a lot of different gravitational wells I have to navigate. And the only thing that I could do was to protect the kid part of me who was writing as fast as he can. That kid part of me was dreaming as fast as he could, and the adult had to just be willing to protect it. That's not terribly dissimilar from what a producer does the producer protects the creative people from the company that has primarily a financial interest in what's going on, whereas the creative people are coming from their hearts. So it's that battle between heart and head and body that all of us have to do. Every one of the movies or television shows that get to the screen somehow navigated all that territory. And in the midst of it, you have human beings struggling to tell an honest story. You have executives protecting their jobs. But why do they choose the entertainment industry? You know, I kind of think that the executives, they wanted to make movies, they could have done something else, they could work in it. You know, they. If they're just interested in money, you know, go be an investment banker or something. You know, I think that they wanted to make money making movies. So I start with the belief that on some level they are my allies, they're not my enemies. Building family, finding role models and dealing with continuous fear. If you take a look at what Tananarive did and let me. She wrote some things. I wrote some things down about this. She was going through negative thinking and grief. Monday, there was one scenario, and then it changed. So she used breathing and she's going to use yoga. So she's using a physical interruption of the negative spiral of fear. You use gratitude. And what she was grateful for, what the script meant to us, the health of our relationship, the health of our son. Gratitude is an antidote for fear. She focused on Jason being about to go to college. Huge threshold. She talked to her friends, Luchina Fisher, one of her dearest friends, filmmaker, and talked to role models in our manager and so forth, so on. So sharing the stress between multiple people, as well as getting the perspective of people, understand this particular moment in our lives and careers. She let herself first feel the grief, that fear of, how long can I keep doing this? How many more times can we be disappointed? But I was so proud of her because the answer she came up with was, as long as it takes. In other words, right back to that. We are that bitch. We can do this. We will eat this. This is what we were made for. We are standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. We are the hope and the dream of the slave. You got to kill me to stop me. Whatever beliefs you use that allow you to contextualize this moment of pain, you use them and you start understanding what internal language our emotions are created by, by what we focus on, how we use our bodies, how literally how we breathe, facial expressions, things like this, and the language that we use, the words that we use. To represent the experience. Our podcasts, www.lifewritingpodcast.com are filled every week with people who are on this path. Many of them are more successful than us. Some of them are about our level of success. Some of them are just starting out but doing really, really well. And they all, without exception, talk about what it feels like to get knocked down. All of them. When you look at successful people, it isn't that they don't get knocked down. It's that they keep getting up, and they get up having learned something new. So we had the map for how to do this. All we had to do was to begin the reintegrative process. And as far as I'm concerned, the reintegrative process begins most powerfully with breathing or shifting your focus and changing your language. So, boy, just trying to give you a sense of where we are and what we're doing. And now what I would love to do. Tom had his hand up a while back. If he wanted to raise his hand again out. Be delighted to talk with him. Tom.

Well, just actually, Tananari pretty well covered what was going to be my question, which was given how much? Which was still given how much you have both of you on your plates, professionally and personally, and given that heavy, heavy hit that you took, what did you do to stay in motion? And she answered that, and you answered that. It's just do the next thing.

It's like getting into a boxing rig. Yeah, you better expect to get hit. Yeah, you expect to get hit. It's gonna happen. You prepare yourself for it the best you can. And when it happens, there's a flash of fear. You feel sick. Whatever it is that happens, the more times you go through it, the more you recognize this is just a part of the process. This is just what I set myself up for. When I said I wanted to be a writer, I was asking for the writer's life. I wasn't asking for a shelf full of books. The shelf full of books is a byproduct of living the writer's life. And. And fear is a part of that. And heartbreak is a part of love. And injuring yourself from time to time is a part of fitness and sports. If you make. If you get realistic about this, Tom, then you know it's coming. The hero's journey says, you know that you meet you, you encounter evil, and you are defeated. In this particular case, you encounter the vagaries of chance in Hollywood, where it's a revolving door or a game of musical chairs and, you know, projects turn into orphans. All the time if we're not ready for it. Stay out of the game if you don't want to get hit, stay out of the ring if you don't want tears, just harden your heart and never love. Once you understand that, then the question is, how can I do this and have fun in the process? How can I get move away from pain towards joy and move to Service? Okay, if that's the progression, then what we had this week was an opportunity, was a chance to get knocked off balance. Fear, finding our joy in our son, in each other, in potentials, in our allies. And now service is explicitly sharing the experience of this week with you guys. So we have all these motivations to keep going, whether they're personal or they're financial or they're physical or those of service to the community. Finding how to keep going even if you get knocked down, it's in how you get back up. And the magic formula, like I said, is set up so that a disproportionate number of times in a way that is really weird to talk about, except that I live in California, so it's, you know, California woo is nothing special to me. If you set yourself up so that you don't need luck, that's when the luck happens that you take a look at it and say, okay, well, what have I got around me? How am I going to do this? I am absolutely going to survive this no matter what. We're going to be fine. And you take those steps. That is when the universe says, oh, okay, I'll go screw with somebody else. Because you guys, you know, you guys have it together. I don't have any place to insert my fork of fear because it's not because we don't fear, it's because we're not afraid of our fear. The fear is just there. Here it is. Fear is here again. And I remember somebody saying that to me a long time ago and I did not understand what they meant by it, but now I do. And hopefully you guys will look back over your lives and find, you know, when you look for the things that are on the fear spectrum, stress, grief, guilt, anger, all those things are on the fear spectrum. You can see how fear connects to all of them. And if you will gain clarity about what you're afraid of. Am I afraid of something that affects my body? In this particular case, yeah. Survival. Stuff connected here. How about our heart? Yeah. How about our minds? Career path? Yeah, absolutely. That fear hits on all levels when you've got put a tremendous amount of yourself into it and you're worried I'm getting, am I getting too old for this? You know, all that stuff. Fear. Okay, so I wrote a like a five part way of looking at this and it's, it might be useful help. So the first thing to do is to identify the source of the fear. Is it in your body? Is it in your emotions? Is it your mind, you know, your relationships? Is it in your mind, your career? Is it about yourself? Is it about others? Is it survival? Is it status? Is it loss of love? What is it? The second thing you do is gain clarity about your fear. So identifying the source, gaining the clarity on it. So for instance, in terms of my martial arts training, I was told to visualize a glass tube filled with water and there's glitter suspended in the water. And you just watch the glass tube until the glitter settles to the bottom. It took me six weeks approximately to go through this process dealing with my fear of sparring in the martial arts before I saw that the fear, that the problem was not the fear. The problem was that I thought the fear meant something. The problem was that I thought the fear meant that I couldn't or I shouldn't or I mustn't, or that I was weak or that I was a coward. It didn't mean any of those things, just meant I was afraid. And I lacked the wisdom to understand that fear was natural and normal. The next step is to find a way to turn fear into action. Emotion is a message to take an action. You generally feel the negative emotion when you're not taking an action. When you are in action, you generally don't feel the emotion. So to a degree, you can actually measure how efficient and effective you are by how much fear you feel. If you feel a lot of fear, that generally means you're not taking the action, you're about to take the action, or you're afraid to take the action. But when you're taking the action, that fear just turns into energy. So you could actually say, I'm feeling a lot of fear. I must not be taking unnecessary action. What is the necessary action I could take? Just what the 1% I could take. The magic formula would be. Step four, look at the situation from the framework of the magic formula. Do you have a map or model of how to deal with this problem once you've identified it? Are you taking action? Are you creating and finding positive emotions? Gratitude, which is the antidote for fear. Do you clarify your intentions? Do you got a solid goal? You know what it is that you're trying to accomplish? And what is the identity, the. The path, the sea with its confidence, its courage, its character? You have to be the person who can do the thing and have fun in the process within your ethics and standards. And the fifth step is you put your fear behind you, your love in front of you, and run like hell. You don't have to remove fear from your life. You have to have the fear in its correct position in your life. Those five steps are just kind of what I came up with today. But now I'd really like to just kind of open this and allow people to ask any comments, questions, requests, any wins for the last week, any clarity that you're gaining, whatever. And by the way, Tom, thank you very much. So who has comments, questions, requests, anything like that story to share with us? Orion raised her hand. Okay, unmute.

Yeah, there it is.

There you go.

I've been trying to do the right one sentence every day. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But I've been telling my. My mind when I go to bed that I'm going to do that in the morning. And sometimes it anticipates morning. But this week it kicked into motion. And I've written two short stories so far this week.

Two short stories so far this week?

Yes.

You're a beast. Applaud, Orion. This is great. This is fantastic. I love hearing this.

The next object is to actually edit them and send them off to someone else.

Remember, you only have to do one per month. Now if you, if you wrote eight stories and you got one of them into the mail, that's a total win, a huge win, a stupendous win. Okay? And just, I mean, you should dance. And it's really, you know, first of all, you need just celebrate the victory of finishing two stories. That is, that is the path. That's the path of mastery. You're taking the actions. Congratulations, Orion.

Thank you very much. And thank you for the information on fear. Because this week I got bad health news and I'm still processing it and getting to where I can breathe outside of it.

Okay. And I hope that you have a resource circle of doctors and support friends during this time. And we can be part of your resource circle as friends. And I hope that you have all the resources that you're going to need to navigate this territory with integrity and power.

Thank you. And hearing what you're saying about fear stabilized a lot of my problem.

I'm glad.

Clearer and proceed forward without.

Yikes. Absolutely. And I am honored that you trust us to be here and to share that with us and people you know in chat. Make sure to take care of Orion in chat. I can trust you about that. You guys have been good. So thank you very much, dear.

Thank you.

Dr. Joan Cartwright. I don't remember seeing you here before. I would love to say hi to you.

Hi.

Hello.

I've been here before.

Oh, okay. Great.

Tanana Reeve was in Florida when I lived there and she wrote a book that I read and it impressed me. A lot of books don't impress me, particularly fiction. And I went to meet her and I was supposed to come and see you in Atlanta, but I forgot. So the next time. But I really appreciate everything that you just delineated about fear because there's only love or fear. And we are like you say, we're energy.

Forces.

So if something happens that puts us in a frame of mind of danger, the uric acid rises in our bodies just like slaughtered animals. And fear is what is result of that. So breathing. Is what brings us back to the center. And you know, you look like my brother. You look like my uncle, my brother, my granddaddy. You look like all of these people.

I am all those people, sweetheart.

And I probably look like people in your.

Absolutely.

You look like my sister, as we all do. So I appreciate the honor of knowing Tananarive do of meeting you and all these wonderful creators here because we are the creators and there are other people who are sitting around in fear and thinking about how they're going to hurt somebody. We are the ones that are here to bring that light into the world. The fear of being hurt is real. It's a real thing. And we want to swipe past it.

Is there any way we can be of service to you today, dear?

Oh, you are. That's what I'm saying. I'm able to fantastic myself because of exactly what you just said. The five steps of I can feel that you.

You serve the world. Service to the world is very important to you. What, what is your doctorate in? What. What do you do?

I'm a dba Doctor of Business Administration Marketing. So I teach graphic design and print layout to students. I'm the publisher of Music Woman magazine and Music man magazine that you can all go to. And hey, if you have a story about a living, breathing musician that you know touched your heart, we're collecting those stories for the 2024.

Well, make sure to share your contact information in chat.

I'll do that.

And so people can do that. And you are so welcome here. It's so, so wonderful to share space with you, dear.

Thank you.

Okay, great. All right, let's take a look. This is. God, I love this. I'm sure you can all tell just how much I absolutely love doing this, you know? So we're looking for another volunteer to talk in the whole. The thing I like to say is volunteer, or you will be voluntold. Matthew Mercier. I have not seen you for a while, if ever. Sure.

Yeah. Hi. How are you?

Hi there.

Yeah, you haven't seen me at all. This is my first time here.

Great.

Oh, well, thank you. I. I didn't want to talk about myself, so.

But.

But I just.

Really. Just you could talk about, you know, the whole thing. Emphasis here is commit to improving 1% per week. Just 1% per week, you know? And so in what arena of your life would you like to make? You know, you could be in all three, but. But make sure that you have at least a toehold on where you want to go. You look like Michael Douglas, but anyway. Yes, Michael Douglas. A young Michael Douglas.

Young Michael. That's very tough. I'm doing pretty well at the moment. I am trying to deal with the ancestral anger, but. But overall, though, I really appreciate what you had to say about fear getting knocked down constantly, because I've been. I've just turned 49, but I. And I've been getting. I'm a writer. I write horror. So that's why I've been getting fantastic. And so I just. I'm 49, and I was told that after I turned 40, that I should give up the dream of getting published. I know, right?

Most writers don't even get published until they're in their 30s.

I know, I know. So I have been a beneficiary of the current boom in the indie horror world. And so I had a novel accepted for publication last year. It's coming out. So hopefully I'll meet you all at Stoker Con next year.

There you go. But I really.

This week, I am. Yeah, I'm dealing with the.

You said ancestral anger. Now, from our perspective, anger is a mask over fear. What are you afraid of?

Becoming my father.

Okay. Okay. So don't try to not become your father. Just be who you are. And you will find that there will be some aspects of his personality, hopefully the positive ones that come through and the negative ones you'll leave in the dust. In order to do that, you need to believe that within you is something that is beautiful and proud, precious. And that means you might need to forgive yourself for mistakes you made in the past, and you might have to forgive him for doing the best he could, but not, not. Not been able to be good at it. Whatever. Pain, fear, horror. All he ever wanted in life, all any of us ever want, is to be loved. And loving to the degree that he missed that mark. My God, his life was a nightmare. He knew he wasn't who he needed to be. And if he damaged his son, he had to be living. He has to be living in his own private hell.

No, he. He. That it may. I made him sound worse than he is. He's not at all that kind of man. He actually unloaded. He. He. He actually broke the cycle of abuse in his own family.

Great.

Never lay a hand on me. So. But there are. But there are. I don't know, there's ancestral ghosts. There's something in the.

Yes. You know, we're all standing. We're all dealing with that.

So there's a lot of that. And I see it in myself and I see it in.

Do you write some of this stuff into your fiction? Oh, yeah.

Yes.

Good. So you have a. So, you know, you're taking action. The emotion is driving your action, which is great, because that's what we need. We need honest writers who are putting their real emotions into their work. That's what changes. That's what. That's what creates greatness. Yeah.

And I've never felt more empathy for him than I do now because.

Fantastic.

Because I can see the pain of his childhood inside.

That's right. He was dealing with his own fear. And his father and mother were dealing with theirs, and theirs were dealing with theirs, and on and on and on and on.

Yeah.

And each of us can only make so much progress in one generation. But you get to be the end result of all the positive actions that were taken. You know, nature, life is hard, brutally hard. And the only thing that makes it worthwhile is love. So to the degree that you can love yourself so deeply, more deeply than you ever have, and give that little boy inside you who had all those dreams, the safe space he needs to create his stories. So you, as his father, create the safe space for him. You take care of the business negotiations and working another job or whatever it is that you have to do to create the safe space for your kid to tell his stories and share his heart. You do that, and you will have the engine that you need. These principles we talk about here apply to any aspect of life, but they really work for artists, and they really, really work for. For writers, and they really, really, really work for genre writers. You know, so we. You're our people. You know, you're closer to the people that we can. We can help directly and don't get the wrong idea, but this is the point at which we mentioned, by the way, we'll be applying all of these things specifically to the craft of writing in our upcoming Life Writing. Life writing seminar, basically. Screenwriting webinar.com just go to www.screenwritingwebinar.com. now back to our.

That was good.

That was good. Yeah. Well, you know, it's the, the beautiful thing I have the same fear of, you know that I used to have the same fear of asking for money in terms of things like that. And you know that we've talked about this a lot because one of the things that we've done with this workshop is that because we attract a particular type of person, we actually are able to trust. You guys. If you can't afford the full price, we'll let you in for a donation because people have been honorable with us and most people pay the full price, but we can usually put in one donation. And I'm talking by donation, I mean, whatever you can afford. Just get in touch with us. Go to www.screenwritingwebinar.com the information how to get in touch with us to be able to pay just what you can afford is right there. And we'll take anything because what we want is a big group of people who are really happy to be there and having a wonderful time. And it's all about, we're on this path. We love being on this path. We love others who are on this path. It's. It's a lonely. It's a lonely journey. And everybody like you who will share your insecurities as well as your victories with us makes the journey a little less lonely. And so welcome, brother.

Thank you.

You're welcome. You take care and see you again.

Someday I'll be around. Yeah.

Fantastic. Otis Johnson.

Hey, man, what's happening?

It's. It's a good life. Where is, where's Otis Johnson?

I'm down here. I'm down here with my lovely wife again. Oh, yeah. Since last week, we got our first rejection slip.

Great.

And it's kind of awesome. I just have a feeling I'm just going to keep, you know, attacking. Attacking until someone, until someone bites. And I already wrote a second story and we're about to put that in the mail. So, like, I got one down in a week.

Yeah. So here's just. First of all, everybody congratulate Otis. Just fantastic. Thank you.

Everybody, thank you.

And this is, this is critical. This is not, this is not jive. When you have a success, celebrate. Every time you have a success, celebrate. I mean, just strut, man, walk through the wall, hug that beautiful wife of yours who adores you. Just, you know, feel grateful for life as it is and figure that this process, this thing you just did with the story, you're going to do it at least 100 times before you even ask the question of whether or not you can get, you can do this time. So that's one. Yeah, one. So, you know, it's just like. And make sure you read 10 stories for everyone that you send out. You know, make sure that you're following that pattern. Not a single person who has ever followed that pattern has gotten past Dory 26 before they sold. Not one.

Right.

So I don't think you're going to be any different.

I noticed something too, by the way, is after getting these first two stories out of the way is those were the low hanging fruit and I'm realizing I'm having to dig. And I guess that's what you guys do because, yeah, like, those were the easy stories and up ahead are like a little more difficult. And you know, I embrace it, but that's okay.

Well, let's take a look at that a little bit. You know, creativity is thinning the wall between your conscious and unconscious mind. Everybody goes quietly insane every night. Every night we have dreams. If we could tap directly into that, you'd have a hundred ideas every day. Okay. So it's a matter of, you know, so you could keep a dream diary.

Yeah.

You could read stories and say, well, I could. I would have started that story differently or I would have ended that story differently. And you've automatically got different stories there. Right. The point is to trust your creativity. Trust that you are a churning urn of burning funk, that you have more ideas than you could ever use. It's just so you just look at these ideas and think. So the way I put it is, in one sense is this is the circle of the ideas that I'd like to write. This is the circle of the ideas I think somebody would buy. Where those two circles overlap, that's where I write. I write in that little space right between the stuff I would like to write and the stuff I think other people would want to read. Now if I. When I'm getting ready to pitch on a television show, what I would do is I would. I would brainstorm hundreds of ideas. Literally. I mean, just, just in most of Them are garbage. Then I would sort through them to find the ones kind of. Well, they kind of sort of work. Then I sort those again for the ones that sound like they would be the most fun to work. Then the ones that I have not seen before that look like, you know, they'd work for that particular show. And then the ones I could write off the shelf, the ones where I wouldn't have to do any research because they're based on things that I already know. So I would go through a series of filters. But that first thing of just vomiting up every idea I could think of, I would fill books with that stuff. Just fill books with them. It's like I will never live long enough to write all the ideas I've had. And neither will you once you stop editing yourself. Just come up with the idea. And your wife's back there saying, I've been telling you. I've been telling you.

This all makes great sense. No, I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, I think she's smart. She's smart enough for the both of you.

She really is.

Yeah. Yeah. I bet you chased her until she caught you. There you go. There's nothing in the world that's better than love. I just, I, you know, I just, I'm crazy about love. So you celebrate. Do something specifically to celebrate. They get right back on the horse and keep going. You do that for me? Yeah. You keep coming here and talking to us about what you do. Tell me a little bit about the story. Just a little bit. A little bit.

Which one? The first one or the one that you sent out? The one I set out. It was fun. It's a little bit crazy because me and the wife here were watching this show called. What was it called? Love Has One.

No, it was called.

Right, yeah, yeah. Well, I think it was called what Love Is One. But it was about Mother God. This like hardcore woo woo. New age cult leader that had like, in the process of like running this cult had actually mummified herself self.

Mummified.

Had.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah. With her own weird treatments.

Yeah, yeah.

And like. So like we just kind of ran off the story with like, well, what if she mummified herself?

What if she mummified herself and was actually gone?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's still conscious and she's in touch with like Lovecraftian elder things, entities. And then you guys seem so nice.

You seem so normal. Where's all this coming from? That's why we're nice.

That's why we're nice. Because we get weird ideas and get them out.

That's right.

No, but the basic concept was like, you know, obviously in the real world she, she was. Excuse my friend, she was, she was full of. Right. Like it was a cult and she was lying and none of this was true. But so our. The concept of the story is. Well, but what if she wasn't lying?

Yeah.

What if she was telling the truth?

Like she was actually.

God.

Yeah. And what if she's. So we have her as this mummy that's like controlling all of these mummy.

That has like telekinesis and they're like.

Taking her around like Weekend at Bernie's or something.

But.

You'Re mad people. I love it. You know, you guys, you know you're going to come to our screenwriting workshop, right? Yes.

Hell yeah.

Great. I can't, I can't wait. I can't wait to see you guys there. This is great. And you're having fun.

But he made a movie and it's a feature film, a full length film. It's really good and you can watch it on Vimeo and you should link it to them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll link my movie to you guys on Vimeo or throw it up on life writing. But like the whole deal is. And why I'm here is I've written a movie once and I've written stories before, but I never got into the process of what you call the machine. And I've always kind of written and then kind of went, well, my work was okay and then backed off of it or whatever and I wanted.

It sounds like your goal is to do movies, is that right?

Say that again.

Is your goal to do movies?

You know what my goal was just to just get it started and live off of creativity. I do music also, I DJ also. But I've done a feature film and it was at one time my goal to do movies and I could get that bug again. That's why I'm going to do the screen.

Right. So you. Yeah. You keep working on the stories. When you've published a few of the stories, I would suggest that you aim at making a short film.

Yeah.

Out of one of the stories that you sold.

Yeah.

Because that tells you if you sold it and got money for it and the check cleared the bank.

Yeah.

It tells you that a professional editor was willing to bet their paycheck on you. Yeah. That's what you're looking for. The. There's a course called Dove Simon's Three Day Film School that basically talks about all the basic Pieces you need to make a movie. And one of the points that he makes is that you, you stair step yourself up. That if you wrote a movie, that's like a 20 minute movie, one act movie, one set. In essence, it's, you know, my Dinner with Andre, you know, it's, it's a one act play that you film on your cell phone or whatever you know is enough. And you can do that for, you know, you, you go to the local film school, you recruit some students, you, you know, you, you, you set it up in some way and you pay them with donuts and bagels, you know, so for $50, you get to make a movie and you do it on your cell phone and you, you rehearse it and you do it one take or you edit it together because you've got the software to do that. But, and then you post it on YouTube or whatever and you, if, if people like it, you use that to raise the $500 that you need to make a more extensive one. And if you do that successfully, that you raise the money to make one for $5,000. And at every step you are learning to market and sell and you're literally learning the business, you know, because if you don't want to pay for it, you know, the first $50, maybe $500, you can do that out of your own pocket. Above that, start being more careful. Because if you don't know how to raise money, if you can't convince some investors to put some money in, you're probably not going to be able to convince an audience to come and see it. So the ability to get a group of dentists or something to pool some money to help you create a movie is one of the ways that you know that you're creating something that people will want to exchange their money for. So you have fun every step of the way. You never put your family at risk. You have fun every step of the way and learn and you grow. And you're selling short stories. So the creative urge is being satisfied by selling the short stories. But there's also the possibility of asking yourself the question, do I have what it takes to make movies and get in that business? You might. You never know, you know, and the fact is that there's, you know that it's a major victory to make a movie and just make your money back, right? And there are lots of ways to monetize that. So your goal is to have fun while simultaneously expressing yourself, while simultaneously learning the business enough to figure out, I wonder whether or not I could actually support myself doing this. And I think we said right last week to either you or somebody else. Choose one bill, just one bill, okay? And your goal is to make enough money to pay that one bill. You do that and I'm telling you it feels great. It feels fantastic. Just, just your water bill I made this month on my selling my storage to pay my water bill. You do that and that is a major victory. Major victory. The, you know, and I believe that the average person who is willing to focus everything they have can get that far. I think the average person can get far enough to pay one bill with what they, you know, I think that if you're willing to put extraordinary effort, the average person can make a living doing it. But you know, not, not a huge living, but, but, but a decent living can actually pay your bills and so forth. Because money making money in almost anything is, Is a matter of marketing. It's understanding. It's understanding how to get is marketing and sales. Who is my product for? How do I convince them to give me money for it? So that is within your capacity. The question of getting into Hollywood or getting on the bestseller list. Now you're getting into territory where it's useful to have some luck. Yeah. And it's useful to. To have. The only innate talent that I really believe in is the capacity to focus on something over time monomaniacally and to choose it properly. I think that most of what we call talent is that if you take a look at what you know, Fred Astaire, you know, often considered to be greatest dancer in the 20th century. If you look at any biography of Fred Astaire and they will talk about his absolutely fanatical practice. You listen to, you know, Michael Jackson, you know, just so talented when he was with the Jackson 5. They came to CBS Television while I was working there. And while the rest of his brothers were ripping and running around CBS Television, 7800 Beverly Blvd. In Hollywood. Though the rest of his brothers were running around the studios. Michael was sitting quietly thinking. I ran into him in the cafeteria sitting by himself thinking while the rest of his brothers were off having fun. One of those brothers is now, you know, was working in a supermarket. Last time I heard you listen to talking about the Supremes, Diana Ross and Supremes. The other girls were out running around while Diana Ross was perfecting her makeup. And they will talk about that extract from that that you need to be doing things that are so close to your heart, that are so important to you, that while remaining in balance with your Physical health and the integrity of your relationship. You can put everything you have into it safely. How much of yourself can you put in there? And if you do that, you will publish. You will become a good writer. How good, nobody can promise you. But this is something that you absolutely can do, Otis. And I'll tell you something, Your wife would be so proud of you if you get published and she can show people this magazine. My husband wrote this. Trust me, date night is going to be special, If you know what I mean. And I think you do. All right. Well, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Anything else you wanted to say or we can move on?

I guess we can move on.

Okay, great. So who's next? Who's next? Who's there? Who has Vicki Solomon. Hello, Vicki.

Hello.

How are you? I have been doing a good job.

Of.

Exercising while singing. Okay. You suggested this.

Okay.

I did have to modify it.

I'm doing vocal warm ups while I am doing a multi joint mobility routine.

That sounds great. Yeah. Do a vocal warm up for us. Do a little bit of a vocal warm up for us. Okay, great.

Cheeks, five note scale.

Fantastic. Is there anything we can do for you today?

No.

Okay. Well, thanks for being here. It's always wonderful to see you. Great. All right. So, Heidi Nichols. Hello. You got your AI up there. You want to unmute yourself?

Hi.

I'm sorry. That unmuting thing gets me every time.

Hi. Hi. I love your cartoon.

Thank you. It's actually a fairly good representation, I think, as avatars go. So I'm pretty happy with it.

Fantastic.

I have trouble with my phone because I do zoom over the phone freezing up when I try and give it too much video input. So having this works really well for me.

I love it. I love it. Is there anything we can do for you today?

Actually, I kind of have a praise report. Thank you. I. I had a really hard time going to my family in December and you know about this. Everybody else doesn't know about this. My niece Kelly has Down syndrome and has survived a lot of things in her life. Several open heart surgeries, having rickets, having leukemia. And she's just a little fighter. She's an amazing kid. And I would have to call her the heart of our family. You can't be around her without smiling and feeling the joy that she exudes. She's been really sick and she got RSV at a visit to California Adventure last February. She's been in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation centers and just struggling to breathe. And she came down with double lower Lobe pneumonia and was in ICU mid December. I ended up having to go home for what would have been a normal Christmas trip about a week early because I wanted to make sure that I could see her. As I said, she was in ICU and I mean critical at the time that I got the news. And I got to Fresno through a lot of like mishig that happened, which happens sometimes when you're traveling in the holiday season. And I got to finally see her, I was so overjoyed to see her. And she had actually gotten released from the hospital and put back into a rehabilitation center where they monitor her 24 7. But she can have more visitors and it means that she's healing. What I didn't expect was the toll that had been taken on my family. My brother and sister in law were barely scraping by. And we talked about this, you and I, that the worst thing was that they had let fear engulf them. Not only fear of losing her, but fear of everything else that, you know, their income had been affected. My sister in law lost her job as a result of this. They were barely, barely stinging by. And I stepped in and did what I could. I also don't have a very high income and I was just overwhelmed because you could visibly see fear eating away. And we talked that fear is the enemy of solutions because you can't find the solutions until you get past that blockade fear puts up. But what I did see from my brother and sister in law was their overwhelming love both for their daughter and that driving to the care center to see her. They're holding hands in the car, so that's lovely. I, I asked for help for them, which you generously gave and I asked for prayers for them from a lot of people. Also generously given. And while I was there, I was able to reach out to some people in the community that provides services to see about getting them. They've gotten all this care for Kelly, but they haven't gotten counseling for them or any kind of therapy or any kind of way to express everything they're going through. And so that's now happening. And so my biggest thing to share today is thank you. Thank you all for being a part of this, a part of the chain reaction. And thank you for understanding that we can't let fear win. We need to do everything we can to combat it.

Amen. And I'm unpinning you so that I can see these people. Did you hear the sincerity in her voice? Do you understand that we as individuals can make a difference in the lives of people who sometimes reach the end of their resources and feel like nobody cares. There is no support. You can't always help with resources, but you can always help with love. You can always help with compassion. Hugs, smiles, being there. Now I just would like to give a hand to everybody here who offered support in any way, shape or form to Heidi's family and to you, Heidi. Respect to you for caring and loving for your family. It was an honor to be of any assistance whatsoever to you and the people that you love.

I appreciate it. And the biggest thing that I, I've been with you for a while from one on one and life writing and, and stuff. And I have learned a lot. Learning to trust other people, learning to trust. To say I need help. It's really hard. Some of us are built with like brick wall inside of us that we have to be independent and well, that's.

Because when we reached out, we got slapped back or disappointed.

Yeah.

But it's worth it. And, and, and gratitude is a part of the cycle of this. So I really do mean it when I say thanks everybody.

You're very welcome. Very, very welcome. Zinnia. I would love to hear just a little bit from you, dear.

Hi all. Hi everyone.

Hi.

Thank you. Steve, I did write to you. Did you see what I wrote for you to speak on.

Hold on, let me take a look, let me take a look. I, I, I said, can you just tell me what it was? Yeah, yeah.

I was interested in hearing you speak on fear of success to break it down.

Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, look, there are lots of different reasons we can be afraid of success. But the one thing I can tell you is that when you're afraid of success, that means that the change that you're looking for does not match your self image. That there is a gap between the way you see yourself and the way you see your life and what it is you're trying to achieve. And that gap represents, you know, uncertainty, you know, you feel like imposter syndrome. It could be for you and your identity. It could also be that you will change your social groups. That if you're not surrounded by people who are successful, if you, if you surround yourself, if you have a weight problem, the chances are very good that other people in your circle have weight issues too because they're going to have similar values, doing similar activities, eating similar things and a similar balance of calories. In, out, you start aiming at losing weight and you can actually lose your friends. Okay. If you associate with people who are not in relationships, a Bunch of singles and suddenly you fall in love. It can get very awkward hanging out with the people that you used to hang out with. If you grew up in poverty and you start making money, why do you think so many rappers will bring their homeboys with them? You know, because, so that they, they had somebody who knew them when. Because you, you want to bring. We need tribe. So those are the two, those are two things. There are others. What if feeling that being a success makes you a target? My mother told me point blank, stephen, if you show white people how smart you are, they will kill you. My mother told me me that. And if you want to know why, I had a spotty college education right there. But simultaneously I felt that if I did not succeed massively, I would also be killed. So I was caught. If you want to know why somebody is open hearted as I am, spent so many years in the martial arts, the answer is very simple. Massive amounts of fear about either succeeding or failing. So I was roadkill. Okay, so you want to look at the question, what is it you're afraid of about success? Is it you don't believe you deserve it, you don't believe you can have it? If other people start treating you differently, you'll become a target. You know, some people don't want to make money because they're afraid people will try to will take the money from them. Some people don't are afraid to fall in love because they're afraid their heart will be broken. They're afraid to lose. I had one woman tell me that she was afraid that if she lost weight she'd start cheating on her husband so she had to keep the weight on. So look at the thing that you're afraid of. Look for it, gain clarity on what is it exactly? What's the worst case scenario if you succeed at this, what is it going to cost you? Write this stuff out. You don't have to show this to anybody. Be as crystal clear as possible. Talk to the child part of you, the adult part of yourself and the elder part of you. Looking back over your life, there really can be genuinely threatening things about changing your life. So that's your first step, is to identify what's actually happening here. What are you actually afraid of? Because once you determine what it is, it's not that you mock it, it's not that you say, well, that's stupid. No, no, no, no, no. There really are things that will threaten your survival. And one of them is losing tribe and one of them is losing your ego identity. That literally a Major success at something that feels like it's out of sync with your definition of self will kill your ego identity. It will kill your old ego self. So something as joyful as getting a promotion or getting married or taking a vacation that you've never taken before will often create fear because it doesn't feel like it's you. So who would you need to be in order to embrace this challenge? Have the success and have fun in the process? Make sure to add, how can I do this? And have fun in the process? Because otherwise maybe you'll do it and you'll suffer. Oh, I got that raise, but, man, it just broke me. I did this, but it was just horrible. No, be sure that you're having fun. You deserve to have fun. That when you ask your brain to come up with a way to help you do the thing and have fun, you are asking a different question, which then will provoke different answers. So your task is to show the world to, first of all, to move away from pain, embrace joy, and then to show the world that you can accelerate, you can evolve and be joyful and love people and be an avatar of light and love and possibility. Do that and you win every day. No matter what's happening outside you, when you are an avatar of love and light, you win. You can control that part of your life, and you also inspire other people. You also are more likely to take continuous action, which, if you're taking the right actions, will give you the best chance of achieving your goal anyway. So what we're up to here is don't fight a battle you can't win. Don't set out after a goal unless every day of moving towards that goal is a victory. Be sure that you're doing things that are in alignment with your heart, in alignment with your soul, in alignment with your community, so that you are feeling that your victory is a victory for the little girl that you were, for the elder you will be, and for your ancestors and your descendants. When you take actions that are that aligned, I believe that nature gets behind you and the wind will fill your sails.

Thank you.

You're very welcome. Fantastic. This is great. All right, so anybody else before we start wrapping up, because I got to get to work, I got to do 50 page. Basically, I. I've got my 400 page manuscript, the mace Windu novel. So today all I have to do is to do 50 pages. Listen to 50 pages. I'm going to have use Speechify and use the Snoop Dogg voice and have him reading the first 50 pages to me. While I go through. And then I will input those corrections into the computer. And if I need to stop after that, I can. Except that I won't. I mean, hopefully it'll take me about an hour to do 50 pages and about an hour to input, and then I'll do it again. So I will have gone through 100 pages today. We'll see. But it's going to be in those 50 page increments. And as long as I do that, I'm on the path and I know I'll get there. So to wrap all this up, when you're feeling stress, anger, anything like this, look for the fear that's underneath it. Get clarity on what that fear is. The process we talked about, gain clarity. Identify the source of the fear. Is it in your body? Is it about body things survival, emotional things, relationships, mind things, career? Get clarity, real clarity on what the fear is. Turn that fear into power by finding actions that you can. Use the fear to motivate you. Use the fear to motivate actions. You will know if you're doing this right, because if you've chosen the right thing and you get into it, you will not feel fear while you're doing it. If you're still feeling fear, you're not taking the action. If you're taking the action, you're not feeling the fear. Use the magic formula. Look at yourself. Be sure you don't have a zero in any of the categories. You have a map or model. You're taking action. You're feeling gratitude. You have a clear intention and you believe in yourself. You believe this is what you can and should do. And the last step is put your fear behind you, your love in front of you, and run like hell. Everybody, unmute yourselves and say goodbye and wish each other a good night. Wish me luck.

Everybody. Hope you.

All right, everyone.

Have a good week. Have a wonderful week.

Love to see all of you at the Screenwriting Webinar. I'll. I will write it into the thing. Like I said, we will. If. If money is a problem, we take any donation. What we just. What we want is a good group of people who are there to support each other and learn. So. Www.screenwriting webinar.com and it's February 17th. We're going to have a party. Take care, everybody, and I'll see you later. Team Within Me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Take care.