How I beat my year-long writer's block
Stephen Barnes describes a year-long creative block and how he broke it using meditation and reconnecting with his inner child. He shares rejected scripts, a framework for understanding creativity, and techniques like daily brief meditations and tolerating failure.
Chapters
Hello, this is Steve here. We're gonna be getting going in just five minutes, so I just thought I'd zoom in first. We're gonna have fun, and I'm looking forward to talking with you guys. Oh, thank you for the love. Thank you for the hearts. I really enjoy that. I love you guys, too. And this is fun. I'm actually going to be talking about something that's pretty close to my heart today. I mean, I always try to tell the truth, but I think that you guys are going to really like what I'm doing today, so. Hey, Steve. Hey, Karen. How are you? Can everybody hear me? If you can hear me, say, yes, you can hear me. Just want to be sure that the sound is good and everything is good. And we'll be getting going in just four minutes and nine seconds. And. And there's a cat scratching in the background. Come on. Come on, jigger, get out of here. Oh, man. So much going on. Yes. Yes. Okay, great. I'm just. I love it. This is good. Oh. Oh. Karen's celebrating my birthday by learning something. Happy birthday, Karen Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday, dear Karen Happy birthday to you Karen is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I love her dearly. They're just. Yeah, she's given me a lot of love, a lot of support, and a great surprise birthday party one year where Norman Spinrad showed up, walked out of a closet. That was wonderful. Oh, man, I love knowing. Back at you, sweetheart. All right, that's great. Give Chris a big hug for me. And there's Carol, and there's Daniel Brynn and Edward Greaves, all sorts of fun people. So, yeah, we'll be getting started. Just a minute. But just wanted you to know that we're going to be talking about the worst writer's block I ever had, why it happened, and how I got through it. So if you think that there are people out there who would be. Could use this. Could use a conversation about writer's block, what causes it, the cost, and getting through it. Writer's block or creative block of any kind, then please make sure to share this. It's the only way that I know that these messages are reaching people. I take a look at the number of times it's shared, and that's how I know which messages to go back to. So last week we did one on writing, and people seem to like it. So I'm going. I'm doing it again. You know, just. I love it. So whatever it is that you guys need, that's what I'm going to do, so you let me know. And, oh, Carol Phillips said, we love you. I love you, too, darling. Love you, too. And I'm so happy to be able to communicate with my fam. My people. So we'll be getting going in just a couple minutes. I'm sitting here drinking some chocolate Soylent. Have my water. I figured out a way to get PowerPoint slides onto the computer. I've got my laptop sitting next to my desktop, and I've got the PowerPoint going on my desktop using Google Slides. And, you know, it's not perfect, but enables me to talk to you guys without any time lag, which means I can actually see your questions and stuff like that, and I'll be able to, you know, to answer them and hopefully deal with them. Okay, good. All right, how do we share this? There should be a share button at the top of the screen. Anybody can teach her, can tell her how to share, can tell Karen how to share it to their page. You should be able to click that, share it to your friends or share it to your page. And there's more people giving me thumbs up. Yeah, thumbs up. I wish I could give you a thumbs up back, but I can say that I love you. I've been working hard today. I think we've got the first draft of Jerry Pernell's last novel finished, I'm pretty sure, and Larry's looking at it now, and hopefully that will be going off to our editor, our agent. So listen, 42 seconds. I'm going to rest my voice for just a second, and then we will be getting going. Once again, thank you for joining. This is always fun. It's always fun. Oh, and somebody. Oh, yeah. Sad face because of Jerry's passing. Yeah. But we did a heck of a good book, and I think you guys are going to love it. So it's. It's all good. You know, everybody has to die, but not everybody lived as much as Jerry did. And I loved him dearly. And, yeah, I'm sad, but I'm happy to have been able to be with him as much as I was the last couple of years. And we are. We are live. We're like, so live. We're just, like, so live. I can hardly believe it. We're here with 5 Minute Life Hacks with New York Times bestselling author Stephen Barnes. Who is that? Well, it's me, but, you know, I just wanted to talk, and we're talking about. I spent my whole life studying things that help people perform at a higher level. And I realized that I had one set of these things. Oh, look at all those hearts. Love you right back. You better believe I do. I had a whole set of things that I called the 101 program is 101 life hacks, most of which were very short term interventions. And I published that 10 years ago and gotten back hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments from people, most of them saying, when are you going to do something else like this? When are you going to make this available again? Because it actually was out of circulation for a long time. One of the things I thought I would do is take little slivers out of that overall work and share them with you guys along with the stories that back up so that you know where these things came from. Like last week's is about creative writing, which is, you know, there are three things in my life that I care about. I care about writing and things connected to that. I care about martial arts and things connected to that and I care about my family and friends and that's it. If it doesn't connect with one of those three areas, I don't do it. And this is me. I'm a New York Times best selling writer. I published 32 or so novels, over 3 million words. I hold three black belts and I am married to my soulmate author Tananarive Due, who I just is in Texas right now at World Fantasy Con. She's a guest of honor there. She's a British fantasy award winning novelist. Just pretty. She's absolutely fantastic. I've lectured at ucla, Mensa and the Smithsonian on creativity and self improvement and how these things tie together. So hopefully you guys will feel like I'm offering something to you that is of value and whatever it is I can do to help you, you make sure to let me know if you stay all the way to the end of this. I got a couple things for you. One of the things is I'm going to find. I'm going to tell you how you can get a free copy of my new book, 12 Days. And the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a story I have not told very publicly before about how I got revenge on the producer of the biggest television show in the world who messed with me. So yeah, yeah, I'm not always an angel, but I try to be. I really do. My chief goal in life is to help 1 million people become awake, aware, adult human beings and to add to that in just five minutes a day. So stay to the end I'll tell you how to get a free copy of my book. I'll tell you that story about what I did to the guy who messed with me. And we'll learn some things that you can do in only five minutes that can change your life. So basically our subject today is a five minute life hack attack on the worst writer's block of my life. I mean, just absolutely killed me. And so in order to understand this, we're going to need to go over three things. We're going to need to go over, let's see, what is creativity? The question how do we lose it and how do we recover it? And three, why is it critical to success? So we're going to have a good picture here. Because what I want you to do now is I want you to imagine what your life might be like if you had full access to all of your creativity, all of your emotional aliveness, your ability to come up with just tons of ideas. Remember when you were a kid and you used to best be able to spin stories all day long and then they were always fun and you could entertain your friends like that. If you ever wondered what happened to that, if you ever wanted to be able to tap back into that, give me some likes, show me some love. If you know what it's like to feel that creativity, that aliveness that you had when you were a kid, that somehow it's not there anymore. It's not there in the same way if I'm not the only person in the world who's had that experience, who's had that sense that something went missing somewhere along. Good, thank you. Thank you. Because you're the ones that I'm talking to. You're absolutely the ones I'm talking to. And every week we're going to be talking about things that are connected to this. It's critical. It's critical. And I'm going to show you why. So secret number one, what is creativity? Secret number two, how do we lose it and recover it? And secret number three, why is it crucial to success? So let's go to number one. Secret number one, what is creativity? So it's kind of fun to think about what this thing is because we recognize that, recognize people who are hugely creative and we are attracted to them. And I've always been attracted to them. And through my entire life, anytime I wanted to learn how to do something, what I would do is I would find somebody who was better than me at that thing, and then I would get as close to them as possible. And when I Was growing up. When I was a kid, the person who seemed to be the epitome of creativity, an avatar of creativity, was Harlan Ellison. And there he is. We're talking. And I stalked Harlan, just to be honest with you. If he was giving. I heard him on the radio. I saw him on television shows. I read his books. I read his column in the LA Weekly. And I just thought to myself, I don't know who this guy is, but whatever he is, he is something I want to know more about. This was. I knew I was looking at something special when I would listen to him talk or I would watch him. So if he was giving a talk, I would go to see it. If he was giving a lecture, I would pay to see. And I'd always sit in the front row, and I'd always ask polite questions. And I did this for over a year. And until I noticed that he started wondering, who is this guy sitting in my speeches all the time? Who is this guy coming to all my signings? Who is this guy coming to all my panels? I never gave him crap. I never gave him crap. Well, and then I finally did, and I found out why it's not a good idea to give Carlin Ellison crap. Basically, what happened was, at the loss of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, they were having a raffle, a charity raffle. You could buy an opportunity to sit with Harlan Ellison at Harwell Ellison's table at the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film Awards. Okay? And so I outbid everybody else. I must have paid about $150 to sit at that table with him because I really, really wanted to meet him. I wanted to get close to somebody who had that level of creative flow. So I'm sitting there at the table, he shows up with this gorgeous model. Harlan really had style. I mean, he was just a rock star among science in the science fiction field. No question about it. He had the fastest mind I had ever encountered. I just never run into anybody like him before. And so we're sat there at the table, and that year, as I recall, Sammy Davis Jr. Was getting an award for an ABC movie of the week called Poor Devil. He got the best actor award in a television movie or something like that for Poor Devil. And I thought this was my moment. I'd been perfectly polite through all of dinner and everything else. And when they announced that Sammy Davis Jr. Was getting the award and the guy from ABC was there to receive it, I leaned over to Harlan and I said, they only gave it to him because he's Jewish. And Harlan looked at me and without skipping a beat, said, shut up and eat your watermelon. I could not believe that he had gone there, that he had been that fast. I mean, literally not a second. He said it instantly. I'd never run across anything like that. Now, as time went on, I got to know Harlan very well. And he found out I was not an idiot. And we've been friends for many years. And I just. I love him to pieces. I really do. And I found out what that tough guy, fast gun exterior was all about. And if you listen carefully, you'll understand my theoretical model of what Harlan Ellison is and what these really creative people are. Because once you understand what they are, you're going to be able to use this too. I don't know how long it was after I met him that I had this sense that Harlan was like a Chinese puzzle ball. Have you ever seen these things? They're like carved ivory or carved wood. And they're a series of concentric spheres with different holes. And you have to line them up just right. And if you line them up just right, you can stick a stick all the way through the puzzle bowl. I had this flash one day hanging around with him at his house that he was like that, that somehow he was able to line up all the different aspects of his creativity so he could access something down. He would refer. He called it the burning core. He actually said that. And that unlike most of us, he could do it on demand. He could do it whenever he wanted to do it or whenever he needed to do it. I think that there were times he would force himself to do it. But what it reminded me of was a little bit like a volcano, that there is a core of magma down at the. At the base of what Harlan was. And that given the right set of circumstances, the right set of motivations, he could line himself up so that that magma would rise up to the surface and it just exploded. I remember there's so many people who are extremely creative who worked with him at one time or another. And we just talk about the fact that he could just create on demand. He could just. He could just do it. You know, he could sit in the middle of a. He could sit in a. In the middle of a convention lobby at a hotel and write an award winning short story. He could sit in the window of bookstore and write in and write. It was just an amazing thing to see. So that meant he could tap into that burning core like the volcano could tap into its magma. You know, that, like that, that Puzzle ball. He could solve that puzzle, tap into that burning core, and would be able to then produce. Now, for most of us, creativity is just. It's a bunch of different stuff. You know, we. We have all these different ideas and we have all these different expressions and all these different goals and all these different desires, and the luckiest ones of us can tap into them, can sort through all that stuff and find the things that actually apply to the task at hand. But the most important thing is just being able to tap into all the different stuff, having all these different ideas, having all these different pieces of ourselves, and then to be able to sort through them. There was a famous science fiction writer whose name I will not mention, who enjoyed psychoactive substances. And toward the end of his life, instead of. What writer's block is for most people is you can't come up with an idea. You can't work. What happened to this poor guy was he would have too many ideas. His ideas would go off into all different directions, and he literally could not decide which of them he was going to pick. They all looked equally good to him. If he was working with an editor, the editor could tell him which ideas were good and which ones were not, and he could write. But if he was just doing it by himself, he really couldn't do it. So that was just a different form of writer's block. So we're going to define writer's block as anything that interferes with the complete flow of creativity between initial conception and creation. In other words, if you don't come up with ideas, if you can't choose an idea, if you can't write a first draft, and if you can't finish your first draft, if you can't polish, if you can't submit it, if you can't continually submit it, if it gets rejected, and if you cannot continue the process, anything that stands between you and that, also the research and thought that makes it possible for you to continually upgrade so that you're constantly learning more and more and more. But you're also not letting the fear stop you, because your editor mode is always stronger than your flow mode. So the trick is you have to come up with a lot of ideas, and then you have to be able to dig through those ideas. And a little boy standing on a pile of horse manure saying, I know there's a pony in here somewhere. That's how you've got to feel about the ideas that you come up with. You've got to come up with tons of ideas. You've got to Learn to search through them. You have to learn to have enough courage to take a stand. To take a stand. And that means that it's contact with your creative self, which is a little kid that doesn't know that most of the ideas are crap, just going to come up with all these different ideas. And the thing is that by watching the reactions of your parents and your neighbors or your friends, you learn to pick out which ideas are going to work and which ones won't. That's just the way it works. So if you have faith that that little kid inside you has wonderful ideas, and then you learn to sort through them so as to select the ones that are actually going to work. And the only way you can do that is by failing over and over and over again and not being afraid to fail, to keep getting back up. If you can do that, you're going to be okay, you're going to keep getting better and not being able to move forward, to procrastinate, to feel like. Like you have to get everything perfect. It goes back to one of my favorite expressions, which is perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control. That you have to learn how to be willing to fail, how to be willing to look bad. The only way to get good at anything is to be willing to suck at anything that you're doing. You're going to suck at first and you have to simply get over it. And you also have to give yourself enough time to get better. So this is what I saw when I had a chance to get close to Harlan. I've had a chance to get close to a lot of different, very, very creative people. And I always saw the same thing. They worked like field hands. They had an encyclopedic knowledge of their field. They constantly were reading, if they were writers, they were constantly listening to music, if they were musicians, if they were boxers or martial art. Always observing the people who are better than them, looking at the masters, looking at their competitors. Always, always, always this is what they did. That there was nothing. I don't believe in talent except the. The only talent I acknowledge is the talent of being able to focus until you stop sucking. To keep doing it and doing it and doing it and constantly learning and dealing with the demons in your head, because those demons will devour your dreams. But let me tell you something, and this is tied in with secret number two. If the secret is to get in touch with that kid inside you, the one that has all the ideas, and then simultaneously develop an adult sense of being Able to distinguish between the ideas that are good and which ones aren't good. It's still a delicate process, and it can be interrupted. And I'm going to tell you the story now that I've built a model of what creativity is, that you're doing research, you're coming up with ideas and inspirations, you're brainstorming, you're choosing between them, how I screwed it up, and screwed it up worse than I ever had in my life. I got to take a breath now. Take a drink of water. If you've enjoyed this so far, if this makes sense to you, if you're getting what I'm saying, give me some love, show me some likes, and let me make. Let me make sure that you're understanding what it is that I'm saying. Are you with me? Yes. There are the hearts. There you go. That's my people. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I love you, too. I really, really do. Once again, if you're enjoying this, share it so that you can share this with other people. Because now I'm about to get into something that's kind of emotional for me, and it is the time that I betrayed myself the worst. When Nikki, my daughter Nikki, was about three, four years old, I was pitching in Hollywood a lot and just trying to. Trying to make it, trying to get something going. And there was a television series called Friday the 13th. You know, Jason Voorhees, guy in the hockey mask. Well, The Friday the 13th show was about a haunted curio shop. And every week somebody would buy something in the haunted curio shop, and it made them commit, go out and start murdering people. So my agent set me up a meeting there, and I watched the show and I thought, this is terrible. But I really needed the money. I mean, really needed the money. So I came up with an idea that I thought would work, that I thought would have some ethics, I thought would have some meaning, a little bit of meat to it. So I drove onto Paramount's lot and, you know, walked over to the bungalow and, you know, they. They sit you down and everybody shakes hands and they tell you what a fan they are of your work and offer you some water and so forth. And then you get down to it and they look at you, fold them, fold their fingers and say, what have you got for us? And I told them that I had a story for them called Purple Heart. And the story, Purple Heart, was about a unit in Vietnam who were being led by a sergeant who everybody loved and a lieutenant right out of Officer Candidate school, who everybody hated. Terrible guy, the way I put it, was the kind of guy who would send you under heavy machine gun fire into a minefield to retrieve a live hand grenade. He was getting men killed. And he got their sergeant, their beloved sergeant, blown to bits and killed. So the men fragged him. They murdered him using the dead sergeant's gun. There was only one problem. The dead sergeant wasn't quite dead yet. And he got medevaced out to the hospital. He lost both arm, both legs, an arm and an eye. The brass figured that he had fragged the lieutenant, but they realized that somebody as injured as the sergeant would, you know, they'd never be able to convict him. He'd look too pitiful at the court martial. And so they basically screwed him over in every other way with his veterans benefits medals, cashiered him out. And it was just a terrible, terrible situation. And he never understood why or how this had happened to him until years later, there's a reunion. And one of the men at the reunion accidentally lets it slip what they did to him. And he just. He's just, you know, heartsick, you know, how could you do this to me? You know, I loved you guys, you know, just, if you needed to do that, why didn't you just let me die? I mean, I would have done anything for you. And in the midst of a lot of acrimony, the meeting breaks up, and he wheels himself home in his little wheelchair. And he lives in a cold water walk up flat. And the landlady at his flat knows that he's a nice boy and knows that he never got his medals. And so she'd been walking home that day, and she passed a curio shop. And in the window of the curio shop, she saw a Purple Heart medal that somebody's grandfather had won in World War II. And she bought it, and she gives it to him and she pins it on his chest, saying, you know, this is the medal you should have gotten. And he thanks her and sheds a tear out of his one good eye and wheels up to his room, levers himself into bed and goes to sleep with the Purple Heart medal still pinned to his chest. And that night, while he's asleep, the Purple Heart metal begins to glow and it begins to beat. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And veins extrude themselves from the sides of the metal and beat, bury themselves into his chest. And he heaves up and sinks back down into his nightmare. And the metal continues to beat boom, boom, boom, boom. And it burns and sears and sinks its Way into his flesh. And once again, his eye, one good eye, flies open and he screams in the darkness. And the empty eye socket glows. The eye grows back and the empty sleeve glows, and the arm grows back and his empty pant legs glow and the legs grow back. And he levers himself up out of his bed, a demon of vengeance, and goes after the men who framed him, killing them off one at a time, commando style. Karate chops and punji steaks dipped in human feces and mortars, claymore mines and garrotes, just killing them off, one after the other after the other after the other. And the guys in the room sat back and looked at me, and they said the following thing. They said, we can't do that story, because if we did that story, people would think that this show was about something. And our only excuse for putting on a mass murder every week is that this is pure entertainment. What else you got? And I sat there, sick at heart, realizing what I was in a room full of, and also realized that I needed their money. I needed it desperately. If you ever asked yourself, what are you willing to sell your soul for? The $17,000 that they could have gotten from me by picking up the phone and telling the finance office that we want to buy a script from this kid was enough for me to sell out. And I sat there in that room and I began to pitch lamely one idea after another. And luckily, luckily for me, if my heart isn't in it, I cannot do good work. So they said, thank you very much for coming in, shook my hand, and I left. And as soon as I stepped out of the room, I heard the voice of the little boy inside me. And he said to me, I heard it as clearly as I ever heard a voice in my life. That little kid who'd always been the source of my creativity. And he said, daddy, why did you have me talking to those terrible men? Don't you love me anymore? And I had nothing to say, because I tried to sell out that little kid inside me. I. It was equivalent to having put my little boy out on the corner turning tricks. It was horrifying. And he stopped talking to me. And I could not contact him. Ordinarily, I could meditate. And I could see that little kid inside me so easily. And I could hear his voice. And he came up with all those ideas. He would come up with all those ideas. Tap dancing for Daddy. Look at me, Daddy. Look how. Look how much I love you. Look what a clever boy I am. Look at all the ideas I can come up with. And Daddy had always loved him and protected him. And he kept coming up with those ideas because he knew there was a pony in there somewhere. Then Daddy wouldn't point at all the crap. Daddy would help him dig and help him find those ideas and love him and tell him he was a good boy. And I had done a terrible thing. I'd done a terrible thing. And I could not contact him. And I. For the next months, I couldn't write. I wrote, but I couldn't come up with any good ideas. It was a struggle. For the first time in my life, it was like driving with my brakes on and my tires flat. It was awful. It was painful. Instead of a joy. All of my fear, all of my doubt, everything just swarmed up and covered me. And I knew that I could not go on like this. That nothing was worth this, that this felt like death. The one thing I'd always been most confident, most comfortable about in my entire life, I had lost. I had to find a way back. And one of my teachers gave me an idea. And what I did was I began to meditate every day. And sometimes it was only five minutes, and sometimes it was longer than that. And what I would do is I would imagine a place that was very pleasing to me When I was a little boy. It was Santa Monica Beach. And I would imagine going down to the beach, and I went down there, and there was nobody there. But I could easily imagine that when I wasn't looking, that little boy was out there on the beach looking out, wondering if there was anybody in the world who loved him and would protect him, because I sure as hell hadn't. And every day, I would bring a basket of toys down to the beach, hoping that maybe he would come and play with me. And he didn't. But I would leave the toys there. And day by day, I would leave those toys there. And I'd come back the next day and nothing would have moved. About two months into this process, I noticed that the toys had moved just a little bit. In my imagination, something had happened. And there were footsteps, footprints, child's footprints, around the toys. So I kept doing it. Every day, every single day, I would bring the toys. Sometimes I'd bring food. And I'd sit there for as long as I could. And then I would go away. And then I come back the next day, praying that I would see some sign that little Stevie, that little part of me, had forgiven me, had accepted the gifts. The play continued. The disturbance of the toys continued. But I didn't See any sign of him. Until one day, a couple of months later, I'm sitting there on the beach, totally alone. But way out on the horizon, way out on the northern horizon, way up the beach, I could see a little boy standing there, facing me, looking at me. Too far away for me to speak to or even to really see his face. But I knew he was crying. I kept coming back, day after day after day. And every day, he got a little bit closer. Just a little bit closer every day until I could see his face screwed up with tears, filled with betrayal, knowing that his daddy had sold me out. Sold him out. But if I went every day, every single day, I was doing everything I could to prove to him that I was so sorry. I was just so sorry. I had messed up so badly. And one day, he was standing no more than a hundred feet away. And I stood up and faced him. I did not try to take a step toward him, but I stood up and faced him. And a few days later, he took a step toward me. And I took a step toward him. And a day later, he took another step and I took another step. And then he took a step and I took a step. And then all of a sudden, he broke into running. And he ran to me and jumped up into my arms. And he said, oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy, where have you been? I've missed you so much. I've been so alone. And I said, I am so sorry. And I swore to him that I would never again in this lifetime ever leave him alone. And I never, ever have. I swore to that part of me that I would honor him and protect him and die before I let anything hurt him. And I know that all of us have broken integrity with our own hearts, with that child within us. And that's what stops our creative flow. A child who knows his mommy and daddy love him no matter what, is not afraid to fail, is not afraid to make a mistake, is not afraid to come up with ideas for fear that someone will think he's a stupid boy, a bad boy. That little boy inside me is just the most beautiful little creature in all the world. And he loves me. And I see him every time I look at my son. Every time I see my son, I see that little boy inside me. That's that story. That's the price I paid. And ever since that time, that little boy has been inside me. That little boy has let me know that he trusts his daddy. He trusts me, the adult part of him, to protect him, to take care of adult business so that he can Play. If you know what I'm saying. If you felt what I'm saying. Just, you know, give me some. Give me some likes. Give me some loves here. Let me know that I'm not the only one who's ever sold himself out, who's ever broken confidence with the most precious part of my own existence, your own existence. If what I want to make sure that you know is that it is not too late. No matter where you are, no matter who you are, it is not too late. It is never too late. All you have to do is be willing to make contact with that little kid inside you and let it know that it is. Let him know that he is safe. Let her know that she is valuable. Let her know that she is loved and that you'll die before you let anyone hurt her ever again. You see, what's true about us is that we're born whole and life fragments us. And it's up to us to put those pieces together the best way we know how. And we don't have to be perfect about it. That little kid inside us doesn't expect us to be perfect. He just expects Mommy and Daddy to do the best they can and to love him, to love her without any reservations. That's all they really want. All right. Whoo. That story is hard for me. But I love you guys enough that I wanted you. I wanted you to hear it. And the other question is going to be, well, what came out of it? Did it make a difference? Does it matter? What I need you to understand is that no matter what type of life you live, no matter what occupation you're in, no matter what profession you have, whether it's a writer or an artist or a musician or a teacher or marketer or just a parent trying to communicate with your kids, you need creativity. You need to come up with lots of ideas, and you need the ability to sort through them to find the ideas that work. One of the things that happens when. One of the things that happens when you make contact with this part of you is you increase your intuition. And I'm going to tell you, because I think all of us know that there are times when we sell ourselves out. I had another opportunity to sell myself out, and I did not do it. I had the opportunity to write for the Outer Limits, the new Outer Limits show. And I pitched them an idea about a woman who develops an approach to time travel. And she goes back. She waits until serial killers have been killed and goes back in the past and kills them before they've had the chance to kill their first victims. It was called A Stitch in time and it starred Amanda Plummer as the scientist who develops this. This approach. And basically what she's doing is she's building up her confidence to go back and confront the man who abused her. And at the end of the story, she was going to do just exactly that, leading to several twists and turns. Well, the guys who ran the show told me that they wanted a change in the script, that the scene that I'd done where she goes back and finally confronts and kills the man who had abused her, they wanted her to change her mind. They wanted her to decide that if she did that, it would change the timeline and she would never have been the woman who went back and did these things. And so therefore, all the women that she would have saved would have died. And they thought that that would have been a better answer. And I could not convince them that this is not what she would do. And finally, I was just about to yield, and somehow I found some strength inside me. Now, most of us sitting in a room full of people who can make us rich, and they find that they find the strength to stick to their guns, they would feel like, you know, they're unleashing their inner Superman. Well, in my particular case, I was unleashing my inner 9 year old boy, that little Stevie, because Stevie understood and Stevie felt it. I sat there and I said to them, I tell you what, I noticed something. Everybody in this room is a man. And you're telling me what a woman would do. Well, I'm not going to argue with you. I tell you what you're going to do. You're going to go home and you're going to ask your wives what they think about it. And they said, okay. And they went home and they asked their wives and they called me back in for another meeting and they said, oops, you were right, we were wrong. And they did it my way. And you know what happened? Amanda Plummer won an Emmy for my episode of the Outer Limits, playing the scientist who had gone back into the past to set things right in her life. Best Actress in a dramatic series in 1996. I won. That's my Emmy, too. I created those words. I created those images. I created a place where this wonderful actress, wonderful actress could go and give her heart. And I had been courageous enough to stand up to the men in that room who had my career in their hands and tell them, no, that was me protecting the little boy inside me. That was what happens when you are in touch with that part of yourself. Wow. So, to go over it very very briefly, the ancient child technique, that child thing, is the dreams of your child self with the wisdom of your elder self. And then you simply conduct your daily life in alignment with both. And when you do that, no one can touch you. No one can take anything away from you, because you belong to yourself. You own yourself once and for all. Anyone out there who has ever had the sense of having severed the connection between themselves and their creativity, themselves and their aliveness, that kid within them, tell me now, because I know. I know that you have. I know that I did. I know that I have. And I know that it was worth any price in the world to get back in touch with the part of me that knew. The part of me that. That has that knowledge. There is nothing that anybody can pay you that is worth giving yourself away. Nothing anyone can give you. No friend, no boss, no lover, nothing. Hold on to that kid inside yourself. Protect it with your life. When in doubt, get in touch with the old person you're going to be at the end of your life. No more games, no more play, no more ego. No one can scare you anymore. And ask yourself, what will be important then? That is your way out to make a commitment to do anything in your power to protect that child within you. What's the result of doing all of this? Enhanced creativity, decreased stress, greater emotional integration, creating a powerful positive spiral. Because you will start making choices based upon your real values. And the people who are in alignment with those values will begin to seek you out. And you will. Instead of falling apart, you're building yourself together, you're building yourself up. And there is nothing that feels as good as acting in alignment with both your dreams and your values. Wow. Well, if you're like me, you probably feel a little bit like you've been hit in the face with a fire hose of information and emotion. And this is the point where I always want to know what I can do for you and some of you before I do these talks, I pace up and down my office. I know that there's somebody out there who needs me, who needs to hear this, who needs this. And I pray to God that I've been able to be of service and some of you will want to be closer, who want to find out more about how to get more interaction with me. And I would like your permission to be able to share with you something very special that I put together to make it possible to work through these things, you know, with me. Anybody who would like me to be able to help them more. Who would like to see what other ideas. Thank you. Thank you so much. Because it only took me, it was like a minimum of five minutes every day. I would do it for as long as 20 or 30 minutes, but it was the consistency of doing it that made the difference. Keeping that open, the question, is it possible to create five minute solutions for other issues? What I want to say beyond any shadow of a doubt is that it is. There are five minute solutions for family, for finding love, for writing, for martial arts. These are the things that matter to me. And I always go first. What's the first five minutes that I can get somebody to do? Because if you can do five minutes, if you can't do five minutes, then you're not talking about something that's important to you. And if you're talking about something that's important to you, you can give it five minutes. And once you have learned that the five minutes actually works, you can build on that. One case of somebody who did that was my dear friend, Victoria Whitlock. Victoria had a lot of childhood issues that were interfering with her ability to lose weight, to build up her career, to find love in her life. So we built some five minutes, some very short interventions. This first one was a breathing technique that helped her deal with the stress. The second was to identify the damage that was done to that internal child. And the third was to begin a daily ritual of reconnection so that she could not just deal with the stuff, stress, but she could begin to build up. In other words, she could actually use the stress to grow stronger. Because if you have stress balanced with rest, balanced with nutrition, your body gets stronger and so does your psyche. We were able to make some tiny interventions that over time made a massive amount of difference in terms of weight loss, finding the love of her life, and advancing to being a major force project manager at Boeing. So that was all very, very good. But there were other people, lots of other people that I helped with these things. And I created a program that we called 101 Five Minute Life Hacks. It's just filled with these kinds of interventions, very, very short term interventions that you can spend more time, but you don't have to spend any more than five minutes a day. Because there really are secrets that work just that well. And basically it's designed. The way we design this is that every day you get an email. Sometimes it's just an email, Sometimes it's a PDF, sometimes it's an MP3 of a visualization or a lecture. And this goes on for more than three months. For more than three months you'd have me sitting on your shoulder talking to you every day. And all you have to do is five minutes, the most basic five minutes. You learn that in the first couple of days and then after that you just look at the other things and you try things. As you've got more time, you create your own program based on just making sure that you do the five minutes every day. You then start creating a program for yourself. If your issues are physical, if your issues are psychological, if your issues are emotional, if they have to do with relationships, if they have to do with work, they have to do with writing, it's perfect for writers, martial artists, people who want relationships, because those are the three things that I really, really wanted. However, it'll work for people who only want one of those things or just want to increase their physical aliveness, learning their aspects of goal setting, fitness, emotional health, finding your soulmate, managing money, losing weight, loving yourself and tripling your daily efficiency. And so much more that I really don't have the time to tell you all this right now. There's more about it on the website, but I would say that the total value of all of this is pretty close to $1,500 if I totaled up everything that I was doing and everything that I was giving based on the cost of the component pieces. Now the question you might want to know is does this work? Well, I know it works for me, but does it work for other people? It worked for me and Vic, but there are other people. A lot of their stories are on the website, but here's Andy Duncan. He said, Stephen Barnes has given me tools and understanding that have taken me from a struggling filmmaker 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 I thanks Andy for that. People have been so nice in terms of telling me, giving me ways to communicate with people. Basically. That's been really, really, really good. I've been very grateful for that. But we've got bonuses that we're going to add to it. Sorry about the Google Slides thing there. The first bonus is the full ancient child program mp3, PDF transcripts. It's the crown of what I've been teaching, what I've been given, and I'm giving the whole thing in the program. It's just, you know, on one of the days you'll get that and so. And then there's another bonus. It's The Fear program, the Fear Mastery course. I'm turning fear into energy. Some of the most. It took me 17 years to earn my first black belt because I was dealing with so much fear. And then I started learning techniques that actually dealt with fear in ways that no therapist or shaman or any anything else could help me with. I could not believe it. I'd spent almost two decades, thousands of dollars, and just worked my heart out. And I found things that were so simple, so direct and so powerful that once again, I sold these things separately. But I'm putting all these things into this one program, turning your fear into energy. So you're going to get the full course, the full life Hacks course that was originally the 101 course that broken down so it's in 5 minute bits coming to your mailbox every day. And then the ancient child MP3, the fear mastery course for dealing with stress and fear and total value, eighteen hundred dollars almost. Remember, the question is, what do you want? Who are you? What do you want? What. What are your dreams? The answers to everything. Intelligence is problem solving or nothing at all. If you set yourself with the problem of how can I live a happy life? And if you consider yourself smart, then all that has happened is that there is stuff that is standing between you and the full creative flow of your life. Remember what we talked about there a long time ago? That Chinese puzzle ball? You line it up right and you can stick the stick all the way through it. That volcano that taps into that molten magma deep, deep, deep within yourself. What we're about is untangling that cord, untangling that. And what I have to ask you is, what are your dreams worth to you? You know, are they worth a month of your work? Are they worth, you know, 5,000, 10,000? What would you give to be able to have the life that you really love, that you really deserve? I mean, if you were to spend 50 years and $100,000 researching, teaching and testing these secrets, you could compile something like what it is that I've done here. You really could. Because there really are secrets that are as powerful as running west. If you want to see a sunset, there really are. If you run east, no matter how far and how fast you run, you will never see a sunset. But the right teacher at the right time can help you build a life that will turn you around. And what I want you to know is if I could give, if I'm right, if I could give you these things, if you could have the life that you want as powerfully as this. Wouldn't it be worth more than $1,800 if you could? If I'm right about this, wouldn't it be worth more than that? What is your life worth? Because if it is possible for you to have these things, then what I have to do is to find a way to bring them to you at the lowest price I possibly can. And that price today is only $297. And you'll get everything that I talked about over there@www.liferight.com. and we've even got a time payment set up of only $50 a month. We've done everything we can to make sure that if these words touch you and you want to experience what I'm experiencing in my life, that you will be able to have it. That you will be able to do for yourself what I've been able to do for myself. But there's more than I want. A lot of writers and artists talk about the inability to sell what it is that they've created. So I talked to a friend of mine, a Sufi master named Mushtaq Ali Al Ansari, who had told me that Sufis had the reputation for being able to be successful business people without selling themselves out while staying in alignment with spirit. And that program is, I think, ideal for artists to be able to create without selling themselves out. The Enneagram is a process is known in the Western world primarily for helping people understand human psychology. But that's only 1% of it. It goes way beyond that. And what Mushtaq and I created is something that is relatively unique. I don't think there's anything like it. The information really is not available to the public in many places at all. It may not be available anywhere. And this bonus is also there. We're also including that. I don't know what the price on this would be because you can't compare it to anything. But let's call it a $300 bonus. And you can get that plus everything else for only $297. And that's at www.liferight.com. with the time payments, you can put it on your credit card. PayPal has a special time payment thing. We can work something out. And there's a 30 day money back guarantee. Sign up today and if you don't like it for any reason, 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. The real question is, what is Your life worth to you? I know what my life is worth to me. I know what my children are worth to me, Nikki and Jason, my wife, is worth to me. And I know what that little boy inside me is worth to me. And I do anything to protect them and to give that little boy inside me an opportunity to shine. So let's take a look at everything you're going to get. You're going to get the full 5 minute life hack system incorporating the Full Life Writing technique which has been developed for over 30 years now. It's, you know, plus the ancient child $97 value says $1497 value plus the ancient child, plus fear mastery, plus the spiritual entrepreneur, total value of over $2,000. And once again, it's only $297. Now. I'm nothing special really. My kids think I am. What I am is a guy who's been very, very lucky in terms of the teachers and mentors that I've had over the course of my life. I bless them. I'm so grateful to them. I literally give thanks to them every morning of my life during my morning ritual. And I want one of the things that's been a blessing is my wife. You know, we were looking for each other and thank God we found each other. And how we did is also part of this program. The Soulmate process is a part of this program. I'm really giving away the story here. Everything, love, success, health, happiness, the whole thing. Dealing with fear, healing, emotional wounds and what I'm going to do because I know that so much of what I am is because of the people I've been able to share my life with. The first 10 people order this, are going to get a free copy of the entire program to share with a study partner. And that's another $2,088 value. So what you're going to get is three full months, actually more than that, of daily five minute life hacks incorporating the Full Life Writing System, the Ancient Child, Fear Mastery, the Spiritual Entrepreneur and a study partner copy the program with a total value of over $4,000. Plus we have a social media group, we have monthly teleconferences. The first one is going to be this Sunday, November 5th. We have a six part webinar coming up in 2018 and more. As you tell me what you need to succeed. My only interest here is making sure that you are getting everything that you possibly need out of this. So all I can do is beg you to get started now for 297. If you order by midnight Friday. I'll give you a free copy of 12 Days. I'll give you a free autograph copy of 12 Days. That's the offer there. Thank you so much for sticking around. And now I'm going to tell you the story. How I got revenge on the producer of the most popular television show in the world, which was at the time, Baywatch. It was being seen by a billion people worldwide, in China, because it was big. It was being shown in China. And because it was both saucy and sexy and very family friendly. Well, what happened is I wrote an episode of the show that was a satire on Baywatch and they bought it. And one of the producers of the show got into my script and changed it a lot. And changed it so much that he went to the Writers Guild and asked the Writers Guild for shared credit. Now, this guy's a multimillionaire and I'm a poor working writer. And I had no idea why he wanted to steal money from the mouth of my children, my child, my daughter, my family. And the Writers Guild called me and talked to me and told me that this was happening. And I told them, give him the credit, because if you don't give him the credit, he's going to take it out on me. He's gonna want revenge. And that's exactly what happened. They did not give him the credit on the script. And as it happened, he was a neighbor of the head of my agency, Martin Gage. I was working with the Gage Group at that time. And he went to Martin Gage and told Martin Gage that I wasn't a very good writer, that they had just been carrying me out of friendship. It broke my heart. It absolutely broke my heart. And I got hurt so badly that my wife, at the time Tony, decided to leave California is right after the LA quake. She just gotten tired of watching me get beat up by Hollywood. And so she said, you know, I'm leaving, you know, come with me. She was trying to save my soul, really. So I gave my house back to the bank. It had been damaged by the quake. It was worth. It was upside down with the mortgage. I gave it back to the bank. I packed all my stuff into a 27 foot truck, was about to turn off the lights in the house, and the telephone rings. I pick it up, it's Baywatch calling. Stevie Baby. They say we are coming to the end of the season and we're one show short and we need something fast and we need it good. And so we thought you. I said, I just bet you did. And we. I still couldn't believe what I was hearing. So we had a meeting at a fancy Beverly Hills restaurant. And there, on the back of a napkin, I sketched out an idea for a story about an environmental terrorist who kidnaps one of the. One of the lifeguards. And as a reward, you know, and the guy who had tried to screw me over totally was sitting right at the table acting friendly with me. I just. I couldn't believe this guy. Just couldn't believe him. And I also got to give Garner, the black security guard, black cop on the beach, his first girlfriend. You know, sort of maybe their way of saying that they were sorry to me. So I'm traveling up the. Up the west coast, driving up towards the northwest, working on this script at night while I drive during the day. And vengeance was in my mind. It's like I knew I never wanted to work for them again. And I thought to myself, I'm going to get these guys. I'm going to get them, because this is just. Yeah, but what can I do? Well, like I said, this is a family show. And I wrote a scene where Garner the cop is pursuing a bicycle thief, and he falls off a pier, and he is saved by this beautiful black lifeguard who performs mouth to mouth on him. And later on, they start getting flirtatious. And the following dialogue exchange occurs. She says, I hope you're not going to tell me that now that I've saved your life, you're not going to tell me that old line about how now that I've saved your life, you belong to me. And he says, no, I've got a brand new line that I know a bar, I know a restaurant where the steaks sizzle so fine that the cows line up to jump on the grill. And she said, scouts honor. And he says, I was never a scout, but I am prepared. And she says, I don't ordinarily eat meat, but I might make an exception tonight. The actor who played Garner came up to me after he saw the script, and he said, how in the world did you get that line in the script? And I said, it was easy. The first draft of the script said, I don't ordinarily eat red meat. As soon as they approved it in the second draft, I just dropped the word red out. I knew they wouldn't read it carefully enough to know the difference, and they didn't. And they filmed it, and it went right into the show. And not until they got complaints from the parents did they even know what I had done that is a story of how I got revenge on the most popular television show in the world. So what I wanted to do now is I wanted to spend a few minutes if you guys wanted to. If you have any questions. Questions about anything in connection with the program or anything else. I wanted to answer questions. And once again, thank you guys so much. I hope so much that you'll go over to liferight.com, take a look at the program. I put my whole heart and soul, 30 years of research into that program. If you have any questions, ask me. Now I'm looking. Rebecca Fleming Martin says, I met Harlan at a Westercon. Boop, boop. Okay. So I will answer questions for five minutes if you've got them. I met Harlan at a Westercon years ago. I asked him to sign my favorite Star Trek story that bore his name. He politely declined and said that Rodenburg had ruined his story. That's right. Failure, the basis of success. I struggle with the prosecution. I love how broad your definition of writer's block is. Basically, anything that stops you. That's right. Including writing too much. Including never finishing what you're doing. Rebecca said, I made abundance dare to be imperfect. Fraggable. Officer. Yes. Like minds. Wow. Wow. Join. Join. Oh, my God. Oh, Steve. A metaphorical beach. That's exactly right. And you find someplace that has significance to that little kid inside you. Someplace you used to love to go as a child. Someplace that is totally comforting and warm and has the best associations possible. The beach was a place where I used to go with my family, my mom and my sister. And we would go, and we'd bring a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I'd play in the sand, and I was totally safe and surrounded by the people who loved me. And so it's a very, very good place to go. I'm going to make my son listen to this. Everything you say I want for him, Carol. Everything you want for your son, I want for you and your son. I hope you'll try the program. Deborah Blackwell, you just reached into my soul, sweetheart. All I've got is my soul. I have totally run out of BS in my life. All I want to do is help as many people as I can while I can. The child within metaphor never made sense to me. Maybe because the child who was me was so hurt, so damaged. But you make it so clear, so understandable and believable. And, Carol, you can use a younger and younger and younger child, depending. If you were really damaged by your family and people did not protect you, you might need to go all the way to a single fertilized egg and then grow it up from there. But you do a wire from the adult woman who I know is powerful enough to protect a child, to that child. Because we have the ability, we're programmed with the strength to protect children. But we often do not apply that strength to protect ourselves. So by creating a metaphorical child and committing to protect it, you are also committed protecting your dreams and you're protecting your creativity. This works. It just works. So that's great. My inner child became fierce and strong because her parents were not safe caretakers. That right? That's right. There are answers. There absolutely are answers. And one level at a time, one layer at a time, one problem at a time. I believe that we were intended to be like room temperature superconductors and that the problems we have are like knots in the wiring and they cause burnouts if you try to pump too much energy through them. Let's unknock that wiring. Anybody out there who wants to be a part of this, just join and join us just one day at a time. Give it five minutes. Just try it. Make me prove myself. Please. Put me to the test. Tom Barclay joined. My inner child escaped into books and her imagination. Absolutely. Cher, you'd like to have this program. I would love for you to have it. I'll do anything that I can to make it possible for you. I love you guys so much. The webinar. Oh, God. Yeah, I got here late, but I made it. Thank you. Thank you. Revenge is sweet. You bet it was. I love. I feel like I had an hour of therapy. Yeah. Room temperature soup. I'd definitely talk to my family about getting your program for my kids. My daughter Carol. Apply this to yourself. There's a five minute achievement check for kids that is just fabulous for them. I would love to share this with you and with anybody else. Like I said, I've been working on this stuff for 50 years. The cream of everything that I learned that have helped me become successful. I have so much more that I want to do in my life. I failed at so many things, but the truth is that I got everything that I set out to do as a child. And I wanted martial arts mastery. I wanted love, and I wanted to be a successful writer. And I give blessings every day. I give thanks every day for my blessings for the people in my life who love me and the things I've been able to do and being healthy and happy. And all I want to do is to be able to share as much of this as I possibly can in the time that I have left. So this is going to be available later on video? Absolutely. It'll be on YouTube. It'll be up on there. And I just wanted to. I have to go and take care of my son now. And please, if you have any more questions or requests, PM me, let me know what I can do. Share this with anybody who you think could use it. Until we speak again, just God bless all of you. I love you guys. And have a wonderful, wonderful day. And never, ever, ever sell out that kid inside you. She is waiting for her mommy to come home. He is waiting for his daddy to come home and say, you are the most important thing in the world, and I will die before I let anyone hurt you ever again. Take care, guys. Bye. Bye.
