Perhaps Indie Filmmakers can do what content marketers already do – think of every person as a potential marketer for their film.
Continue Reading...Rant on the victim mentality, how it affects our lives, and what I’m trying to do about it.
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By revisiting your memories and redefining them, you can become healthier. It’s time travel as therapy.
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There are many people out there doing amazing things.
Writing can do wonders for your intelligence, especially with other people.
Imagine it: When you create a story, populated with different people. you have to create those people. People who aren’t you. In acting upon your need, desire, and best efforts to create those people, you learn that your own subconscious mind is a tricky beast. You’ll find a way to sneak your own personal preferences, dislikes, ambitions, or their opposites, straight into your characters. Depending on the direction the story needs to go, a lot of it needs to be edited out.
But by whom, you? That’s like asking the man with dark sunglasses on to turn on the light. They may notice the change, but they still see the world through those super-c0ol, or not-so-cool, lenses.
As it turns out, writing about other people is a skill. By practicing it, you learn so much about your own patterns, and begin to notice the patterns in others as well. This is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t get when people say that ‘fiction writing’ has no value.
If the act of writing a story gives you a better ability to look at the world from beyond your own personal biases, then it’s practically a crash-course in truth-seeking, wisdom, and emotional intelligence. The investment is well worth it.
Given, I’m no expert yet. I hope I can be good one day. So far for me, the only way to really improve is to interact with other people as much as possible, continue to edit out the parts of me that sneak into the characters’ lives, and keep writing stories.
Maybe somewhere between my 4th and 40th story, I’ll reach that self-determined stage where I can look in the mirror and call myself ‘good’ at this skill.
Have you had trouble looking outside of your own viewpoint?
Has a lack of skill in this area negatively impacted your ability to succeed the way you really want to?
Sometimes you have down moments. Here I am ranting about one of my own. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.
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Calligraphy from the 15th century...brought to you by the letter 'V'!
I know it was the 12th, but I celebrated Valentines day last Saturday night.
Least favorite holiday of the year. Still, I had a good time.
I was visiting the church of a friend, and spent the weekend staying with his family. There were two church services, a park outreach, singing in a nursing home, and a fancy Valentine’s dinner celebration all in one day.
Keep in mind, I rarely make it through one church service, let alone two. When you add several outreach ministries on the back end, anyone can be made to feel stressed by the end of that day. The social atmosphere of church usually wears me down. Hopefully I will have more days like this to push through and increase my social stamina.
Anyway, on to the celebration. There was Italian food, and violins playing concertos. It felt like something out of Pride and Prejudice – the atmosphere can make any man feel like a gentleman. The evening was followed by my friend, his brother, his Pastor father, and me all playing a cover of “Surfin’ U.S.A.”.
Don’t even ask.
The crowd loved it though, and it was a great way to start playing the guitar again after a year of letting the callouses deteriorate from my fingertips. Other acts followed: stand-up comedy, covers of love songs by a talented pianist, and finally, the highlight of the evening, the affirmations.
In one calculated move, the Richardson Texas church took the one thing I disliked about Valentine’s day and made it my favorite part. After this post, you are sure to feel the same.
One by one, people stood up and publicly thanked the individuals who have showed them love at different points in their lives. This was symbolized by a short speech, and an exchange of roses and chocolate.
The usual suspects had their time in the spotlight. The happily married couples, significant others, and boyfriends/girlfriends had plenty of opportunities to make single people feel jealous, and painfully aware of their own lack of relationship. The expressions of love exchanged on that night lightened the atmosphere and gave me great appreciation for the group of people gathered there.
Brothers and sisters, guitarists and soundmen, mothers and sons, and friends of one another all had their chance to show how much love and respect they had for their close friendships.
The affirmations took a long time to wrap up, and we left the church after 10:30 p.m.
Even though we stayed at ‘church’ from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., I went to bed feeling less worn out than I normally do after three hours of traditional church worship services.
Valentines day is a great day to be alive.
There are several things I am excited to announce:
KINDLE!
Emotionally Bulletproof Scott’s Story is now available on kindle. If you have an iPhone, iPad, laptop computer, or a kindle e-reading device, you can use the kindle applications to download the complete story and read it anywhere, without carrying a book at all.
What excites me most is that people in the UK, Canada, and any other countries Amazon ships to will be able to learn simple principles for building trust with the people in their lives. There are no shipping hassles, an affordable price, and the opportunity to read the next two books in the series when they come out.
Brian Shaul
My coauthor is becoming a pioneer in the area of coaching. He not only developed the ideas for the book series, but also has a blog about becoming your own coach. This is useful whether you have a coach and want to get more out of the relationship, or if you feel like experimenting with sound, biblical principles on your own.
Emotionally Bulletproof is how he plans on changing the world for the better, and it’s definitely worth a look. I would even recommend subscribing to see how it progresses.
EBP Travel
The greatest thing about being an author, other than writing, is meeting well-intentioned people seeking health, wealth, and healing.
I will be traveling down to Texas, which is my home base, then traveling up through to Idaho, where I will begin working to make the Northwest United States familiar with EBP and biblical principles. I have been holding back my excitement for weeks about this.
honest abe by bluepoetie
Feedback is results that can be seen, measured, and acted upon. This can come from 2 different places:
- Your own personal experiences.
- Other people’s advice and mentorship.
Life is too short to make all the mistakes on your own. If you want to achieve big goals that are beyond your current level of achievement, you are going to need the guidance of other people. This will allow you to apply your efforts to the activities that you know will work, making you appear much wiser.
This may seem crystal clear to most people, but do YOU actually do it? If you have so far, then you’re a step ahead of me. If you don’t keep doing it, you won’t be ahead for long.
Not that it’s a race, but I’ve learned that the biggest thing that I can do this year to gain the most success in the least amount of time is this: Seek out advice from people who have already done what I want to do.
Seek out several sources. You can keep it to simple tweets to the people in question, a ¼ page email, or an in-person interview over coffee and lunch. It doesn’t have to be hard.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket either. If one person doesn’t respond, have several other people ready to respond to you.
For example, several places I would like some help are:
- scheduling radio interviews
- learning how to network better
- learning how to sell to booksellers
- learning how to get started in public speaking with no previous background
These are just a few. In any of these cases I will look for people who have succeeded in these areas in the last 3-5 years, as well as people who have been doing these activities for decades.
If you want to take action on a simple thinking exercise, make it this one: What are you wanting to learn how to do? What are you struggling with? What obstacle are you afraid of facing? Finally, who can you talk to for answers (people you know personally or who you know of online)? Strangers? Is anyone in your network already who may know the types of people you’re looking for?
True and painful lessons in leadership you should learn the easy way (by reading this post).
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