Principle 3: Play The Movie

The day shall not be up so soon as L to try the fair adventure of tomorrow.

—SHAKESPEARE

THE OLD MAN SAT DOWN on his favorite bench, settling in with his newspaper for his lunchtime ritual. He was a man of routine and could be found here most any day, enjoying the trees, the children playing, and the sounds of the bustling city around the park.

One day a young man sat down next to him with a paper of his own. The old man moved over a bit to make room, and went back to reading.

After a few minutes, however, the new bench partner said, “Excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?” the old man answered, looking up with a friendly smile.

“Would you happen to have the time?” the younger asked.

The old man looked the young man over for a moment, taking in the fact that he was pleasant looking. “No,” he said, then went back to reading his paper.

Puzzled, the younger man could not imagine why the older man would not give him the time, having noticed that he was wearing a watch. So, he asked.

“Umm, excuse me, sir?”

“Yes?” the older one replied.

“I don’t mean to be a pest here, but I am curious about some­thing,” said the younger. “I can’t help but notice that you are wear­ing a watch. Yet, when I asked you if you had the time, you said no. Have I offended you in some way?”

The old man just looked at him, not saying anything for a moment, but eyeing him up and down. Finally, he said, “No, not at all. You seem to be a nice enough young man.” Then he went back to reading his paper.

This seemed ever more strange to the young man, so he persist­ed. “Then I don’t understand. Why won’t you give me the time?”

The older one put his paper down.

“Well, when you first sat down, I noticed you. You seemed like a nice enough young man, clean-cut and all. You seemed interested in the world and its current events, as I noticed by the particular paper you were reading. That was impressive. Then you asked me for the time. And I figured if I gave it to you, we might strike up a conversation. And if we started a conversation, you would proba­bly tell me about yourself, and I would probably like you and we would become friends.

“And if we became friends, I would see you here again, and we would get to know each other better. Then, I would probably invite you to my house sometime to meet my family. If that happened, you would meet my wonderful daughter whom I love very much. With you being such a nice young man, she would probably like you. And, as beautiful and wonderful as she is, you would probably like her too. So, the two of you would probably get to be friends, and go out on a date. And if that happened, chances are you would fall in love and get married. And I’ll be hanged if I am going to allow my daughter to marry any man who doesn’t own a watch!”

GOING TO THE MOVIES

Déjà vu people rarely take any action without considering its future implications. Tell a man the time and you might just end up marrying off your daughter to a guy who doesn’t own a watch. Life is a slippery slope!

You never know exactly what might happen on down the line when you make any given choice, but the wise person at least thinks about it. However, what I began to notice about successful people is that they do not just think about future implications when mak­ing those big, scary decisions. Almost everyone does that. Déjà vu people tend to think that way all the time, in matters large and small.

So here, then, is the third of the Nine Ways I’ve seen my déjà vu friends use to be successful. We’ve seen that we must dig up and invest our talents, and move past the negative. Now we see that successful people know how each scene contributes to the film’s good end.

There are several ways to think about Principle Three. The simplest is to look at it merely as a matter of cause and effect. “If I do A, then B will happen.” That may be the easiest way, but it doesn’t illustrate the profound nature of it. Experience takes us much farther than that. It’s more like this: If I do A, not only will B happen, but C will too. And D and F and G and so on and on.

That is the difference between the simple law of cause and effect and the deeper version of true sowing and reaping. Sowing and reaping is much bigger than the immediate connection between what I am doing now and what will occur immediately following. Sowing and reaping is about what I will ultimately end up with (take in, live with, be stuck with, and so on) if I sow this particular behavior, choice, attitude, value, or strategy. It is the long-term view. More accurately, it is the end view. What will happen in the end? is the question the wise person seeks to answer.

Successful people evaluate almost everything they do in this way. They see every behavior as a link in a larger chain, a step in a direction that has a destination. And they see this link in both pos­sible directions, the good and the bad. They think this way to attain the good things that they want in life, and they think this way to avoid the bad things that they do not want. In short, they rarely do anything without thinking of its ultimate consequence. They play the movie, so to speak.

Playing the movie means never to see any individual action as a singular thing in and of itself:

Any one thing you do is only a scene in a larger movie. To understand that action, you have to play it out all the way to the end of the movie.

After viewing the entire film, you can decide whether you really want a particular scene in the movie of your life. If it alters the plot or your story, or takes you to other scenes that you do not want to live out, or even causes the movie itself to have a different ending than you had plotted, then you do not want it. No matter how inviting the scene itself is, you do not want it.

Conversely, if it alters the plot of your story in a direction that you would want to go; if it creates later scenes that you would want to live out, then you might indeed want to add that scene. No mat­ter how hard the scene itself is, you might want to choose it.

Play now, pay later. Pay now, play later. We teach this to six-year­-olds. How much better our adult lives would be if we would always live it out ourselves.

THE FUTURE WILL COME

Once while I was doing a seminar on reaching goals and dreams, a lady asked if we could talk for a moment. We sat down and she told me her story.

“Ever since I was a little girl I have had this dream of being a lawyer,” she said. “I used to watch TV shows about lawyers; I read books about trials; I even used to go watch trials being conducted at the courthouse. I would love to practice law. It would be the ideal profession for me. I would love the work, and it would also be a great way of helping people.”

“What do you do now?” I asked.

“I work in the loan industry,” she replied.

“How do you like what you are doing?” I asked.

Her face changed to a cross between revulsion and hopeless­ness. “I hate it,” she admitted. “Every day I wish I were doing some­thing different, especially practicing law.”

“Well, sounds pretty clear to me. Why don’t you do it?” I asked.

“Because it would take too long to get there,” she said.

I asked her what she meant.

“Well, obviously I would have to go to law school, and that would just take too long,” she said.

“How long would it take?” I asked, wondering if I was missing something. Usually law school takes about three years, which didn’t seem like a long time to me when one was thinking about a lifetime of work. (Having gone to graduate school for five years myself, I may have been simply trying to get revenge.)

“It would take about three years,” she said, confirming my esti­mate.

“And you hate what you are doing now?” I repeated.

“Yes. I mean, I love the people I work with, and I am grateful for having a good job. But it is just not how I want to spend my life,” she explained. “But, it would take too long to get my law degree. So, I feel a little stuck.”

It was clear to me that she did not know how to play the movie. So I played it for her. “Let me give you something to think about,” I said. “Do you plan to be alive three years from now?” I said.

“Well, I should certainly hope so!” she replied.

“Okay, then think about this. That date is coming. Period. It is not optional. Three years from now will come, and you will be alive. I repeat, The three years is not optional. It is going to come and pass. You will be here,” I emphasized. “Now, here is the question. Since that day is going to come three years from now, on that day do you want to have a law degree, enabling you to do something you love? Or do you want to be still hating your life?”

She just looked at me.

“Before you answer, let me emphasize what I just said,” I continued. “You said the reason that you have not chosen to go to law school is that it would take too long, as if the passing of three years were optional. But three years are going to pass. That day three years from now will be here. It is not an option. The question is what do you want your life to look like on that day?”

“I never thought about it that way,” she said. “It is not about three years seeming like a long time. It is about where I will be in three years if I don’t do this . .”

Now she was catching on to the script of the movie. She could see that her choosing to avoid school was not just an isolated decision. It was only one scene, but the movie was going to keep playing regard­less, and that scene would dictate the way it turned out. The movie is not optional, but where its plotline goes is. She could choose to be in a very different movie, one that she would like. Or she could choose to be in one that she did not like at all. It was up to her.

The thing to remember about the sequential nature of life is that the passing of time is not a choice. Three years would take too long, she said. Well, too long is coming, period. You don’t have a say in that. But you do have a say in what your life will look like when too long gets here.

When we think of a difficult thing to do, like attending gradu­ate school or changing careers, we often just think of the immedi­ate comfort that comes from not doing it. No, I won’t do it gives a little relief from the big gulp of work that school would be for three years. But, that is a big lie we tell ourselves—a lie that hides the future consequences of our choices. Yes, you avoid the work. That feels good at the moment. But in doing that, you have made anoth­er choice as well: to have a life you hate three years from now.

We act as if the present is all there is; we forget that the future is going to come either way. Immediate relief from hard work is not the only consequence. By avoiding the immediate discomfort, you also sign up for the negative consequence residing within the future reality.

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

Wise people play the movie to prevent negative things happening as well as increase positive things in life. And by doing so, they can change behavior that they would not otherwise be likely to change.

Bill was an example of this. He was in his late forties and gain­ing more and more weight. He had tried many diets to little avail. He would begin them well, but soon he would lose motivation and get off track. Usually he gained back more weight than he lost. It had become a destructive cycle. Now more than a hundred pounds overweight, he had basically given up.

While talking to him, I learned a frightening fact. When Bill’s father was about his age, he collapsed and died with heart prob­lems brought on by obesity. Bill not only had a clear health risk due to his weight, he also inherited genes which made that risk even greater. I asked him what he wanted to do about it, and his answer gave me little hope.

He said he knew that he had to lose weight. Although he had never before followed through on his diet and exercise program, he said he was going to get more committed this time and stick with it. He was determined. This time it would be different, he was sure.

But I played the movie. It was a rerun. He had tried many times before to do what he was vowing to do now, and it always ended the same. I could see him trying to “will-power” himself to turn away from delicious cheeseburgers and exercise. But it just was not going to work, no matter how much commitment he invested. He did not possess what it would take to do it.

Nevertheless, his answer was that he was going to be more self-disciplined than in the past. So, I asked him, “Who is going to be more self-disciplined?”

“I am,” he said.

“But your history shows that you are essentially undisciplined. How is an undisciplined person going to become more disci­plined? Are you the problem or the answer? You do not possess the discipline to do this, so how can you expect to be what you are not? That is like my telling a car with an empty tank to get more gas. It cannot do it,” I said.

Bill looked at me with an expression that was a combination of knowing the truth and realizing that the truth is not good. He knew that if he were honest, he just could not do what he was ask­ing himself to do. It is a depressing moment. “So, what do I do if I can’t do it?” he asked.

“Well, you are in a good place, actually. You have come to the end of yourself, and that is usually when a person truly gets better. When you face the fact that you are powerless, then you look out­side yourself to find the power to do what you are unable to do. That is how people usually change, and it works,” I said.

I explained to him that he had not lost weight because he could not make himself do what was necessary to lose it. He did not have the structure, discipline, or self-control to pull it off. In addition, he was probably using food to medicate himself against a lot of hurt, stress, and other negatives. So the answer was to add the dis­cipline he needed from the outside.

He would have to join a structured program that would provide the structure he did not possess. He would need a group to work on his hurts and the things that he was running from, as well as to support him and be a team with him. He would need a buddy or two he could call when things got tough. Also, I told him he had to learn to ask God to help him in moments of temptation as well. And I told him that if he stuck to a regimen of this kind, he would lose the weight. It would be statistically rare for such an approach not to work if he stayed with it. I had seen the proper recipe of sup­port and structure work for too many people.

But there was another problem, one that only playing the movie could solve. As the old saying tells us, the program works if you work the program. I knew that the program would work, but I did not know if Bill would work it. What was lacking was the motivation to remain connected to the program. It was time to get him to play the movie.

Bill had young children. So I asked him to write several scenar­ios that begin with his dropping dead tomorrow of a heart attack. I asked him to write the stories of his children’s lives starting tomorrow without a father. First, see them at the funeral. Then watch them grow up without a dad to help them develop their values and negotiate the difficult teen years. Write the stories of adolescent girls looking for male attention to fill the void of not having a father and show how that vulnerability might affect the choices they made with guys.

Then 1 asked him to think about where his family would have to live without him as the breadwinner. What about their loss of friends and community when they were forced to move after his death? What kind of atmosphere would their next neighborhood provide? How well would they live on what his wife could earn? What opportunities would they lose to make their dreams become reality? And what kind of discipline would they muster to achieve those goals without a father’s guidance?

Next, I wanted him to write his wife’s story as well. How would her life play out after losing her husband at such a young age? He needed to include the struggle of finding herself in her late forties with young children, with no real marketable skills since she had devoted her career to motherhood and then having to go to work to provide for the family. How would her working affect the chil­dren? They would not only lose Bill; they would lose a lot of her as well. Then watch the movie of her empty-nesting alone. Or worse, marrying someone she did not love just for the security.

Then I asked Bill if that movie might help him stay connected to the plan that would help him succeed. “I get it,” he said. “I can­not let that story come true. I cannot do that to them. I will not let it happen.”

Playing the movie was the turning point for Bill. Remember, it was not the answer. Just playing the movie would not empower him to quit hinging and start working out every day. But it did provide the motivation to hook up with the things that would empower him. He needed a lot of help, and the movie motivated him to get it. (This is similar to what occurs with an alcoholic who goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to help stay sober. The program and the support network are what enables him to succeed. But playing the movie of what drinking has done to his life and will continue to do is what motivates him to work the program.)

Going to the movies can save your life by preventing bad things from happening, and it can build your life by enabling you to see the good things that can happen. I have a friend who devotes a cer­tain amount of his spare time (not all of it, which is wise too) to buying and fixing up rental properties. This is not as much fun as other things he could be doing with those free weekends, for sure. So what keeps him out there on those Saturdays? He told me that he plays the movie ten to fifteen years down the road. The mort­gages will be almost paid off, the rents will have increased, and he will be retired. I am sure that he has to play this movie each time he faces a choice between going fishing or going out to look for one more fixer-upper. But at the end of the movie, he is doing a lot of fishing and golfing and not a lot of working!

HELP ALONG THE WAY

In addition to motivation, playing the movie provides successful people with another strategy common to all of them. They use it to live out the difficulties before they actually occur. They “borrow trouble,” in a way quite different from worry. Don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow by worrying is good advice, because it is a bad kind of debt. It is borrowing with no pay off. Worry is often the non-acceptance of situations that you cannot do anything about. People who worry about things they cannot control would do well to learn and practice the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

But successful people often borrow trouble in a way that can give a payoff. They borrow trouble from tomorrow in situations that they can do something about. They worry ahead of time they play the movie—and then they take active steps to make sure they are ready when that scene arrives.

I had lunch one day with a déjà vu friend who owns a highly successful construction company. “What are you working on now?” I asked.

“War games,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“We are having a week of what we call war games,” he replied.

I had to ask. Surely he had not gone back into the National Guard.

“We play’ out future bad scenarios and make sure that we are in a position to handle them. For example, right now interest rates are at a certain percent. What does our company look like two years from now if the rates go up a point and a half? What if land costs increase? What if, at the same time, there is a union strike? Then we look at what that would do to us and whether we would survive. Since those are real things that happen, we make changes in how we are structured so that if or when they occur, we will do well in spite of them.”

That is being a lot more active about the future than just mak­ing sure you have enough cash reserves, isn’t it? No wonder this man has been so successful for so long. He will thrive in the tough times because he has already lived through them, theoretically, and survived.

When I conduct seminars on reaching goals, I often have people isolate and plan the worst things they will have to face if they try to reach their goals. I have them play the movie ahead of time and devise a strategy to prepare for the worst scene before it hits.

For example, if a man wants to build a new career in sales, he will have to make cold calls. When he looks at the past movies of his attempts at cold calls, there is one scene that always changes the outcome of the movie. He runs into a few rejections, gets very dis­couraged, becomes fearful of making more calls. He retreats into his old, safe routine that will not get him where he wants to go.

So I have my seminar participants plan on that scene. We do an exercise where the bad thing just happened. They are rejected and feel horrible. It is time to make another call and take another risk.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

“Terrible!” they say.

“What do you want to do?”

“Quit,” they say. “Give up.”

“Okay,” 1 tell them, “now that critical scene is coming up where you are feeling discouraged enough to quit and give up, and you have to make your next cold call. What are you going to do?”

Then they make a plan. Call their buddy, form a support group, get with other people who are trying to make it, pray—the list goes on. They build strategies that prepare them ahead of time for the failure that has derailed them in the past. And this time they do not fear it. They are expecting it. It is coming. They are counting on it. And they are preparing for it. They have seen the previews. And this time, they will know exactly what to do.

I have a friend who was a porn addict, though he has been “clean and sober” for some time. He said that for him, breaking free required discovering this concept of “triggers,” the event that began his cycle of isolation, withdrawal, depression, and then fin­ally porn use. That would be followed by guilt and shame, and the cycle would begin again. He found that the entire cycle would always begin with some personal interaction in which he felt he was put down in some way. That was the trigger.

When he learned to play the movie forward, he was ready. For example, if he had a meeting with a higher-up in the company who had a harsh personality, he would play the movie and see the upcoming scene where he would feel put down. Then he was ready. He knew what to do. He had a sponsor in his recovery program prepared for a call, both before the meeting and after. He also had a Twelve Step meeting he could go to. Eventually, after being ready for those scenes and successfully negotiating them, the triggers lost their power. He was so successful in dealing with them that other people lost their ability to make him feel put down, even when they tried. He had found the power of self-control. All from playing the movie and being prepared for the difficult scenes. Playing the movie ahead of the triggering crisis enabled him to seek help to keep the crisis from spinning him into his destructive behavior.

The same was true for Sarah. She was caught in a tough cycle while trying to break up with a boyfriend who was no good for her. She had ended the relationship several times, but each time she found the loneliness and depression too great to bear. She would decide to go back to him, at least for a while, to end the pain of loneliness. But it would not be long before the same patterns would trigger the need to break up again. She could not sustain the “get­ting over it” time period.

So Sarah and I played forward the movie “Going Back to Him When I Am Depressed” past the planned break-up. This time she was planning ahead for her depression, loneliness, and feelings of abandonment. Therefore, when that scene occurred, she knew what to do. She assembled a support network, which kept that show run­ning in front of her at all times. They met regularly and were on call for her when she hit the lows. She revived her spiritual life. It all worked, and she is now free and married to a much better man! She is the star of a much better movie as a result of playing the difficult scenes ahead of time. Déjà vu.

BIG THINGS, SMALL THINGS

We’ve been talking about major life decisions and challenges. But déjà vu people live out the principles of success in the small things of life as diligently as in the big things. They do not play the movie only to deal with major crises such as potential heart attacks or losses of relationships. They play it to handle the details as well. It is just the way that they operate in life. Period. Remember, big wins are usually a collection of very small steps. For instance:

“I would love to watch that TV special. How will I feel at work tomorrow if I stay up that late?”

“I want to buy that dress. It would make me feel good now, but how will I feel when I pay the Visa bill next month?”

“I want to stop by and see Marsha. . . but if I do that, it will rush me to get that report done before dinner. And if I don’t finish it before dinner, I’ll have to do it afterward, which means missing time with the kids. I’ll have to see Marsha another time.”

“It is only September. . . I have a lot of time left for Christmas shopping. But last year I hated Christmas because I spent the whole week before running around like a chicken with its head cut off finding gifts. It was too stressful. I don’t want that again. I am going shopping today.”

“I want to buy that new couch, but I promised myself I would get my savings up to a year’s expenses before making any new pur­chases. If I buy this, I will not meet my savings goal.”

These examples seem like small things, and they are. But the way of handling them is not small at all. It is one of the most pow­erful ways of success that there is. And the déjà vu person follows it in the small things as well as the large ones.

PLAYING THE MOVIE IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS

Playing the movie applies in every area of life. Let’s look at some examples.

Relationships

In the middle of an argument, a person is tempted to blow off steam and become sarcastic or cutting. But, he asks himself, where will this go if I say that? Venting may feel good for the moment, but he can play the movie ahead and know that it will be all downhill if he says what might feel good at the moment.

In dating, when a woman is not sure where she wants a rela­tionship to go, she can play out the implications of saying yes to things that are being asked of her. If I go on this trip, what will 1 have communicated to this person? How far will I be into something that I am not sure I want to be in?” A man can ask himself, If I kiss this per­son, what have I implied? What expectations am I setting up?

When a difficult person makes a request and you say no, he gets angry and manipulative. You immediately feel the pressure to cave in to his demands. It would get rid of the immediate conflict and relieve the pressure. He would turn into that nice person you enjoy as long as you are saying yes. It is tempting to give in to keep the peace. But you take a moment to play the movie and realize that if you do cave in, what you are saying yes to is going to totally mess up your calendar, or your time, or your heart. And that is going to take you way past the moment of today. In addition, by giving in you have trained that person one more time in how to get his way with you. Proverbs 19:19 tells us not to rescue an angry man, for “you will have to do it again.” Give in to the tantrum in this movie scene, and you have lost whatever you were trying to hold on to. And you have continued in the same old plot for the future.

In a marriage where you face control, rage, disrespect, addic­tion or other character problems, you check your gut and ask how it feels to be passive and not take a stand. You sit there and experi­ence all the negative fallout from the problem, and then you look down the road one year, two years, thirty years, and realize that if you do not confront the issue and become an agent of change, this is the future you can count on, or worse.

You become aware that you have very little time for your spouse or children because of the career situation you are in. You leave before everyone wakes up and return after the day is way past done. Basically, you never see your family. And, this is not merely for a season, as it is for a tax accountant in April. It is the way the entire program works. Play the movie and you will see that because you have not built your relationship with your spouse well, you have begun to drift apart. Your children grow up on their own and really do not know who you are. Other people are forming their person­alities and character, not you. You picture them as teens drifting into counterculture because they are alienated from their parents.

Parenting

Your child blows off cleaning up after himself in the kitchen or den. You have told him that he must finish his chores before playing. But it is late, you are tired, and you do not really have the energy to discipline. You just want to have a moment to read, and the mess is not a big deal for you. Play the movie. See your son at twenty-five, married, and leaving that mess for his wife. Day after day, he expects her to take care of his responsibilities in life.

Or, your daughter snaps at you and is disrespectful. Play the movie and you will see the tone and nature of her relationships in the future when she does not get her way. Or, you say no to her and she cries her way into a yes. Play the movie and you can see what her husband and friends will be in for, as well as how she will be resented instead of being loved and appreciated.

Your child does something annoying. You get angry, and raise your voice or snap at him to get him to behave. It works . . . for the moment. Play the movie and see him trying to make it in life with fear and guilt as his constant companion, or with a broken spirit. See him attracted to difficult, angry people as a result of how his parent modeled relationships. See him living his life trying to achieve the impossible goal of always striving to keep difficult, angry people happy.

You are tired at the end of the workday. But your child has not seen you all day and comes up to you wanting attention. It is so easy to tell her to watch a video or go out and play. You are busy. Play the movie, and if this is a pattern, see her learning that she is not desirable or worthy of anyone’s attention. See her attracted to detached and emotionally unavailable people, trying to get love that is not available. Picture all the destruction that comes from that.

(Okay, if you are co-dependent, and usually are responsive to your child, don’t go eat a carton of ice cream right now to escape the guilt this example is causing. You deserve some time for your­self. I am talking about someone who would push away their chil­dren frequently, creating a pattern that the child is internalizing.)

Here, this next example should make you feel better: You are normally very attentive to your child, even today. And you have been so attentive that you have had no time for yourself. Your child still wants to play even as you sit down for a moment to yourself. You feel that you ought to put down your book and accommodate her. But you play the movie and see a bleak future for your daugh­ter. She is a demanding slob who cannot stand to give people the space or time for themselves that they need. (There. Does that get rid of your guilt feelings?)

You had it very hard growing up, and do not want your chil­dren to have to work as hard as you did. So you give them a gener­ous allowance and shower them with opportunities to enjoy life, sports, and fun activities. You give them the childhood that you never had. You are glad that they do not have to provide for them­selves at fourteen, and you are grateful that you can buy them clothes and the finer things of life. There is nothing wrong with that. But if you are giving them no counterbalancing responsibil­ity, play the movie and see what they look like at thirty if they do not learn to work and earn some of what they need. They still live at home, borrow from you, resent their jobs, and soon leave them.

Your child is upset about some misunderstanding with a friend he was playing with. He runs inside crying. You hate to see him upset. Instead of sitting down, talking it out, and pushing him to go back and work it out with his friend, you feel sorry for him. You know he loves ice cream, so you give him a couple of scoops of vanilla with chocolate topping to make him feel better. He cheers up, takes the bowl, and settles in front of the television. Things are better now. Or are they? Play the movie to the scene where he is older, seventy-five pounds overweight, afraid of arguments, and withdraws into TV and computers instead of establishing relation­ships where he might have to work out conflict.

Morality

You are married, but you find a certain man you work with attrac­tive and attentive. You slowly begin to spend more and more time around him at work, and eventually the two of you find ways to spend time together outside the office. Those meetings have no legitimate business connection. You begin to fantasize about what it would be like to be with him sexually.

Stop and play the movie. Watch the upcoming scenes where you see yourself as a duplicitous person, looking your husband in the eye and lying. Play it forward further. Watch the scene where he finds out, which usually happens, and see him—and a few friends and your parents—confronting you. Look at your children’s faces as they find out that their home is coming to an end. Look at your life as a divorced person—two homes for the children, complicat­ed single issues, and the “wonderful” other man who is now back with his wife. Or if he is with you, look at the lack of trust you have for this person you met in an affair, a proven cheater. See your fan­tasy as the first scene of a tragic story if you choose to live it out.

Or, your tax burden is more than you can afford this year. You see opportunities to claim items as expenses that are not really business related. You consider turning in receipts for goods and services from sources that you truly did use, such as taxis, restau­rants, suppliers and vendors, contractors, and equipment compa­nies, but that are not real business expenses. It all adds up to cover your tax shortfall. Your problem is solved and no one will be the wiser.

Play the movie forward and see yourself looking your boss in the eye as he thinks you are a trustworthy employee. Look at your trusting wife who thinks you take care of finances in a way that enables her to sleep at night. Look at yourself feeling like a crook and a cheat. Then play the scene where you open a letter from the IRS explaining that you have been selected for a random audit. Or more likely, that one of the companies you expensed is getting audited, and your account is part of their audit. As the scene con­tinues, they find your padded reports, turn you in to your boss, and by policy, even though he likes you, he must fire you. The IRS presses charges against you as well. Your accounts are attached. You now cannot pay your mortgage and you have no job. Fast forward to the scene where you try to get a job as a felon—or as someone who was fired for stealing from the company. Then come back to the scene you are considering playing out into a reality. Compare the immediate relief of your tax problem to the direction the movie of your life will take if you siphon off that small amount of money that no one would miss.

Health

In Bill’s example earlier, we saw how the movie can play itself out to help you see where certain health habits are headed. Here are a few more suggestions.

Attach a picture of a cancerous lung to your cigarette lighter. See the movie depicting the grueling course of cancer treatment— if you are lucky enough that your cancer can be treated.

Take a picture of yourself in your current shape and put it on the refrigerator you raid for between-meal snacks, or on the alarm clock you set to get you up for your workout. The picture should help you to set your alarm and leave the refrigerator door alone. Or, if you find it more motivating, use an old picture that shows what you want to look like again.

See yourself at older ages, unable to move about because of dia­betes, heart problems, joint problems, or whatever. See your family missing time with you and you missing time with them as they engage in activities you would love if you had the health and energy to do them. Play the scene showing the pain of all the health prob­lems associated with lack of exercise and poor diet. Find pictures that depict these problems and post them in places that will remind you when you are making those choices. If you use a system of calo­rie or point counters, associate your diligence in sticking to the pro­gram with real outcomes as you play the movie forward.

Play the movie of your wife’s emotions. Get inside them and see what it feels like for her to be with a loved one who is not taking care of himself. See the disappointment that she feels in you. Feel what it is like when it becomes difficult for her to be attracted to you because you have disregarded your health. See the fantasies that she sometimes uses to overcome how she feels inside.

Play the movie forward, as Bill did, to show the result of just deciding that you are going to do better at your health but without doing anything other than making the same old commitment you have made many times before. Play the movie forward to see your future if you fail to get outside help from buddies, a group, a sys­tem, a structure, or some sort of treatment with support from a weight loss community. Look at the research that promises statisti­cal failure if you try it on your own.

Then think about all the people who make it if they work the program instead of trying to do it on their own. Plan for the moments when you are ready to drop out of a program because you “have tried that before.” This time plot a movie that includes the scene of your quitting your smoking or overeating, and get the right supporting actors involved in that scene.

And my favorite example of playing the movie forward in regard to healthy habits: A moment on the lips, forever on the hips! Now that is a bad movie.

NOT ALL MOVIES ARE BAD

We have spent quite a bit of time playing bad movies in this chap­ter. But remember, as we showed above, for every bad movie that follows a pivotal scene, there is a good one that can follow if that scene is re-scripted. You saw the tragic movie scripts I had people write if they included the bad scenes they were about to live. But I also had them write scripts with happy endings that would come about if that scene were rewritten. Bill wrote the scene of giving his daughters away at their weddings because he was healthy enough to live to see that day. The woman who wanted to be an attorney created a whole picture of what her life was going to look like when that third year in law school ended and she got her degree. It seems that with human nature being as it is, we need a lot of reminders on the negative side. But I want to bring you back to the positive so that you will play the movie to choose the immediate scenes that will bring about the ending you desire.

One of the best examples of this procedure is Tiger Woods, who grew up with Jack Nicklaus’ major tournament record pasted to the headboard of his bed. It was the first thing he saw every morn­ing when he woke up and the last thing he saw at night. He was playing the movie of his future, winning more major tournaments than the king of golf. Long before he ever played in a major tour­nament, he had been playing the movie of himself becoming the next king of golf. And now we are seeing that movie unwind as a reality right before our eyes.

Think about this: how many times do you think Tiger Woods was tempted to sleep an hour longer instead of getting up before dawn to hit practice balls before school? How many times do you think he was tempted to add a more attractive scene to his movie that would have him partying with friends rather than practicing two more hours on his putting? I am sure that such temptations were countless. But at those moments he knew that none of those immediate scenes would take him to the end of the movie that was posted on his headboard.

ON THE BIG SCREEN

Plot a movie, a vision of your starring character, your relation­ships, your spiritual life, your career, your health, your finances. See it, plan it, and then evaluate each scene you write every day in light of where the movie is supposed to end. If you do that, and make sure that you include the right supporting cast along the way, I will be so happy for you when you get your Oscar for a life well lived. “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21).

And the cool thing is that the accolade is not even the best reward. The best reward is the life itself, the life you have built over time. That is the reality that will not only last for eternity, but will also give you abundance and fulfillment along the way. Choose the right scene at each pivotal moment, and you’ll be the star in a great movie. One scene at a time.