We Dream The Dream

What do you think defeats us?  Age, income levels, education?  How about attitude...?

At my age and accumulated body damage level, I'm never going to be a Olympic acrobat - probably.   Both my shoulders are hinky from years of martial arts so I doubt I could hold that Iron Cross move.  But I'd kill on the vault (not really.)

Would that stop me from trying if I really wanted it?  No.

Every time you think you've seen it all, heard it all, experienced it all someone comes along to prove you don't know squat about what a human being is capable of.  The movie "127 Hours" shows that even something as incomprehensible as surviving a crushed arm without going into shock and bleeding out and then self-amputating that damaged arm is possible.  We watch "American Idol" to see people struggle and succeed against odds stacked long and tall against them. (more)

I think most people's problems with success come from two places:  1)  They don't think they can do it so they're already defeated and 2) They don't define what they really want properly.  Probably have to add a number three now that I'm thinking about it: 3) They don't understand how to define success at what they've chosen.  It isn't always being the best - it's just sometimes about showing up to finish that makes you a success even if you don't feel like one.

I had a friend tell me once (in slight disgust) "he's like you - good at everything."  That shocked me because I'd never thought of myself in those terms.  But in looking back I had to accept his judgment but in this way:  It wasn't that I was so successful at everything - it was that I had followed through and completed what I wanted to.

I took martial arts in the 80's and got as far a Brown Belt in Kenpo before giving up.  A decade later,  this particular friend and I started Aikido/Aikijitsu at a local dojo for the fun of it.  I enjoyed getting back into it and stuck it out.  He didn't.

Today I'm a third degree black belt which astounds even me.  What got me there is the lesson I learned after spending the decade of the 80's giving up on my musical career and martial arts career and my business career and just about anything I started.  Somehow, a switch was flipped in my brain and I got tired of looking back in regret after quitting.  From the early 90's on I just stuck with something until I accomplished it.  As mentioned I'm a  black belt now and as far as a career choice, I've sold 25 scripts and have 19 produced films with more, many more, on the horizon.

The point in all this isn't about me; it's about the sticking-to-it that goes hand-in-hand with anyone's success - just like the incredible shock that everyone felt when they saw and then heard Susan Boyle, the frumpy British woman who came out of nowhere, got on a stage at "Britain's Got Talent" and created a world sensation.

Sure, she has talent - she a damned good singer.  But what I think gets lost in some of the discussion about her is that in order for her to sing like that she had to continually practice.  

She was 47 when she stepped on that stage for the first time and the audience laughed when she said her age.  How long did she carry that dream with her - the one that goes "I want to be an international singing sensation?"  Decades?  Had to be.  No one sings like that at her age without keeping the work up, having a clear focus at what you want.  I mean, damn, folks, that's just incredible when you think about it.  She didn't miss a note when she stood on that stage - her voice was strong and resonated like a ringing bell announcing her to the world.  She would not be denied.  She sang the song "I Dreamed a Dream" from the musical Les Misérables.

I still can't watch that video without choking up.

The audience went insane.  For good reason - she was wholly inspirational.  There was this woman who looked like your prematurely-aged grandmother standing up there changing every preconception we had about her and anyone else who looked like her.
There's a great scene in the movie "VisionQuest" that speaks to this phenomena.

The fry cook, Elmo, played marvelously by actor J.C. Quinn tells Matthew Modine, who wants to give up on his dream, the following:

Elmo

I was in the room here one day... watchin' the Mexican channel on TV. I don't know nothin' about Pele. I'm watchin' what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. Next thing I know, he jumps in the air and flips into a somersault and kicks the ball in - upside down and backwards... the goddamn goalie never knew what the fuck hit him. Pele gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium waving it around his head. Everybody's screaming in Spanish. I'm here, sitting alone in my room, and I start crying.
[beat] 
 That's right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species that I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute... let me tell ya, kid - it was pretty goddamned glorious. It ain't the six minutes... it's what happens in that six minutes.

Modine of course wins the match but let's understand and absorb the lesson here - winning is great but just showing up is 99% of it.  Success is then already yours at that point  because you haven't defeated yourself.  You haven't refused to turn away from the challenge of what you're trying to accomplish.

Susan Boyle showed up.  She strode across that stage, stood tall and made the world love her.  I've embed some video of Simon Cowell talking about her in admiration.  Like him or hate him Cowell is a world-renowed judge of talent.  But even more than that, he is a world-renowned judge of who should be a success because he recognizes that those who do succeed won't be denied simply because someone says "you don't fit that mold." 

The Orange County Screenwriters Association has the motto: "Be Inspired, Do Good Work" because it takes both to get what you want.  Be inspired by people like Susan Boyle, but do the work required of you, like she did, to make yourself great.

It's your attitude, stupid - to paraphrase a political catchphrase from the 90's.  You cannot watch Miss Boyle on that stage and not appreciate that that's a huge part of what it takes.   She struck a blow for all of us who have heard, in one form or the other, "you can't do that."  Why, you need to ask those people.  Why can't I?  Just because you didn't or can't doesn't mean that I can't.

Live your dreams by participating in them every day - and remember that just showing up makes that dream a reality already.

To paraphrase legendary college basketball coach John Wooden: it's not who starts the game but who finishes it.