The Script of Your Life

 

Dear reader, please find a quiet and secluded place to read this article—a place where you are alone and uninterrupted. Keep an open mind. The piece carries vital personal mastery insight. It bears a tried, tested, and trusted approach drawn on by serial achievers to pull off elite performance and gargantuan results. 

Imagine, one Sunday afternoon, you are sitting in a Starbucks and sipping and savoring your hot cappuccino. You are reading a new book entitled, ‘How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk,’ by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish. The ambiance is exquisite. The vibe is good. People sit at tables in ones, twos, threes, and fours, enjoying their coffee beverages. Some are reading books and newspapers on Kindle and hard copies for pleasure. Others are chatting heartily. Yet others are engaging each other in endless discourses, smiles, and laughter. Tracy Chapman’s hit song - Give Me One Reason - is playing in the background. Asteria espresso coffee-making machine hisses. Cheerful baristas, dutifully, move with agility and poise from one table to another, taking orders and serving smiling coffee imbibers. Television screens perched in the corners of the shop showcase Starbucks’ enviable products. Yes, jaw-dropping commercials. It feels great to be here. You feel on top of the world. On cloud nine. Life is good [for you].

All of a sudden, you are confronted by a stranger. A tall weird-looking man. A hoodlum. Wearing a black overcoat and woolen gloves. Masked in a black hood. Brandishing a gun – a silencer piston that kills at close range without any sound. He walks toward your table, keeping the piston precisely pointed at you. Breathing in puffs like a bull running away from a slaughterhouse, he aims the point of the piston at the temple of your head. You are held at gunpoint. He is ready to pull the trigger and blast the white stuff out of your head if you dare move by an inch. Or you do not obey his orders. Then, he dips his left hand into the pocket of his overcoat, fishes out a pen and a scroll of creased white paper, and throws them on your table. He looks at you without saying anything. In Zen style, he beckons you to pick up the materials. With a hostile and harsh voice, he orders you to write something on the pieces of paper. “. . . mate, on the pieces of paper that I have given you, draft the story of your life. You have sixty minutes. Yes, one hour to write an account of your life.” Having said this, the hoodlum relaxes, withdraws the gun from your head, and puts it back into the pocket of his overcoat. He is not yet done with you. He sits down, right opposite you, still breathing in puffs and staring at you like a hyena would watch over its prey, waiting for you to produce the script of your life. 

What would you write about ‘you’? What common vocabulary would you use to describe 'you'? How are you going to tell your story? Yes, your unique statement. How would you introduce the tale about 'you'? How would you end the script? And, remember you have just about sixty minutes to churn out the script of your life. 

Before you read any further, pause. Take a few minutes to jot down your points in response to the hoodlum’s instructions. This will immensely increase your understanding.

If you are like most people who have taken this exercise before, you would start scripting the story of your life by going back in history – your childhood, youthhood, and adulthood – skating and scanning the eras for breakthroughs and heartbreaks. Recording moments that you had with friends, family, and significant others that made your heart sing and sink. Then, respectfully, hand in the script to the hoodlum. 

If you take this approach, verily, you are courting trouble for yourself. The hoodlum will step up and stomp on you. Why? Because you did not follow his instructions. The instructions were that you should write the story of your life. Yes, your life. 

The life of any living organism - yours and mine included - has two distinct points: the start date and the end date. According to Gallup, ninety percent of the examinees who take this exercise capture the story of their life in part - from date of birth to the present only. Not in full. The majority of the interviewees omit the most important part of the script, which is the future part of their lives. This is the most crucial part of your life that the hoodlum wants to see in the script. This is not to say that the past is not important. No. It is a valuable part of the script. But it is history. It is gone. You cannot control it. Whether it was laden with colossal high achievements or not, it can only be used as an academy to create a new life. Focus on the future. The sages from the east put it better than I can, “. . . the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.”

It has also been observed that people who take this exercise do not only write the story of their life in part but concentrate on writing negative elements of their past – that they grew up with abrasive parents; . . . that the spouse was an alcoholic and never took care of the family; . . . that they missed out on promotions because their boss was a narcissist; . . . that food was responsible for their weight gain; . . . that they failed to land their dream job due to the nepotism tendency of the interviewers. A litany of negatives.  If you are the sort of person who always goes back over life, whining and complaining about the past - focusing on and mulling over the difficult path you have traveled - verily, you are not only assigning and losing your native power to the situations but bringing more difficult circumstances into your present and future life. The truth of the matter is that you can either grieve over a dysfunctional past or look forward to a seamless sky-blue future but you cannot do both. Impossible. Make a new start. Let go of the past. The question remains - what do you want to achieve during the remainder of your life? Write the answer in the script. Create your whole life in advance. The famed humorist and author, Prentice Mulford, may have said these words a long time ago. They are however still valid today, “. . . a person who sets his mind on the dark side of life, who lives over and over the misfortunes and disappointments of the past, prays for similar misfortunes and disappointments for the future. If you see nothing but ill luck in the future, you are praying for such ill luck and will surely get it.” 

There is a technique for better living that I learned in diaspora from the maharaja many years ago when I was looking for answers to life’s mysteries. While I sometimes forget to implement the wisdom, I try as much as possible to keep it in mind. It is a powerful praxis that positively transforms run-of-the-mill organizations and poor performing individuals into high performers and turns high performers into super stars. 

Zander letter is a standard that has been popularized by leadership coaches, globally, to elicit elite performance and gargantuan results in life and business. The canon requires that one projects oneself to a date in the future. This is an imaginary date that marks the end of one’s life. Write a letter addressed to yourself. Introduce the letter with a salutation to ‘you,’ as follows: ‘Dear [write your name here].’ Place yourself at a date in the future, work backward, and write down the practical steps, decisions, and choices that you took to achieve the goals and milestones that you wanted to achieve in your life. Be as detailed as possible. Jot down all the insights that you acquired, and all the high points that you attained during the years as if those accomplishments were already in the past, earned and enjoyed. Present the accomplishments as if they were all history. You are looking at them from a distant date in the future. Capture the impact or significance of the milestone. Once the letter has been finalized, it no longer becomes an ordinary script, but a sublime blueprint. A roadmap to your high calling. Yes, a roadmap about how you will live your life going forward. A roadmap to your successful life.

Many professionals have used and continue making use of the concept with enduring positive results. Top Formula One racers use the concept to navigate the circuitous race routes. Academicians draw on the principle to improve students’ scores and grades. Leading business executives and titans of industry make use of it for strategic planning. Dieticians, beauticians, commercial farmers, faith healers,  chess players, and coders all employ the methodology in their orbits. It is a tried-tested-trusted principle that if used in an approved and proper manner, generates and guarantees a happier, wealthier, and healthier life. 

The concept was first used by Benjamin Zander, a university music professor at New England Conservatory. It has since then been synonymous with him. Professor Zander was frustrated by poor performance of his students. The students were always anxious about the end of semester examinations. Paralyzed with what psychologists refer to as purpose anxiety, the students were becoming less creative. The students’ overall performance was getting worse. 

One day, Zander decided to find a solution to the problem. He did something radical. Something that he had never done before. At the beginning of the semester, he gave every student in his class a grade A (highest grade). In return, the students were instructed to write a letter to the professor on how he or she got the highest grade. The letter was written and addressed to Mr Zander, and it was introduced as follows, “Dear Mr Zander, I got an A in music because . . .” The students were directed to describe in as much detail as possible how they came to achieve the extraordinary grade as though it had already happened. The results did not only astonish the professor and music students, but the entire student body on the campus. Whereas students in other classes got dismal scores and grades, every student in Zander’s class got an A. Was it not Napoleon Hill who asserted, “. . . whatever the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.”  

Have you ever wondered what your life could look like a year, five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty-five years, or forty years from now? Most of us feel stuck, overwhelmed, and unsure about how to shape our future. We enroll in countless personal development programs without seeing tangible results. Perhaps you may have heard a friend or workmate, disclosing, “. . . I have tried different personal growth strategies but still feel stuck in one place;” “. . . I work hard but I hardly garner traction in my achievements;” “. . . I am ready for growth but I do not know how to go about it.” It is not their fault. Many people feel like this because they chase what leadership coaches refer to as ‘surface-level fixes.’ Let the truth be revealed – personal growth is not a quick fix. You do not grow yourself by reading one book, attending three seminars, watching five podcasts, or passing three professional examinations. Personal growth is not an overnight activity. No. Personal growth is a marathon. Personal growth is a continuous process. It has a start date but has no end date. Personal growth is intentional. Not accidental. Personal growth is about consistently having and implementing a customized measurable plan that removes barriers to achievement over a long period of time. A plan that suits the attainment of your unique goals and overcoming challenges. A plan that transforms. One such plan is Zander's letter. Oh, lest I forget, what is the cardinal premise of the script of your life?