Chapter 4

The Silver Screen

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When I looked at my watch, it was a little past 1:00 a.m. We had been talking for almost six and a half hours. That is, I had been talking. As with our first meeting, he asked me question after question after question.

We spoke little or not at all about Network Marketing. The entire conversation had been about me – my past, present and future. And what was fascinating to me, was that I – who always watched the clock like a hawk – had no sense of the time passing.

Instead, I was left with a feeling of tremendous peace – and freedom. I was light – physically feeling younger than I had for years. It was as if all my worries, my anxieties about my circumstances and my doubts about the future had disappeared completely. I felt somehow more hopeful and very much alive.

Two parts of our conversation I shall never forget: we spoke about my “values” and my “life’s purpose.”

Throughout our talk, he would ask me if such and such were one of my values. At first, this question threw me. I wasn’t sure what he meant.

He explained that values – as he was using the term – had to do with those essential qualities that were most important to me. And he used the example of success.

Success was certainly an important value of mine and I said so. Then he asked, “What does success mean to you?”

I said, “You know –”

“No, I don’t know,” he interrupted. “No one but you knows what success means for you. The best I can do would be to tell you what I think success means for you, and that’s not the same thing. I’m interested in what you mean – not in what I think you mean.”

Okay, I thought, and I took a deep breath and explained what success meant to me.

When I had finished, he summarized what I said: “So for you, success means being able to live your desires and dreams?”

I agreed.

“And what does success provide for you?” he asked.

I thought for a moment, then said, “Freedom.”

“Good,” he said. “Values come in pairs, one providing for the manifestation of the other. Just one by itself is incomplete . . . ”

“Wait!” I interrupted. “You mean, always? Why in pairs?”

I suddenly felt a little self-conscious, as if I’d jumped in too impatiently. I think I actually blushed slightly. “Or, were you about to explain that?” I apologized.

He seemed to enjoy the interruption immensely. “Great question!” he beamed. “Let me answer it with another: Why did God tell Noah to bring two of each animal onto the Ark?”

The look of utter bewilderment on my face must have been quite comical – it drew a good-sized version of his trademark laughing explosion.

“Ah . . . ha . . . !” He wagged his finger instructively, like a professor making an important point – “We need another example, perhaps – a more practical one?” He continued, still chuckling. “Tell me: do you know why you have two eyes?”

“Bifocal vision . . . depth perception,” I repeated from school-days memory.

“Right! Very good. It doesn’t seem like we’d really need two, does it? – either eye works just fine on its own. But working together as a pair, they add to ‘vision’ the perception of ‘depth.’ And,” and here he brought up the mock-professor finger again, “one eye ‘anchors’ the vision of the other – gives it a reference point.

“It’s the same with your values. One supports the other. Together, they allow your vision to operate in depth.”

I could grasp the poetry of this, but knew I didn’t really understand what he was saying, and said so with my face.

“That’s okay,” he assured me. “Look at what you were just telling me. Do you see how ‘success’ and ‘freedom’ are interrelated for you?”

I replied that I did. I remember telling him how much of my life, I’d felt trapped . . . how without success, I felt like a prisoner.

“So you might say,” he continued for me, “that ‘success,’ for you, provides for the expression of ‘freedom.’ That the one actually gives the other a reference point, a context for its existence.”

“Right, I see – they work together . . .” I was starting to get the sense of what he was saying – and it did truly feel like some sort of “sight” was being restored!

“My guess,” he said, “is that you feel imprisoned to some extent about everything in your life. That’s because your values of success and freedom are not being honored.”

As we continued talking, I discovered other sets of values I had: appreciation and recognition . . . adventure and fun . . . communication and power . . . service and contribution . . . partnership and leadership . . . relationship and intimacy. There were others. These seemed the most important.

Then he asked, “What is your life purpose?”

That was the biggest question anyone had ever asked me.

What was my life purpose?

I didn’t know and told him so.

“I want you to do something with me,” he said. “It’s a game I play when I want to know something, but just don’t get it yet.”

I agreed to play, and asked what I needed to do.

He told me to close my eyes, sit with my back fairly straight, rest my hands on my legs, and take a couple of long and slow, very deep breaths and relax as completely as possible.

I did.

Then he said, “What I want you to do now is to use your imagination. I want you to pretend that you’re standing in front of a movie theater. There’s a big crowd outside waiting to get in. You look up on the marquee and there, in huge letters, is your name, and it says, ‘The True Story of His Incredible Life.’

“Go on in and take a seat.”

I did.

Then he told me to imagine the lights dimming, the music coming up louder and the movie beginning on the screen.

He had me tell him all about the scenes I imagined on the screen. He kept asking questions about what was happening in the movie, pressing me for details of the events and people I was seeing. After a while, he stopped asking me questions and sat quietly, while I watched that movie of my life continue vividly before my eyes.

I have no idea how long it was before I opened my eyes. When I did, he was sitting there smiling at me. He asked, “Well, what was that like?”

“That was wild!” I replied. “I’ve never done anything like that in my life.”

“Great,” he said. “What happened?”

I described a number of scenes: some funny ones, a few sad ones (from when I was growing up) – and a whole bunch of things I’d never done before but that were in my movie anyway.

I was receiving an award in front of a hall full of people giving me a standing ovation . . . I was teaching or presenting to another group of people who were all tremendously moved by what I was saying . . . I’d written a book . . . There were many scenes of me traveling in far-off lands like Japan and China and Russia . . . It was astonishing how many different and wonderful things were there!

“How did it end?” he asked.

“It was funny,” I told him. “It ended right here, right in this room. But instead of you sitting where you are now, I was sitting there. And there was a young woman sitting here where I am now, and I was asking her about her life’s purpose.”

He closed his eyes and we sat in silence for some time. Then, he looked at me and nodded his head up and down.

“So, what’s your life purpose?” he asked again.

“Teaching,” I said. “I’m a teacher . . . and a writer – and what I teach people is how to be successful and free. I show them how to achieve their life’s purpose. And,” I added, “I make a profound difference in thousands, even millions of people’s lives.”

I cannot tell you what an extraordinary sensation I experienced as I said those words.

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Click here to read: Chapter 5: A Goal Bigger Than Winning