Estimated read time: 5 min

Hey there,

Happy Sunday ☀️

Let me ask you something before we begin.

When you woke up this morning, which part of you woke up first?

The part of you with your name, your job, your bank balance, your list of things to worry about later in the day, or the one who noticed them, one by one, floating past the window of your attention while you sipped whatever you were sipping feeling grateful for another day in Earth School?

Hold that question. I'll come back to it in a moment.

Earlier this week I spent a lot of time in my filming studios and doing a photo shoot.

The filming was the first proper shoot for something I have been building for a while and that I will be telling you more about over the coming weeks, and I want to say two things about it before we go anywhere.

The first is that filming teaching material is a specific kind of work. You are saying something that carries great significance into a lens that has never met the person on the other side of It, and has the flavour of a conversation held with no one, and with everyone, at the same time.

The second is that Archie was carrying real main character energy during many parts of the photo shoot process, and felt that he just had to be in the spotlight.

Watch a dog like Archie for one minute, there. He does not stop halfway across the room to check whether he is good enough, or tall enough, or well-trained enough, or whether the cameras were expecting him. He does not compare himself to the collie he saw on Instagram this morning. He does not run a private conversation in his head about whether the film crew have already made a decision about who he is. He just walks into the shot and looks into the lens with the confidence of someone that has no doubt that the whole thing was always about him.

And here is where Archie has an advantage that many humans lost a long time ago.

You Are Meant To Be The Main Character 🎬

Let me hand you the frame that lives at the centre of my work.

Every human being alive is the lead actor of the movie of their own life. Every human being alive is also the writer of that movie. Every human being alive is also the director of that movie. Main character energy (i.e. moving through your day as if the story is actually being written from where you are standing, not being handed to you by someone else) is not a personality trait some people were born with and others were not. It is your factory setting.

In 35 years of doing this work, there, almost every person I have taught has arrived at my door believing something else. They have arrived believing they were an extra in someone else's film. A background character in the office someone else runs. A supporting act in the marriage. A minor role in the story of the family they came from. And they have arrived with a private, quiet, unshakeable sense that they must be missing whatever it is that other people seem to have.

Let me tell you what other people have that you think you do not.

Nothing.

There is nothing missing. There is only a set of scripts that were written into you before you were old enough to notice a pen was in the room.

Why Archie Doesn't Have This Problem 🐾

Archie has never had imposter syndrome. Not once in his life.

He has never had low self-esteem. He has never worried about whether he is enough. He has never once looked at the reflection of himself in the window and asked whether he deserves to be in the shot. He has never held himself back from the mark he wanted to stand on because someone else might roll their eyes at him for standing there.

And it is not because Archie is more evolved than you are. It is because Archie was never told he wasn't.

But many people were told, there. Very early. Before they could name what was happening. By parents doing their best with what they had been told before you arrived. By teachers under-resourced and over-tired. By a culture that had a very specific job for you and a very specific set of shapes it needed you to squeeze into so the machine kept working the way the previous generation had built it to work.

Not because they were lazy. Not because they were cruel. Because that is what the world does to a person between the age they arrive and the age they are handed the script.

And here is the piece that matters most. That script has been running their movie ever since, quietly, automatically. Every day. In the background of every decision they have made about what they were and were not allowed to reach for.

Now let me turn this back on you.

The meeting this week you were quiet in when you had the better answer. The idea you talked yourself out of writing down, because someone somewhere had probably already thought of it. The relationship you have quietly shrunk yourself inside of, so the other person did not have to feel the size of who you actually are. The room you walked into and immediately started calculating whether you deserved to be in.

That is not you. That is the script.

The person underneath the script is the one Archie already is. That person does not have to be built. That person only has to be remembered.

And that, there, is the real work. It is not about becoming more. It is about un-learning the parts of you that were never yours in the first place, and giving the seat back to the version of you that never left it.

A Note On Tomorrow 🕊️

Tomorrow, there, Monday the 21st of September, is the International Day of Peace.

I have watched a lot of readers wait for the world to become peaceful before they let themselves feel it. That is the script talking. Peace is not a circumstance you are waiting for. Peace is the seat the main character sits in while the movie is being filmed around them.

Tomorrow morning, before the phone, before the news, before the first email of the week: sit in gratitude for one minute. That is the whole practice 🙏.

You are the lead actor of the movie of your own life, there. You are also its writer, and its director. You always were. The only real work, from here, is to catch which parts of today were actually yours, and which were handed to you by someone who had been handed them first.

More on the training that I’ve been filming in the coming weeks. Stay close.

So tomorrow morning, when you sit down for the first cup of the day, ask yourself: who is holding the script?

Have a beautiful Sunday.

All the best,