It’s important to be aware of all the great opportunities there are for us out there in the digital world. This post will address some of my beliefs about the opportunity and really getting yourself out there and see.

The World We Live In

Most people sleepwalk through life. It’s a massive realization and something that will change your life when you really let it sink in. When we understand that the majority of people walk through life in a daze, we understand we have a real advantage in life.

By being one of the few who isn’t walking through life in a daze, you have great power. The truth is, we’re bombarded by social conditioning. It’s all around us. Most people have no idea about its existence, let alone its negative effects, so they are completely at its service.

The average person sees this as a standard life path that everyone should aim to achieve: Go to school. Go to high school. Graduate high school and go to college. Do well enough at college to get a decent degree.

The degree gets you a job, so you enter the workplace in an entry – level position working for someone else (most likely a big company). You get married to your high school sweetheart and have 2 kids, raising them in the town you were born in.

You get the ordinary vacation breaks from work and you long for retirement and freedom. You retire at 65.

The way I’ve described that may sound extremely boring and, probably, quite depressing. The truth is, most people live their lives in this cookie-cutter formula. Their parents tell them to go to college, get a good job, meet a nice girl/guy and settle down to raise a family.

Whilst there’s certainly nothing wrong with settling down with a significant other and raising a family, a lot of people are duped into doing this far too quickly. They forsake a life of adventure and discovery for the cookie-cutter, tried and tested method of college-job-family.

How many people do you know who are stuck in a job they hate? With a partner they can never seem to get along with? In a living situation they despise? How many people do you know who say things like, “If only I could have those years back…” or “Youth is wasted on the young…” or even more depressing, “My time is over, I’m stuck doing this now…”

These are the ramblings of people who are walking through life in a daze. Whilst it might be tempting to feel sorry for them (and it’s only partly their fault), they have still consistently made decisions that have landed them where they are. We are responsible for exactly where we find ourselves in our lives. Every decision we’ve made contributes to where we currently are.

That goes for your lifestyle, your career, your business – it’s about everything in your life.

The Difference That Makes The Difference

You are different. Why? Because you know about the social conditioning that holds people back. The conditioning that renders people’s dreams obsolete, whilst they get sucked further and further into a vacuum of broken desires and ever-growing debt.

You Your Voice, Your Market And Elevate Your Career In Filmmaking” href=”https://filmlifestyle.com/filmmaking/find-voice-market-elevate-career-filmmaking/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener” data-lasso-id=”1251″>have a choice. Everyone does. Some people, the people I described above, just learned to forget that they still have a choice.

You have the choice right now to decide exactly where you want to go, exactly what you want from life, and exactly who you want to be. You’re the captain of your own ship. No one can take that from you.

If you want to make money from the videos you make for clients, then the choice is there.

   

If you want to win an Oscar, the choice is there.

If you want to settle down with a partner and start a family before you’re thirty, the choice is yours, too.

Don’t let anyone fool you into following a path you don’t want. Not parents, not teachers, not friends or lovers.

It’s your path. Own it.

Spearheading The Resistance

There’s a war going on. But it’s one that we can win.

As you’ve read throughout this blog, you’ll have to fight many battles in your own mind. But know that you’ll also need to fight battles against the mass of social conditioning in society if you want to succeed in your career or business.

As I’ve already said, the battles we fight are on the inside. Well, they’re also going on in the heads of other people.

For that reason, we have to be aware of the sorts of socially acquired beliefs that people accept as facts, without ever pausing to verify whether or not they’re actually true.

The vast majority of people will never really stop to observe this massive influence on their thinking, and even those who do will never fully realize the extent to which it shapes their perception and interaction in the world.

Let’s look at what social conditioning looks like and how to avoid it in yourself and others…

Some Attributes Of The Socially Conditioned

  • A belief that having money is the key to filmmaking success.
  • A belief that money is the key to business success. It helps, but it’s not everything.
  • Money is scarce.
  • All successful people went to college.
  • In order to be successful, you must be mean to people. This is propagated in the rash of reality shows out there where business-people are constantly arguing and fighting with one another.
  • “It’s who you know not what you know.”
  • You need to work for every hour that you’re paid for, i.e. time = money.
  • People’s value is tied to the day job that they do.
  • There is some “other” that is creating problems (other could mean anything from a group of immigrants to another country’s policies).
  • People who want to improve themselves and get better with business or filmmaking are somehow flawed people.
  • People who want to work hard to get better at something are somehow terrible people.
  • 
I could go on and on, but those paint the picture well enough.

I hope this post helps you on your road to success. Got something to add? I’d love it if you left a comment below!