I recently watched Steven Spielberg’s Jaws for the first time ever. And while reading a bit of background on the making of the film, I found out a curious Hollywood fact:
Steven Spielberg decided to skip the shooting of the final scene of Jaws.
The shooting of the entire film was long, difficult, and over-budget. Spielberg thought the crew was disgusted at his inexperience. He expected they would toss him in the water once the final scene’s shooting was complete.
So he just played hooky.
This apparently became a tradition. With all the movies Spielberg has made since, he has never been present for the shooting of the final scene.
And though it might not be obvious, there’s significance in that.
Yesterday, I started to tell you about the six characteristics of a positive attitude.
What I didn’t realize is that handing out unsolicited advice on how to be a better person is sure to sound moralizing or even dumb. Live laugh love, that kind of thing.
That’s why I told you the Spielberg factoid above. It’s interesting because it’s so unusual, particularly for Spielberg.
Spielberg got going with filmmaking as a kid. He shot films with his 8mm camera and his childhood friends as actors. In those days, he learned to do everything himself. Writing the scripts. Building the sets. Operating the camera.
Later, Spielberg got to Hollywood. He started working as a professional director. And he was dismayed that he had to rely on other people. That’s why his skipping the final scene is so significant.
And now let me clamber up on my positivity pulpit.
You might think I’m about to tell you that it’s important to delegate work.
Quite the opposite. At least, when it comes to having a positive mental attitude.
Because the second characteristic of a positive attitude is personal involvement.
You don’t have to be like Steven Spielberg. You don’t have to sew the costumes and turn the klieg lights and feed the film into the camera, all by yourself.
But in order to feel hope or even certainty that you will succeed… and in order to have the drive to actually persevere when the shoot turns long, difficult, and over-budget… you need to be personally involved.
In other words, you have to stop waiting for others to others to achieve your goals or solve your problems for you. This is true even when there is an entire crew of professionals, ready to do the work for you.
For example, yesterday I mentioned the book NLP. It’s where I found these six characteristics of a positive mindset.
According to the book, the six characteristics were distilled from athletes recovering from injury.
Some athletes passively relied on doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. These athletes never achieved a positive attitude about their recovery. As a result, they often didn’t recover fully.
On the other hand, there were athletes who actively did their exercises. Who didn’t just lie there, waiting to be stretched and stimulated by doctors. Who took an active role in the design of their recovery program.
They developed a much more positive attitude. And their results tended to be much better.
So there you go. If you want to be more positive and more likely to achieve your goals, get personally involved.
Along with the other five characteristics in the NLP book. I wrote about one of those already. I’ll write about the other ones in coming days. If you want to read that as it comes out, you might like to get personally involved by signing up to my email newsletter here.