A couple weeks ago, I made the mistake of looking up a clip from The Godfather on YouTube.
Since then, YouTube has been serving me up a steady diet of Al Pacino interviews, which I of course have allowed myself to be “force-fed.” At least I found out the following curious anecdote:
During the shooting of a scene in the Godfather, Pacino was supposed to jump into a moving car. But he missed the car and almost broke his ankle.
Pacino said later he was shocked by the feeling of relief that passed over him.
“Thank you God,” he said as he lay on the ground. “You’re gonna get me out of this film.”
Pacino had felt like an underling on set, unwanted and unfit for the role of Michael Corleone.
“This injury could be my release from that prison,” Pacino said later.
Of course, that’s not how it ended up. The director, Francis Ford Coppola, liked Pacino too well. That, plus a bunch of corticosteroid injections, meant Pacino stayed in the movie.
In that way, the career of Al Pacino – from young theater actor, talented, unknown, but hopeful, to massive Hollywood star and international celeb, jaded, paranoid, and alcoholic — mirrored the progression of Michael Corleone in the Godfather — from the modest, good, patriotic son with plans of a respectable career, to ruthless head of the Corleone mob family, addicted to control and power, even at the cost of everything in his family and inside himself.
Before I get you too depressed, I wanna make it clear:
This email is not about the vanity of pursuing any kind of achievement or success in life.
Over the next few days, I’m promoting Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training.
Tom’s story is that he quit his high-powered London banking job in order to seek enlightenment. Enlightenment found, Tom ended up going back to the bank.
Curious, right?
The first time around at the bank was miserable, says Tom. The second time around has been enjoyable, stress-free, and even fulfilling.
What made the difference is what Tom calls the Subtraction Method.
The Subtraction Method is not about the kind of minimalism that involves living in a hut in the backwoods of Montana, shooting and skinning rabbits and melting snow for drinking water.
Rather, it’s about a different kind of minimalism, one that has to do with ideas and attitudes.
The end result can be that you achieve all the external success you think you want now, and you do it on such terms that you’re not eaten out from inside like Michael Corleone or Al Pacino.
Or the end result can be you don’t achieve the external success you think you want now, and you find out that that’s perfectly fine, because what you thought you wanted is not what you actually want.
Here is where I start waving my hands and waffling and mumbling a little too much. Because the Subtraction Method is not my area of expertise. Rather it’s Tom’s area of expertise.
That’s why I’d like to invite you to sign up to his training. The training is free. It’s happening next Wednesday, Nov 6, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I’ll be there. If you’d like to be there as well, you can register to get in at the link below: