The Hollywood Commandments Page 11
In my experience, when God is working in your gut, the feelings tend to show up in one of two ways:
1.A strong feeling or compulsion, often coming out of nowhere. For example, the sudden, overwhelming desire to go back to college and get your graduate degree.
2.An overpowering sense that a choice you’re faced with is either right or wrong.
Another example from author Malcolm Gladwell illustrates the power of such intuition. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles bought an ancient Greek statue called a kouros for $10 million after multiple experts certified it as genuine. But then other observers, including an archaeologist, said that they “felt” the statue was not genuine. Their gut instinct spoke so loudly that the museum went against the advice of the experts, tested the statue scientifically, and found that it was indeed a forgery. Score one for gut instinct.
The issue of experts brings up a crucial point about trusting your gut: being mindful of whom you go to for advice and counsel when you want to follow your instincts. When I decided to leave Sony, a number of experienced friends in the business gave me excellent counsel and didn’t try to talk me out of it. However, instead of consulting with someone qualified to address our need, we often consult with friends, family members, or people in our church who have no experience with the career issue we’re facing. Sometimes, those people will try to talk us out of an idea, especially if it doesn’t line up with what they think we should be doing. Remember the idea of putting your talent in a box? This is the same idea: they are trying to contain something that makes them uncomfortable.
But when people try to talk you out of a gut decision that you and they know comes from the Lord, what they’re really saying is, I don’t believe that you have what it takes to make this work. They might not be saying that consciously, and they might be saying it because they really care about you and don’t want to see you crash and burn, but it’s still an expression of a lack of faith. I try to remember that such people usually mean well, but that they’re looking at my gut feeling from a place of fear—fear that I’ll fail—and you should never, ever make a decision out of fear.
Be careful who your counselors are. There are other considerations to keep in mind when people offer counsel about your decision:
•Know who they are.
•Determine if they’re reliable.
•Investigate their agenda.
Accept counsel from people who have more experience at what you’re doing than you do and don’t be so quick to worry about their spirituality. If there are practical issues you need guidance on, you need people who can give you good advice even if they might be of a different faith. I’ve gotten some of the best career advice from colleagues who are different from me in every way. Yet they have experience in the area where I need counsel, and that’s valuable to me.
Above all, when you face critical career decisions, seek out advice from someone who is already where you want to be in your career. Suppose you’re looking to move into a different area of your industry. Someone who is successful in that area will have more knowledge about how it works and who the players are and might give you guidance that will make all the difference.
Now, before you get up in arms, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t seek the guidance of your peers. In certain circumstances, it’s okay. Just don’t make the peer-to-peer advice the only advice you seek, especially when you’re at a crossroads and facing a gut-instinct decision. This is a time when having “virtual mentors” helps because, even if you can’t locate someone with experience to talk with directly, you can research how your virtual mentor handled similar situations and glean pertinent information from that.
Exodus
Decisions based on gut instinct can be risky, and they can lead to mistakes such as failed projects and bad deals. They can also lead to huge successes, and smart organizations encourage their people to trust their gut, take some risks, and even court failure if it has the potential to lead to greater things. But if you’re constantly coming to your superiors with gut-level ideas and being shot down—if they see risk and failure as something to avoid, not encourage—then it might be time to go somewhere that recognizes the value of gut instinct as much as market data.
FIGHT YOUR FEAR
“For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV). Fear. It’s our strongest emotion . . . and the one most likely to prevent you from acting on the gut instinct God is communicating to you. What this boils down to is a tug of war between fear and faith. If you trust that God is guiding you in the right way through your intuition, you’re going to do whatever your gut tells you to, without questioning. But people rarely do that because they don’t trust, not really.
We don’t get enough experience through the church in trusting our intuition, which is strange because intuition and instinct are really the Holy Spirit at work in us. The Holy Spirit is there to guide us and give us knowledge and wisdom. But in order to trust our intuition as a sort of compass for our lives, we first have to trust it for the very first time. Remember Joe Roth? He’s completely confident in trusting his gut because he’s had experience with it. He acted on it once and it worked out, so he did it again. Most of the time, trusting his instinct has paid off for him, so it’s built his confidence. The next time his instinct tells him to try something, he doesn’t even hesitate. He figures out what it means and does it.
At some point, you have to step out in faith and say, “Okay God, I’m going to trust this feeling You’re giving me. I’m not comfortable doing it, it’s scaring me, but I’m going to try it.” Hopefully, it works out reasonably well and you say, “That wasn’t so bad.” You gain confidence. But in the church, we aren’t taught how to use our gut instinct—how to listen to it, harness it, use it to fuel your success, and use prayer to interpret it. We pray because we want God’s best for our lives. We pray because we really want to understand what we’re supposed to do. But no matter how much we plan and analyze, in the end, it comes down to a simple question: do we trust God or don’t we?
There were no statistics that could have told me it was the right time for me to leave Sony, no report on faith-based producers that could have given me the final push. I had an intuition based upon my logical assessment of the environment I was in, how I was feeling, and what I wanted to do with my career in the future. That’s the ideal state: strong, clear intuition combined with your own internal assessment of a number of factors:
1.How are you feeling?
2.Is that feeling due to the environment that you’re in?
3.What other factors are contributing to this feeling?
4.How strongly is your ego involved? Nine times out of ten, if you let your ego guide you, it’s going to lead you in the wrong direction.
Should you look at all the information available to you, like salaries, hiring trends, cost of living in other cities, and that sort of thing? Absolutely. Look at all the information that’s available to you. Use facts and data to help you determine how to follow your gut: when to make your move, what to ask for in a new position, if an offer is fair or not, and so on. But don’t let data be what convinces you to say yes or no to your instinct. If you do, more often than not you’ll make the wrong choice.
Here’s a good process to follow:
1.Trust your gut the first time.
2.See what happens.
3.Learn what you can.
4.Learn to recognize God speaking through your instinct.
5.Trust again.
6.Learn more.
7.Repeat.
Act on your gut instinct once and see what happens. It’s like riding a bike: you’ll never really learn until you take off the training wheels.
Away from the Workplace
Gut instincts drive choices in every area of life, but I find them to be incredibly powerful in romantic relationships. If you’ve read The Wait, you know that Meagan’s and my relationship and marriage were driven by our gut
feelings about each other—instincts that we denied, then listened to, and finally followed into our season of celibacy and wonderful discovery. If we hadn’t listened to God, we might not be together. For instance, I did NOT want to date an actress. So, who did God tell me my spouse was? An actress! And I can’t imagine ever being happier. In relationships, your instincts might draw you to someone who you don’t think is right for you—someone who doesn’t fit The List you’ve drawn up. Throw it away and follow your gut. You might be surprised.
SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLES, SECULAR SUCCESS
I’ve talked a bit about risk and failure, but when it comes to success in the secular world, they bear deeper examination. In the entertainment business, the pattern is persistent: every time Hollywood plays it safe and makes movies based on data and not creative instincts, they turn out junk. Also, every year, it seems like we hear about a handful of visionary filmmakers who defy all the people telling them their idea won’t work, get their picture made somehow, and shock the world with a dark-horse hit.
Ever hear of a guy named George Lucas? Of course you have. George is a legend in the business; one of the reasons I wanted to go to the USC School of Cinematic Arts is because he went there. But early on, nobody believed in George. First, nobody wanted his first major release, American Graffiti; Fox, Warner, MGM, and Paramount all passed on it. Finally, Universal said yes, and the movie came out in 1973 and made $140 million on a $775,000 budget.
You would think that kind of profit would’ve gotten George a green light for his next project no matter what it was. Not so fast. In most industries, the trouble with having a hit is that the powers that be want your next thing to be a carbon copy. Originality terrifies people. But George didn’t want to make another period piece. He had a two-page outline for a space adventure movie based on shows from his childhood like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. But nobody saw the potential, and United Artists and Universal said no. Twentieth Century Fox finally gave George a shot and he spent two years honing the concept into what became something called Star Wars. I trust you’ve heard of it.
There’s something at work here that you’ve got to remember if you want to listen to God in your gut when you make career decisions:
Most people don’t truly believe something will happen until it does.
Even a lot of people of faith do not really believe that God will keep His word and that gut instinct will pay off until after it happens. That’s just human nature. We want proof. We don’t usually think something can happen until it does happen. When you step out in faith based on instinct, you should assume that most people won’t believe you can succeed. It doesn’t make them bad people; it means they’ve yet to find that place where faith really is the substance of things unseen. You might even be there yourself and that’s fine. It’s hard to take a risk purely on faith. But ask yourself this: when you look at the people who don’t believe something is possible until it happens, how are they doing in their careers? Are they playing it safe and going nowhere? Are they happy? Are they doing work with meaning and purpose—work that serves God?
I’ll bet the answer to all three questions is no. If you don’t want to be one of those people, perhaps it’s time you trusted your gut completely, without hesitation, and let God show you what He can do in your career and your life. Let this be an exercise in deepening your faith. Look back at the times in your life when God has spoken to you. What happened when you listened? What happened when you acted upon it? Are there any missed opportunities you could learn from? What might the next step of faith look like for you?
I want you to do something right now. Put both of your hands on your stomach and listen for what you hear. What do you hear God saying to you as you listen to your gut? Then after you listen, ask God, “What are You calling me to do?” And whatever answer He reveals, know that it will require faith. You’ve got to believe it before you do it, and then take steps to achieve it even before you know it’s going to work. The reason God hides in your gut is because He wants us to become more proficient in exercising faith because faith is the only thing that makes us acceptable to him (Romans 5:1).
USING INSTINCT TO ADVANCE YOUR CAREER
In trying to have a more fulfilling, more financially rewarding career, the best advice I can give you is to listen. Pay attention to gut feelings that pull on you with powerful emotions—compulsions that won’t leave you alone. Those are strong signs that God is working to lead you in a new direction.
This is where prayer can be a powerful tool. Prayer quiets the mind so you’re not hearing the noise of your thoughts, leaving you open to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. Prayer helps you determine who is speaking through your intuition, God or you. We all have our own internal voice that’s sometimes driven by forces like ego, fear, greed, or envy. How do we determine whether it’s God or you? Prayer. If your instinct doesn’t have a tinge of fear or those other negative feelings and seems to have sprung into your spirit fully formed, it’s God saying, “I have something I think you should do.”
I pray for understanding of my gut instincts every day. Should I trust my feelings about the direction of a new TV show? Should I buy this script or that one? Those are instincts driven by experience, but I need to know if I’m coloring my instinct with the desire to copy what some other producer did or to follow some trend. Prayer helps give me clarity, and it will do the same for you. Other tools that will help turn your gut into a powerful career-building resource:
•When in doubt, take the risk. It might seem counterintuitive, but you actually risk more by playing it safe than you do by daring to be original. Trusting your gut and taking risks is how you come up with truly original ideas, and those are what make careers. Whether it’s an idea for a new product, a business model, a work of art, or a way to save your company money, risk speaking and following it. At the very least, if the idea doesn’t pan out, you’ll earn respect for your courage.
•Know your industry. Read, attend conferences, network, learn every facet. That will help you follow up on your instinct-driven decisions with smart actions. This will also help you know whom you can trust and who has a sketchy track record.
•Look for signs. God works in signs and symbols, and when He really wants you to act on a gut feeling, He’ll often send signs your way. They might not be neon signs saying, “Take the job,” but they could be new people coming into your life, details falling into place perfectly, or strange quirks of timing, like the job you covet at a rival company becoming available just as you’re thinking about leaving your current employer. Pay attention to the signs. They’re not random.
•Don’t be afraid to upset some people along the way. In going after what you feel in your gut, there’s rarely room for compromise, and that can make some people mad. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable. As long as you’re straight with everyone and don’t torch a relationship deliberately, don’t be afraid to ruffle some feathers in following the path God’s laid out for you.
•Live your values. Your best chance to avoid setting fire to any bridges while you follow your instincts is to adhere to your Christian values. Be fair and honest. Communicate. Keep your word. Deliver what you promise when you promise. Keep things confidential when asked to. If you have commitments, live up to them before you move on. Care about people. Do those things and no matter what God’s voice in your gut tells you to do next, you’ll always earn people’s respect.
THOU SHALT
»Pay attention to coincidences.
»Look for people in the position you want to be in to be your wise counselors.
»Write down your crazy, high-risk ideas so you don’t forget them.
»Have faith that God will lead you where you should go.
THOU SHALT NOT
»Look for logic or patterns in instinct. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason in what God’s asking you to do, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
»Give the doubters power over you.
»Procrastinate and miss God’s wind
ow of opportunity.
6
YOU GET WHAT YOU NEGOTIATE (NOT WHAT YOU’RE WORTH)
Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
—John F. Kennedy
Over my twenty years in Hollywood, I’ve learned a great deal about the importance of being able to negotiate, not just from a business perspective but also from a practical one. During my last contract cycle as an executive, I was negotiating for a contract that would give me:
•The freedom to make different movies for different divisions.
•The ability to specialize in making some faith-based and urban-genre projects while still developing and overseeing more mainstream projects.
•The opportunity to have flexibility in my schedule so I could travel and continue to build my life as a speaker and author.
When it came down to that negotiation, I took the initiative and created a twelve-page PowerPoint presentation that clearly articulated what I wanted to do. I made the presentation to then–Sony Pictures Entertainment chairmen Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal and to Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad.
They loved it. They told me that they’d never had an executive come to them with such a clear vision and take the time to lay it out in such a concise manner. They all said, “Let’s do it.” But here’s a lesson in negotiation: mutual agreement is one thing, sorting out the details is another. Nobody knew how to structure my deal because they’d never done one like it before. A few days later, they made me an initial offer that was good but didn’t give me the flexibility to fully execute everything I had laid out in my proposal. I turned it down. Strike one. They went back to the drawing board and came back with another offer that gave me some of the flexibility, but not the resources to acquire material. I said, “If I accept this offer in this form, how will I execute on everything you want me to execute on?” Strike two.