“You know you will win before you even start.”

The above quote is from four-time Olympic medalist, swimmer Kieren Perkins. It’s a quote that can apply to how each of us can live our lives. Are you living your life with a passionate zeal, or are you going from day to day hoping things will change? It’s been my experience that things don’t change unless you purposefully go after that change, unless you put your mind to it and do the hard work.

Kieren goes on to say:

If you stand up on the blocks in an Olympic games, and you think you can’t win, you won’t. If you do win, it’s because you knew you would, you prepared, trained, practised, stressed and pushed yourself to your absolute breaking point.

You repeated this process again and again until you got to that moment in your preparation, which aligned with your strategy, that meant that when you stood on the blocks you were ready to go.

When I look back at all the scripts I’ve written, I remember thinking years ago that every screenplay I’ve entered into a competition, I would win. I fooled myself into believing I was ready. I wasn’t. It’s taken years of writing scripts, and re-writing them and doing “this process again and again” (as Kieren puts it), to be where I am today, which is still not good enough, but better than yesterday. Practice does make perfect and re-writing does make a better script. I had to learn the craft of writing a script. It never came naturally to me. But I kept doing it. I keep trying. And what has helped this process was sending my scripts out to trusted friends and colleagues where I got honest, critical opinion. Today, I can say with some degree of confidence, although I may not be perfect, I am continually pushing myself to get better.

What are you doing to run the race? What are you doing to get prepared? Are you training? Are you practicing? Kieren says he pushed himself to the absolute breaking point. That may sound extreme, but the point he’s making is if you are going after a certain goal, you must be 100% committed because there will always be someone else who will be more committed than you. So whatever your passion is, do it with absolute conviction. And if you don’t know what your passion is, find it with absolute conviction.

I’m writing a new script right now for a competition in November.   I’ve spent this last month outlining the story about a young man named Zackary who feels like a failure and has never really had a purpose in life (particularly following the circumstances surrounding the death of his father years ago which Zackary witnessed). Our story begins with a tornado, which destroys a church library. In that library was Zackary’s mother Laura who is put into a coma. This incident becomes the catalyst for Zackary to re-examine his life and a past that he is not yet come to terms with.   The script is tentatively called The Great Surrender and speaks on themes of healing and a belief that miracles can happen even in the midst of crippling doubt.

Come November, I’ll be standing on the blocks, entering The Great Surrender into a screenplay competition….and prepared to win.