Monday February 2, 2009 I love the movie Groundhog Day. In it, Bill Murray’s character finds himself reliving February 2nd over and over and over again. It seems that no matter what he does all day and all night, at 6:00am he will once again awaken to the same day he just had. He gets into a philosophical discussion with two drunks and asks what would you do if you knew you’d get to live today all over again?
His companion asks, “You mean with no consequences for your actions?”
“Yes,” Bill Murray’s character says, “exactly”. He then proceeds to do some pretty shady things, like picking up women usng info he gleaned from them the day before, a day that no one but he remembers. At first, he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realisation that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing every day. The more Phil relives the same day, the more he’s forced to look at other people’s lives, and something unusual happens: he begins to care about them. He starts to respect people, he begins to want to help others and try to make their lives easier.
What would you do if you knew that no matter what you did today, tomorrow you’d get a chance to relive it all over again, or whatever else you wanted, ad infinitum? What would you spend each of the 24 hours from 6:00a.m. doing? Where would you go? What would you have for breakfast? Who would be there with you? What would you spend the afternoon doing? The evening? Where would you be? How would you be dressed?
And I like the idea that if I am feeling like I am stuck in a rut and doing the same things over and over with the same people again and again, that all I have to do is approach everything with a new outlook. An outlook that says “let me help,” an outlook that says, “we’re all in this together.” An outlook that says, “together we can help make it easier for everyone.” That’s what transforms where you are from a prison to an open road, taking what you see and who you see right in front of you, and making a heaven of it.
Re-writing the movie that you star in with these friends and family members is what transforms relationships and makes life a heaven on Earth for you. So if you were going to re-write today’s script and it would play out tomorrow, what would you do? Who would you say what to?
You’ve got the power to pre-pave your future to be whatever you wish it to be. Spend just 10 minutes twice a day doing creative visualization of a scenario you would like to experience. Really throw yourself into it. Bring up that feeling you get in your heart when you are experiencing it. Every time you do that, you are vibrating in harmony with it, and you are attracting it to you.
So, starting tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m., you get up and it’s Groundhog Day all over again.
What will you do differently?