An Original Lifetime Movie: My Life
#Lifetime #dramaqueen #drama

Recently, a literary agent e-mailed me, asking if my story was true, because he had a Lifetime producer looking for real tales about real people. He asked me to write a paragraph about my life and send it to him to pitch to this producer. Here is what I wrote:

At twenty-five I preached on street corners in NYC as an in-the-closet Pentecostal minister. One day, I heard a still small voice say, “I cannot be contained in a book or a law or even in a religion. Dig deeper, reach further inside to find me, and you will find your Authentic Self.” On that day, I left religion, came out of the closet, and began a journey of travel, temporary work, and a study of many religions and psychology. I also began writing, editing, and journaling—particularly dreams, as Carl Jung became a favorite author. One year before 9-11, I had a dream I was in a stairwell, running down the steps with many people screaming and crying. I asked a frantic man what had happened. He yelled, “A plane crashed into the building! Get out fast!” It took almost six months for my partner (who worked in the World Trade Center) and I to finally move to Nashville, Tennessee, where I would teach yoga and be a clinical hypnotherapist and life coach.  When you grow up in the GLBT community, you learn early not to judge quickly, as you have been judged unfairly, which opened my mind up to more possibility and my heart to more personal discovery—especially spiritually. My highest calling is definitely helping people get rid of the blocks that keep them from Finding Authentic You—Real Advice for an Authentic Life, which is the name of my book.
I realized, after I wrote this paragraph, that my story didn’t seem real at all. In fact, I felt as if I had fabricated a fictional representation of my own life, because the facts seemed much bigger than life. Yet, each one of my truths, bigger than the next, all seemed to gather in a large mess in the center of the page and look like an unscripted reality show called: The Real Lives of a Southern Homosexual Housewife.

Every good story takes a protagonist, a person who becomes our hero. To go against the will of the hero—making the plot thicken—a story needs an antagonist, which can be anything from God or nature, an evil partner, a narcissistic parent, or a job. When I look back at my life, the antagonists have been all of the above and more. I began to ask myself the question: “Am I a drama queen?” Then, I trembled in my shoes. Holy shit, this life coach has actually been through more drama than most of his clients! Damn, that was scary. Even scarier, I also recognized that telling my story had become a daily event. I have to recap and summarize my life over and over again to teach my clients not to end up on a dead end road. So, when I present the question: “Are you your story, or is your story you,” am I actually speaking to myself?
My story has created the compassion that solves problems for thousands of people. If I hadn’t had all these terrible things happen to me my entire life, I would never have had the real-life understanding to get into the deepest places of souls to help pave a new pathway toward the light and truth. So, I’m thankful for my past, but certainly don’t want to relive any more drama. I believe that sincerely.

I have many clients and some friends whose have lives that are one drama after another. Often, these dramas don’t even seem to be self-induced. One friend now has had great jobs disappear overnight because of downsizing, then he got fired from another, then had his pay docked at another for taking time to go to a funeral. He has had to move 7 times in three years. He asked me, “What am I doing wrong?” I had to really search for the answer to this question. Why? Life’s lessons are not situational. Our true dramas are to help us learn the hard lessons of human life.

To discover the answers to your hardest questions, you must be strong-willed enough to sit at the feet of Creator God and ask: “What do I need to do learn from this life’s lesson?” Usually, when after you ask, the answer is revealed. But you must listen and not be afraid to learn a hard lesson. When you hear from God (and this could be through the advice of someone else, in a dream, on a television show, through the metaphors of nature), then you must take this advice and utilize it to the nth degree. Then, and only then, will your life begin to change, as mine has.

Does this mean that the lessons will stop? Perhaps, not. But, I guarantee that the cycle of this same lesson happening over and over again, will discontinue. All Spirit needs is your undivided attention. When you listen to your heart and to the metaphors of your life, everything will change, including your Original Lifetime Movie!

[Chosen to show his new hypno-therapeutic techniques on The Learning Channel (TLC) and also given the opportunity to teach at the world conference for Learning, and Given the award of excellence for Helping Overcome Obesity in Nashville, Bo Sebastian, the writer and director ofFinding Authentic You and Uncommon Gay Spiritual Warrior, helps people such as you, make SIGNIFICANT CHANGE with habits, find your SOULMATE, your PASSION, reach YOUR DREAMS, and dictate your own FUTURE. Challenge yourself with one of his 13 books, healing CDs (weight loss, meditation, smoke cessation and more) or his Yoga DVD on Amazon or Amazon/Kindle: Click Here]