If you’ve followed any of my feeds in the past month, you probably already know how much I loved Mad Max: Fury Road. You can go here, or here to see me wax eloquent on how it’s the platonic ideal of its genre and the best movie of any genre I’ve seen this year.
You know what else? It’s also a model for how to rev up your life to kick more ass in your career, relationships, hobbies and anything else. That feature comes from something I’m certain they had as part of their writing process.
An Awesome Guy
Picture a table in a writing studio. The creative team sits there, batting around ideas. The air smells of stale coffee and cold pizza. They’re in the zone. A writer says “What if we had a huge fleet of apocalyptic death cars chase them into the desert?”
Everybody nods in approval, then the Awesome Guy clears his throat and does his only job.
Awesome Guy: Not awesome enough.
Writer: Okay. What if they had a truck with huge taiko drums rolling into battle with them?
AG: Not. Awesome. Enough.
W: Um, they have an electric guitarist in front, crunching out heavy metal on an impossibly huge speaker rack?
AG: Not. Awesome. Enough.
W: And…um….and his guitar shoots fire?
AG: Getting warmer….
And so it went, until we were presented with a movie that delivers a near-fatal overdose of awesome. I left Fury Road happy and exhausted. If you haven’t seen it, go see it. Like, right now. The blog will still be here when you get back.
What would we be capable of if we could hire an Awesome Guy to talk us through the story editing for our lives?
Me: Gonna go home, watch some TV, maybe fiddle around on Facebook.
AG: Not Awesome Enough.
Me: I’ll stop at the store and get some flowers for my wife.
AG: Not Awesome Enough.
Me: Well, I’ll skip the TV and set up a board game with the kids instead.
AG: Not…awesome…enough!
Etc, until the night ends up with my serving all of my top priorities and surprising those closest to me with how much they mean to me every day. All because my Awesome Guy kept doing his job until I finally got in the right head space to do mine.
Brief plug: that’s part of what I do for a living. I coach writers and small business owners. I’m their Awesome Guy. Tom Callos is one of my Awesome Guys.
Not everybody can afford their very own Awesome Guy, and not everybody who can afford one would benefit from the dynamic. But those people also need an Awesome Guy. They can be their own, or sign up a spouse or sibling or similar helper to do the job.
Because we all need an Awesome Guy.
Have you ever noticed how much more frequently awesome moments happen when you’re immersed in some kind of special time? A night out with your partner? A trip abroad? A party with old friends? That’s not because there’s more awesome in those situations. It’s because you’re letting your Awesome Guy talk louder than usual.
The same opportunities are all around us, all the time. It’s just that we don’t have an Awesome Guy to shout at us until we grab those opportunities, slam them up against a locker, and demand their lunch money.
(Okay…that metaphor might have gotten away from me. But you know what I mean.)
How many of the best moments, relationships and things in your life are there because you listened to your Awesome Guy? How many more might there be right now if you’d listened more often. What can you do right now to turn up his volume and make today better than it was before?
I dare you to spend the next week finding out.