November 5, 2022 by Brian Weiner No CommentsChanging The World One Thought At A Time., Lessons From The Mountain

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have, you’ll never have enough.

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have, you’ll never have enough.

OPRAH WINFREY

I think my first exposure to Oprah Winfrey was in The Color Purple. She was breathtaking, heart-wrenchingly brilliant in that role. Later, at The Illusion Factory, we were so fortunate to do all the international creative marketing on several of her outstanding productions, including the Emmy Award-Winning Outstanding Movie of the Year, Tuesdays With Morrie, Starring Jack Lemmon in the title role. (He won the Best Actor for this role.) If you have never watched this film, you must go find it (and read the book by Mitch Albon as well) Both truly brilliant.

More importantly, the lessons learned by your exposure to Morrie are mandatory material in life.

Morrie’s philosophy is so readily represented in Oprah’s quote above.

Reality is perceptual.

We see things not as they are, but as we are. It is only through the filter of our own reality that we are able to discern anything in our world. As soon as we opt to make a comparison to what the majority of humanity has or is going through, we are quickly able to put some of the things that are most troubling to us in real perspective.

We may feel exasperated by inflation and increasing gas prices….but imagine for a second what it would be like, living in one of the cities that is getting bombed in the Ukraine? Does the price of gas suddenly seem so ominous in your world?

There are so many resources for us to garner that stimuli to hold our reality-shaping perspectives in position. I have found my own personal refuge in the words of sages of all types. That’s why I share them, in the hopes they pass value of substance. You never know which thought might be “the impetus” that catapults your life in “the” direction.

Ms. Winfrey has been exemplary in promoting, promulgating, and producing extraordinary efforts in this space.

Happy Saturday!

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Written by Brian Weiner

When I was 5 years old, I discovered that the lemon tree in the backyard + dixie cups + water and sugar and I was in business. I have been hooked on that ever since. In 1979, I borrowed $14,000 to create a brand new product... photographic greeting cards with no text on the inside, called Paradise Photography. That was the start of The Illusion Factory. Since then, The Illusion Factory has been entrusted by all of the major studios and broadcasters with the advertising and marketing of over $7 billion in filmed, live, broadcast, gaming, AR, VR and regulated gaming forms of entertainment, generating more than $100 Billion in revenue and 265 awards for creativity and technology for our clients. When I took a break from film school at UCLA to move to Hawaii, my mother did not lecture me. Instead, she took 150 of her favorite aphorisms and in her beautiful calligraphy, wrote them artistically throughout a blank journal. That is the origin of the Lessons from the Mountain series. Since then, on my journeys to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise, I have spent countless hours contemplating words of wisdom from the sages of all races, genders and political persuasions, constantly accumulating the thoughts to guide me on my life path. I hope you enjoy my books. Please let me know your thoughts, as I highly value your feedback!