We mature with the damage, not with the years.

How many wrong choices have you made in your life?

I could not be able to count all of the wrong choices that I have made. That would be nearly impossible.

The truth is that we all make choices… some large, some small, and they have various degrees of impact on our lives as a direct result.

We always hope in the course of making wrong choices that we are propelling ourselves in the proper direction and with a little bit of luck, more often than not, we are. But then there are the other choices. The ones that catch you by surprise and make you feel like a fly meeting the windshield of a Mac truck. 

In those moments, we feel obliterated. Literally incapable of action and we are left standing in the darkness trying to sort up from down, left from right and everything is completely discombobulated.

These are the moments in which we truly mature and become a higher version of ourselves. We find an internal strength that propels us into our next journey. 

Maturation is not always a pleasant, in fact, in some cases it is one of the hardest chapters of life. This is why a wrong choice can create significant damage and that significant damage puts us into a position of having to grow or perish. Neither are particularly pleasant, but they are a critical component in our overall life process, are they not?

More often than not, when I find myself in one of these moments of debilitation and fear, the only way I find myself out of whatever predicament I have caused is to get incredibly calm and rationalize as many possible options as might appear plausible under the circumstances.

As Sizzle is readying to go to market and to coordinate with potential investors, it is time for me to take the Illusion Factory out of hibernation and start pursuing new clients. I have not pursued new clients in over a decade, so the prospect of doing so seemed ever daunting.

With a portfolio of thousands of examples of work produced for the worlds’ biggest companies, it seemed as if marketing our own organization should be a piece of cake, but the realization that a decade has passed and our crowning achievement (Sizzle) is really what we have to show for our recent years caused me to contemplate what is the best strategy to start winning new clients. Trying to decide which kind of clients to pursue and how to pursue them makes me feel like the fly on the proverbial windshield. I guess it was akin to “physician heal thyself.”

Reality is always sobering and as a result, we are forced to grow, whether we like it or not. So many people that I care about are going through very difficult chapters in their lives right now. I try my best to be there for everyone, because collectively, we are all creatures who are hoping to thrive. When you hit an impasse and the resulting damage causes you to reevaluate the process, you are clearly in a position to determine your own outcome. Hopefully the lessons you have learned on the way to getting where you are now will propel you through that moment and into safe harbor. 

Happy Wednesday!

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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!