02.13.2006
What's up? This week, I'm going to talk about Driftwood and I went over to watch a screening at Ricky Ullman?s house, doing YRG with Gayle on KTLA, my latest corporate speaking gig, and what happens when you mix Apples and water...and I don't mean apples you eat, I mean my dear departed Apple PowerBook laptop.
Well,
last week I flew into Orlando, Florida to do my largest corporate
speaking gig to date. Over the past ten years, I've been speaking
at high schools and colleges across the country. We're talking about
Compton High School in Los Angeles, where around 90% of the kids
are in some kind of gang. I've even spoken at Yale not once but twice.
Over the last two years, I've even done a few small corporate gigs
speaking to 50 - 100 people. Along the way, I've reinvented and reinvented
my presentation. One of my presentations is titled "An Inspirational
Conversation with DDP". The core of the presentation is how you can
learn to "live Life at 90%". The formula to that is that life is
10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. In other
words, things happen in our personal and professional lives on a
daily basis that we have no control over. The one thing we have constant
control over is how we react to the situation, our mind sets. Throughout
the presentation, I give examples my life and others that will help
you live life at 90%. I do this through humor, pictures, and video
mixed with honesty and candor. Leading into this event, in October
and November, I was strictly working on my movie project, Driftwood.
Driftwood took up every moment of my time and all of my focus and
energy. The day we finished shooting, I took off for a 3 1/2 week
book tour for YRG? Yoga for Regular Guys, which also took all of
my focus. After that came the holidays and on January 3rd, I finally
sat down to write my latest reinvention of "Living Life at 90%".
What you need to understand is that this is a one hour monologue
that I have just totally written and have to memorize since it's
completely different from any other version I've had to do until
now...and let's not forget that I still have dyslexia and ADD.
Anyway,
through many hours of rehearsal and rewrites and the help of my friends
and mentors, Marlon, Dan and Tim, I finally had what I consider my
best work to date. I did a rehearsal the night before with some friends
and really feel good about it. The next morning, I leave for Orlando.
I get off the plane around 6:30 PM really feeling at 90% about everything.
I walk into the Crown Room at Delta to check my email and grab my
iPod to listen to some tunes. When I reach into my bag to pull my
iPod out, the bag is soaking wet. I panic, zip open the bag and find
out the iPod is dry so everything is cool. Then I look down at my
carry-on bag and see that my Mac PowerBook has puddles of water all
over it. I grabbed the PowerBook and as I put it on the bar to check
it out, water streams out of it. I am immediately diving into the
-10% zone and flip open the top of the Powerbook hoping for the best,
but when I hit the power button, nothing happens which immediately
had me squealing "OH NO! NOT NOW!!". Out of the corner of my eye
I saw a guy walking up to the bar who immediately did and about face
and headed in the other direction. You could have heard a pin drop
as I realized what a scene I was starting to create. By the way,
this all happened in about 60 seconds. When I realized what was happening,
I immediately started to say to myself, "90% 90% 90%" and took deep,
full belly breaths to calm down. At this point, the girls at the
front of the Crown Room who were watching this debacle unfold, sheepishly
asked me, "Are you OK?". I took another deep breath and told them, "Yes,
I'm fine. My computer on the other hand..." and watched as water
poured out of my Powerbook as I carried it to the desk. this caused
the girls to immediately join in and say, "Oh no!" As I waited at
the desk, I told them that I had my first big corporation presentation
the next day in front of 1500 people...and the presentation is on
this computer. This brought more cries of, "Oh no!" I asked, "Do
you want to hear the funny part?" They replied, "Is there a funny
part?" "Well, not really right now, but at some point I'm sure it
will be. I'm speaking tomorrow about Living Life at 90%" They asked
me what they meant and I laughed, telling them that it meant 90%
of life is how you react to it and I'm doing a little bit of reacting
right now. One of the girl's said, "I guess you really believe this" and
I replied, "What choice do I have? Since my computer is dead I guess
this is going to be my closing story.