If your life were a movie...

If your life were a movie what genre would it be?

Adventure?

Romance?

Comedy?

Dark and twisted?!

Sometimes I think it can be really helpful to see your life as a film. It can prompt some useful questions like the one above and these below…

• Are you playing the lead role or does it feel as if you’re an extra in someone else’s story?

• Are you happy with how the plot is developing or do you need to make some creative tweaks?

• If you were directing the film of your life what would you have your hero, ie you, do next?

• What actions would make for the most inspiring / entertaining / uplifting outcome?

The first time I played the ‘If Your Life Were a Movie’ game was several years ago, after I’d received the news no tenant wants to hear - my landlord had decided to sell up and I would have to move out. To make matters worse, it was the second time in as many years that this had happened to me. The thought of having to move again against my will filled me with doom and gloom.

To make matters even worse, it was notoriously hard to find rental property in the town I was living in, so I decided to go for a complete change and move to the nearby city of Brighton.

But Brighton is a really sought after area too.

‘Ooh, you’ll be lucky to find somewhere so quickly,’ I was told by the first estate agent I approached. And every other estate agent subsequently.

And when I did get to view a property I turned up find about 20 other viewers waiting on the pavement outside. So many people had expressed an interest that the estate agent had decided to show us all round en masse!

A few days later I went to another viewing. The property was on the outskirts of the city so I had to walk miles to get there. 

When I arrived I was glad to see no-one else waiting. But my relief was short lived. 

Let’s just say that when the estate agent said ‘shabby chic’ they really meant ‘shit-hole.’

There was mould on the walls, a weird smell of something decaying in the air (my will to live, maybe?) and to cap it all, two surly looking tenants on the sofa, glaring at us over their 11am cans of Stella.

The only redeeming feature was seeing the estate agent’s irrepressible spirit as she still tried to sell it to me.

‘Don’t you just love the cosiness of this bedroom,’ she trilled, showing me into what I’d assumed was a cupboard.

As the tenants downstairs began arguing I made my excuses and left… right into a torrential rain storm, and of course I hadn’t brought my umbrella. 

As I trudged through the downpour I remember thinking: If this were a movie this is the scene where everything has gone wrong for the heroine; the dramatic low point where she’s about to give up and the soundtrack becomes the melancholic wail of a violin. 

When I reached a parade of shops I dived into a cafe to take shelter. I sat on a stool by the window nursing my coffee and seeking refuge in my trusty notebook. 

If this were a movie what would the hero do next? I wrote. She would discover an inner strength she didn’t know she possessed and she would vow to herself that she’d keep going until she found herself a home!

I downed my coffee, crouched beneath the hand-dryer in the toilets to try and warm up and set off again, putting in my earbuds and listening to some rousing Fleetwood Mac to drown out the melancholic violin weeping away in my mind.

My perfect home is waiting for me, I chanted in my head as I walked through the rain. My perfect home is waiting for me.

A bus went speeding by, sending the contents of a huge puddle washing over me.

Of course, I thought to myself. This is exactly what would happen in the movie - right before our heroine has her amazing breakthrough.

And then, through the misty, rainy gloom, I saw the lights of an estate agency I hadn’t seen before. The only estate agent in all of Brighton I hadn’t approached.

I’m not sure what they thought when I came crashing through the door, soaked from head to toe - shabby chic, maybe? But anyway, one of the guys took pity on me and asked me to take a seat.

I explained what I was looking for, preparing myself for the usual, ‘Ooh you’ll be lucky,’ but instead he said, ‘Your luck could be in!’

I’m sorry?’ I stared at him in shock.

‘A property like that has literally just come on the market,’ he explained. ‘We haven’t even listed it yet. I’m about to go up there and meet with the owner. If you like you could come with me, I’m sure he won’t mind.’

I’m sorry, what??? 

I somehow managed to regain my composure, nodded and squeaked something like, ‘That would be great!’

Ten minutes later we were in the flat and I was meeting the owner and as soon as I saw the old sash windows and wooden floors in the bedroom I knew it was the place for me. It truly was shabby chic.

‘I’d really like it, please,’ I said.

‘OK,’ said the owner.

‘OK,’ said the estate agent. ‘Let’s go back to the office and you can pay a holding deposit.’

And just like that - just like a movie - my fortunes changed.

I moved into the flat a couple of weeks later.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and I’m now living somewhere else. But I’ll never forget that rainy day of despair and how simply asking myself, if this were a movie what would happen next, somehow magically changed everything for the better.

I hope my little tale has inspired you.

It can be all too easy to get beaten down by life and forget that we do have creative control - if not over what happens to us, then certainly over how we respond.

So if things aren’t going exactly how you’d like right now, try seeing things as a film in which you are the lead role, the screen-writer and the director.

I hope it helps. And, action!

Siobhan