The Right Questions with James Victore
The Right Questions is designed to help you get paid to do what you love and stay sane in the process.
The Right Questions with James Victore
Episode 55: Big, Bold, and Being You
If you are a stuck or frustrated creative and want to get paid to do what you love, let's talk. https://yourworkisagift.com/coaching
A wish to be “big” turns into a masterclass on being true.
We pull ten punchy, practical lessons from Tom Hanks’ classic—using story to unpack why loving the process beats obsessing over the future, how the right comrades act like medicine, and what happens when we stop sanding down our edges to fit rooms that were never made for us. The result is a clear blueprint for working boldly, living playfully, and getting paid to be yourself without apology.
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All right, here we go. Howdy, it is I, James Victory, your king, your guide. And this is the Right Questions, the podcast designed to help you get paid to do what you love. And today I want to talk to you about movies. Specifically, one movie and what you can learn from it. We don't watch a lot of movies or even TV with the kids. I try to keep my children away from screens. Mostly because they have screens at school. And more because screens have an amazing addictive attraction for kids. I think it's quite frankly really freaking scary. I bring my kids to the gym with me, and they're off in the corner playing with medicine balls or trying to do burpees. And the other kids are they have headphones on and they're locked onto their screens. They're these little islands of a puddle of child. I want my kids to have a childhood away from screens. I want them outside playing and building and exploring. But we do have special pizza movie nights with the kids. We make or make our own pizzas and we watch a movie. We don't have any learning agenda with our selection, but sometimes lessons present themselves. I think in some way I want to reproduce the experience I was lucky to have when I was eight or nine. This is when my own relationship with movies started. My dad was a career military man, but late in life he decided he wanted to get a college degree because the military would pay for it. And one of his classes was in film appreciation. And on Wednesday evenings, he would take me to the local State University of New York, and we'd attend class in this raked auditorium. To me, it was fascinating. The room felt like a classroom, but it was at an angle. You know, so like the stairs that you would fall down if you tripped. But then the lights would go out, and all of a sudden it was a theater. It was so cool. And the class syllabus went through the entire history of movies. Then I, and I was, I was, at that age, I was privileged to watch the 1902 Le Voyage dans la Lune, The Trip to the Moon by Georges Mélier. Or I saw Edwin Porter's The Great Train Robbery from 1903, the whole thing. Or the 1915 Birth of a Nation, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. If you haven't seen that one, there are so many bits in there that you will recognize from television and movies. The same thing for Beauty and the Beast. Go see the old uh Jean Renoir version of Beauty and the Beast. You will see so many motifs that have been played out in other movies since then. I also got to see the Pathe brothers and everything they made and the comedies of Max Senant. Oh my god, there was so much great stuff. It's surprising I didn't become a movie director or have some closer relationship with movies than just a love of movies. But you can learn a lot from watching movies. For example, there are so many good parenting lessons and life lessons in, for example, The Sound of Music, or the Julie Andrews version of Mary Poppins. Or you can uh check this, you can learn to avoid camping trips or nature adventures with an attractive group of 20-somethings because you're all gonna be brutally murdered. You know, just don't do it. But the good movies are metaphors for our own lives. We see ourselves as the hero and relate with their struggle. We see our lives reflected in theirs. The characters are archetypes of human behavior, each character possessing different fears and powers and representing different people in our lives or different stages of our lives. Star Wars is an obvious and glaring and very good example, and that it is that it has continued its own myth for almost 50 years. You know, the first one came out in 1977. And who doesn't want to be as brave and assured as Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games? Right? We all want to win the day. Well, this past weekend we had a pizza movie night. And Shannon and I keep a running list of our favorite movies and regularly comb through it to find something to share. And by the way, I'm gonna use this opportunity to insert a public apology to Shannon for watching the 2003 movie Holes with Shia LaBeouf on an evening that she was away. My apologies, Shannon, but the kids did love it, you were right. For this past weekend, we came up with the 1988 Tom Hanks movie Big about a boy who makes a wish to be big. It's a brilliant vehicle for Tom Hanks as a comedian. And if you watch it now, it's wonderful to see him so young. So here I present to you ten things you can learn from the movie Big one. Be happy who you are. The main character, Josh, is thirteen, and he wants to be older. He wants to be taller. He wants to date an older girl, drive a car, and be, well, big. This is all too common. Even you and I experience that feeling. We all want more. We all know we're capable of more. We want, we want to punch above our weight, as they say. Many self-help guides invite you to 10x your lives, right? Everything's 10x. They want you to think and feel and see yourself in the future, right? Your future self is more important than now. You know, your now is a servant, servant to your future. But that negates today. It takes you away from now. You can't live in the future, thinking the future will be better in all ways, because that makes today pale and less bright. We have to learn to love the process. The process is all you get. The process is all you get. The future, the reward that you seek, is not assured. Love the process, or all you'll ever do is chase the future. And it will never come, or it will never be good enough. You have to learn to love now, love the process. We want the next version of ourselves, the newer version, our best version, more successful, happier, healthier. But know this that version of you that you're thinking about is available all the time. It's available instantly. It just starts with you believing. So be happy now. Next, in Big, Josh's best friend is Billy. It's a great character. And Billy never gives up on Josh. Even when Josh gives up. So, number two, don't forget your comrades. No one goes it alone. We all need friends. Good ones keep us honest. Bad ones make us weak and pull us down. You guys know that. Be like us, be like us. In my book Feck Perfection, I say some people are poison and some are medicine. We need to see that, see those people in our lives. I mean, this sounds simple, but sometimes we surround ourselves in our own comfort. People with the same sickness as we have, people that allow us to be weak, that allow us to complain. We have the company of misery, but we have no true friends. Find the right people. Everyone in your life influences you. To make bold moves in your life, it helps to surround yourself with people who give you strength and energy. Choose those who, if they don't have solutions, can give comfort and support. Seek those who are medicine, people aligned with your vision and ready to cheer you on and champion your struggle, even and especially when times are hard. Three. Things don't matter. Objects, your car, material goods. We love our things, you know, we love our shit, and we work hard to get them. But our things own us. You know, we don't need a lot. Really. We just need the few nice, beautiful, useful things in our life. Right now, you're thinking, oh man, I wish James Victory could be my mentor, my guru. Hell, I wish he was my coach. Well, you can make that happen. Go to your workisagift.com. There's a questionnaire that will probably help you out, but it'll also give you access to a free call. So let's talk. Let's free you from overwhelm and creative frustration. Let's build your business and help you get paid to do what you love. Again, go to your workisagift.com. Let's talk. Things don't matter. So in the movie, Josh starts making money. But all he wants is experiences. All he wants is fun and play and joy. Those things matter. Things don't matter. Four, ask questions. Speak up. Speak up, ask questions. In Big, Josh is in a product development meeting where they're introducing a building that turns into a robot. Everyone in the meeting is like, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. They're just glad handing and going along because the projected numbers and research says, right? Only Josh has the innocence to ignore the research and ask, why a building? Actually, he says, why not a bug? Listen, there is no such thing as a stupid question. Questions are how we progress. Questions are how we we we move forward in life. If something is not clear, find out. And don't stop finding out until it's very clear to you. Questions are the path to wisdom. So much of life around us is just accepted because it is. Oh, it's just that's just the way it is. That's just the way it works. It's business as usual. Don't accept that. Be curious. And watch where the herd is going. You know, never join the herd. What's it what uh what's the line? Um the problem with following the herd is the view never changes. Be curious. Speak up and ask questions. Number five. Never blend in. The key to the 30-year-old Josh is that yesterday he was 13. He is a child. And like a child, he isn't full of all the fear and apprehension we pick up along the way from 13 to 30. He doesn't do things for other people. So much of our fear, so many of our blocks are because of other people. That's what I wish for you. To remember that point in your life when you were 13 or 8. Think about what it was like. Free from the pull of others. Free from the pull of what you're supposed to do, or duty, or work. Because blending in is just you trying to be everyone else. It's trying to it's you trying to be the herd. There are many examples in the movie about Josh, quite frankly, not knowing enough to even try to blend in. We, in turn, know too much and do it consciously. We want to fit in even if that means leaving our true nature behind. We bend to fit into cubicles, you know, shapes that don't fit us. We accept less than our gift deserves, just so we can pay rent. We know this in our hearts. We drink too much because everybody else drinks too much. We dull our light consciously. We don't laugh as loud, we don't play. We dull our light so as not to fill the room with our love. There's a wonderful scene in Big where he's invited to a um uh the a party, an office party, right, at a fancy restaurant. And everyone's dressed in black because it's, you know, tux or tails or whatever it is, black tie. And he he starts coming down the stairs with a rented tux that's like like Liberace probably wore it, right? It's white with sequins and stuff, and it's just marvelous. He doesn't know enough to not blend in. And everybody loves it. Unless they don't, and those are not your people, right? Because, like I said, so many of our fears and blocks, concerns, hesitations are based around other people. Never contort to what you think others want. Because actually, what they want is you. They want to relish in you and all your authentic weirdness. They do, trust me. What I try to get my coaching clients to understand is this idea of being audacious, being bold and brave and uh with an with an impudent lack of respect. Think about that. Not a fuck you lack of respect, just a healthy lack of respect. Kinda like a character from a movie, isn't it? So never blend in. Be big. Some may not like it, but the right ones will take notice. Off of that one, I give you number six. Never give in. Don't change. In the film, there's an office scene where Josh walks into camera view and he has a suit on and he asks for black coffee. And your heart just sinks. He's done. He's cooked. Oh shit, he drank the fucking Kool-Aid. It's the boiling frog metaphor. Right? The premise is that if a frog is suddenly put into boiling water, it will jump out. But if the frog is put in tepid water, which is then slowly brought to a boil, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death, right? This metaphor, and it's only a metaphor, it is not science and not true for the frog at all. But the metaphor is often used for us to be aware of the sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly. In Big, we see the rules of adulthood start building around Josh like an invisible fence. And it hurts when we see it happen in others. And we're sometimes ignorant when we have it happen to ourselves. Listen, do only what feels right in your heart. Number seven. There is no number seven. No, I'm kidding. Number seven. You can get paid to do anything. Let me repeat that. You can get paid to do anything. In Big, Josh goes through the help wanted section of the newspaper. Yeah, I know. I just said a few things that date this movie, right? What's a what's a newspaper? What's a help wanted section? But he knows as an adult he needs to make money. And he needs a J O B, right? A job. So he answers a call to work at a toy manufacturer, because, you know, duh, as a computer operator, because he likes computer games. And because, you know, he's a kid and he likes toys. His big break comes when he's playing at the fabled toy store FAO Schwartz. And his boss sees him and sees how much he loves toys and how much of just like a big, honest, authentic, vulnerable kid he is. And he starts to get paid well. He's taken out of like basically the mailroom, and he gets paid because he loves toys. And then you see him in his office, and he's got like, he's dressed like a kid, but he's 30, and he's got like toys everywhere that he gets to play with, and you're like, oh, damn, that's awesome. I cannot stress enough how that can be you. How you can get paid to do anything. People get paid crazy money to tell jokes or draw doodles. Right? We don't have to suffer the root of a crappy J-O-B. You can get paid to do anything. You just have to follow your path. We have to follow our passion, put in the time, show your work, show it with the world, and show your love everywhere. And again, you have to believe in yourself. Hell, I just want to get paid to be me. I want to get paid to be James Victoria, because then I don't have to fake anything. I can just be honest. I can be authentic. I can be vulnerable. You gotta figure out how to get paid to be you. And if you need help, message me. Write me. I want to help. Number eight. Number eight is a big one. Play. Play, play, play, play, play, play, play. Please play. This is a biggie. This is a biggie. This is the reason I exist. This is the reason why I do what I do. This is the reason why you are here, quite frankly, you know that well. Play. Play in your head. See all the possibilities for play and fun in your life. Play in your work. Oh my, but James at the office. No, fuck that. Play in your work. You're obviously in the wrong place if you can't do that. You know, I've started to become more active on LinkedIn. And I've been trying to become a contributor. So I go through the homepage and I flip through, you know, as much as I can fucking stomach. Um, and I try to comment. And I see how people write about business. And they write about it like it's the most boring subject in the fucking world, which it isn't. But we've created it like that because we don't know how to write about it, we don't know how to play. This is why all the mission statements um sound the same. Because they're all following the same rules. And you know what they're doing? Here's this: they're following rules that don't even exist. There is little or no play in their words. And even without personally knowing these people or these institutions, I know there's more there. I see how they think. But I know they're humans, and I know they were eight at one time. And I know they are not allowing themselves to play. So please play. Do what you love and play. Number nine. Realize that all life is temporary. We should all experience a funeral at least once a year. Not that I wish anyone in your life passes away, but we need reminders that life, that our own lives, are fleeting. In Big, Josh realizes that the life he left was worthy. And he wants to go home. We all need a good reality check, right? A reality check in the pants, right? Most of us wait for it. We wait for big, ugly, life-changing threats before we make any changes. Don't wait. Take stock now. Play. Be happy. Be curious. Never give in. And get paid to be you. And lastly, number 10. Call your mom and let her know that you are okay. I'm James Victoria. This is the right questions. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting and being a part of this. And please, since it has the word questions in it, that means I want your questions. Send in your questions. Let me know. Let me know how I can help you. Again, I'm James Victoria, and I love you. Adios.