You and a friend can win a trip to Portland for the Living a Better Story Seminar. Simply write a blog entry telling us about the kind of story you want to live and how you think the seminar might help. Then submit a link to that blog entry in the comments on this page and you are officially entered. Here’s a video with some more info, then the details of the contest are spelled out below. It looks like the conference is going to sell out, so if you want to come, register as well and if you win we will pick up the cost of your registration, hotel and airfare. Otherwise you might not get in. Good luck! Living a Better Story Blog Contest from Donald Miller on Vimeo. You and a friend can win a trip to Portland Oregon for the Living a Better Story Seminar being held September 26th and 27th. CONTEST RULES 1. Write a blog telling us about the kind of story you want to live. It might help to read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years to better understand what this means. The story doesn’t have to be a life story, it [...]
I’ve spent the last two days blogging about a movie that, in my opinion, is nearly perfect. I can’t overstate how well this movie is written. And what I’m not saying is that Toy Story 3 is my favorite movie, because it isn’t, or that it’s even in my top ten, I’d have to think about that for a while. What it is, however, is the best-written screenplay to come down the pipe in many years. And of course it has much to teach about life, leadership and the very nature of our existence. So I’ll wrap up this series with a list of things we can learn from the movie. Feel free to keep the list going in the comments. A great story, and a great life, must be clear. Now of course Toy Story is a movie and life is life. Life will never be as clear as a film (unless it’s a poorly written film) but to the degree we can clarify our objectives and define our antagonist, life begins to feel more meaningful. Great stories are about love. Now this one is tough to execute, but life works best when we defend love. This means we [...]
What made Toy Story 3 great was more than just colorful characters and great graphics, though those were certainly in abundance. What made Toy Story 3 great was a strict adherence to some basic story principles, and those principles can also make a life great. I’ll create a short, incomplete list: 1. We knew exactly what the characters wanted. There wasn’t a scene in the movie when we didn’t know what the principles characters wanted. Whether it was to escape the daycare, or get back to Andy, or find a new home, the ambition was clearly defined. And because it was defined, the audience sat wondering how the characters were going to get what they wanted, rather than wondering what it is the characters were trying to accomplish. 2. The characters were good. A constant theme through the movie is family, brotherhood, and a sense that under no circumstances would they separate. They were in the adventure as a team, weak or strong, and they would live or die as a team. 3. The point was love. This may be the most powerful force in the movie, and one of the reasons the Toy Story franchise has made billions. The [...]
Today I’ll launch a three-part series about the movie Toy Story 3. Yes, the movie was that good. It’s rare a story comes along in which the elements are as perfectly clear as they are in this film. The movie is graphically impressive, to be sure, but what really shines is the story itself, and in this movie, the story has been chiseled down to the basic foundational elements, elements that, amazingly, too many screenwriters ignore. The reason I’m excited about this series is because the elements of a great story are also the elements of a great life. And when those elements are clearly defined, it’s hard for a story to go wrong. If you’re leading or managing a team, I’m betting you can learn more from the movie Toy Story 3 than you can from a dozen books on business. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the story. Andy is heading off to college, and the toys are trying to navigate a difficult transition. They might get stored in the attic, or they might get donated to a local daycare center, but what they really want is to be reunited with Andy and to be played with, [...]
If you’re like me, you’re kind of loving the world cup. The drama of nation pitted against nation and the modern-day gladiator feel of each match is too much to ignore. And it’s also hard to argue that the players competing this month in South Africa aren’t the greatest all-around athletes in the world. Anybody who has kicked a ball around for a few minutes knows how fit you have to be to even play, much less compete. That said, many here in America (read white-twenty-somethings who once backpacked through Europe) praise soccer a bit too much as a unifying sport. While it’s true soccer is the most popular sport in the world, and it’s also true it has unifying qualities in the sense that it hilights the common ground interest in a common sport, it’s hardly a total unifier. In fact, an argument that soccer does more to polarize continents, nations, countries and even towns would be fairly easy to make. Entire riots take place after wins and losses. In the end, soccer is just a sport, and it does what every other sport does, it illustrates what is in the heart of man: the desire to compete, to [...]
