Movie-Inspired Life

I recently read an article by Sarah McColl on Yahoo Shine called “What would the heroine in your life movie do?” The main idea of the article is that when we feel depressed, we can make our lives seem more ideal by doing the things that our favorite movie heroines do. For a moment of our imagination, we can live a life that we have always admired. By becoming someone in a movie, we can accept our whole selves, including our flaws, because they are a part of our character. This message resonated with me, because I sometimes daydream that my identity could be as exciting and quirky as that of a movie character. But, I wonder, what is exactly so appealing about being a character?
 
Imagination could easily be a self-defense mechanism. The mindset of treating life like a movie gives us a sense of security that it is okay when we confront obstacles, because they are just part of our life’s storyline. Think about the emotions you have when you watch a movie. Unless the movie is a tragedy, we don’t get too distressed when the protagonist faces a conflict, because we know that it somehow needs to work out in order for a story to exist. Seeing our conflicts as those in a film help us endure them, possibly with alarm and stress, but not with hopelessness. Instead, we think, “I need to react to and deal with this conflict in a _____ way, because that is how my favorite character would try to deal with the problem.” In other words, our lives suddenly become more exciting, because they give us a chance to act out a certain behavior or lifestyle that we have always wanted to try.
 
Not only do our lives change, but we also become more interesting. McColl points out that our flaws become “quirky, necessary character development.” We are not just everyday people who live our usual humdrum lives, but we have interesting characteristics and qualities that we have always admired in other people. We mentally transform ourselves into our own ideal person, and thus we feel more lovable and wonderful to ourselves.
 
This is not to say that I want to delude myself into thinking that I am someone I am not. I love being who I am, and I wouldn’t change myself for anyone else in the world. But, through the conscious development of my identity, I try to think of fictional or non-fictional characteristics that I would want to have. With concrete qualities in mind, I can work toward the goal of reaching those qualities and make myself into someone I want to be. We cannot change our life settings into a glamorous movie scene, nor can we look like our favorite movie star. But, we can let characters in movies, books, and television shows help us become our role models, our favorite personalities. This is not a movie inspired by a true story. It is a movie, inspiring a true story.
 

Related Source/Article
What would the heroine in your life movie do?, Yahoo Shine