I wrote in a chapter of my book, The Boom Operator, about how in film production we use cranes to elevate the camera up high in the air when a person has entered a new location, exited a scene, and/or crossed a plot threshold in the story?

Well, the cranes we typically use only take the camera up about 30 feet in the air. Yet, when you watch the film, it appears like the camera is way up high, like 100 feet in the air. It’s really dramatic, and gives an incredible perspective on the whole setting.

We use this tool everyday to create a feeling of new adventure, or the culmination of a time period. You can use it too, with your imagination. Take the perspective you have of yourself right now. Pay attention to what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, what you’re calculating, what you’re seeing…..and now boom up and picture yourself below. Boom up real high and see yourself from a distance. See yourself turning around and looking at everything. Imagine you hear the neighbor’s dog barking, and then the traffic down the street.

Now keep rising up higher and higher. Float up to 10,000 feet, like a small aircraft, and imagine yourself below. What do you look like down there compared to everything and everyone around you? Now go higher, go to 40,000 feet, like a big commercial jet. Can you even see yourself? Are you still turning? Turn faster! Pretty small, huh? What do you hear? Can you see how you’re apart of the earth, and your neighborhood is apart of a town, and your city is part of a state? Do you see how the earth goes on and on, and then continues on over the ocean? It’s all part of the same world, isn’t it? Now go even higher, go to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere. Go out to an orbiting satellite, what do you see? You’re pretty insignificant aren’t you. Do you think anyone cares about you, only you, from out there in space?

What if you go to the outer reaches of our solar system? Imagine it being so incredibly amazing. It’s so beautiful and majestic. It’s far and wide the most incredible thing you’ve ever experienced in your life. You can see how everything ties together. You can see the relationships that the planets have with each other. You can see how everything is revolving around the sun, and that every star and planet that is not in the light of the sun is in the dark shadows of the sun. It’s spectacular. What’s it sound like up there?

How significant is your little life now? How fast are you turning now? You can still perceive everything, you can still see, you can hear, you can think, you can smell, and you can believe in the most amazing things. And you have gone through this experience in space time. You just projected yourself to the outside edges of the solar system. Wow! What else are you capable of? You didn’t feel so significant to the whole process of the universe, did you? And by the time you got to 40,000 feet you were barely visible…barely moving.

Now snap back to your body! See how your mind, the one that just traveled to the out reaches of the solar system, can travel anywhere it wants to through your imagination. You’re really pretty amazing aren’t you. Is this a tool you can use to your advantage? If you can do that, can’t you also imagine a strong person with ties to each and everyone around you? Can you see yourself as smarter than you think? Can you will yourself to do things you thought you couldn’t do? Can you put a few silly fears aside and take action to live your dreams and passions? Appears to me you’re living in some sort of powerful 4th dimension that allows you to move within space and time. Hell, you ought to be able to do just about anything you want.

I know, there’s still that doubt, that victim thing of, “I’m stuck here or this happened to me, or I don’t have this or that.”  Well, we all have that in varying forms and ramifications.  But we also all have the power we can forever imagine to take steps in the right direction, the direction in which we’ve been dreaming about forever.