SEL in EDU
SELinEDU Podcast is stories and insights from outstanding teachers, administrators, leaders, and students on all things Social Emotional Learning in education. These 30-40-minute podcasts are perfect for a commute, a nice cup of coffee, or a self-care walk.
SEL in EDU
074: Screenwriting Your Success: How Hollywood Storytelling Can Transform Your Life with Kristina Paider
What if you could face life’s biggest challenges the way screenwriters approach epic movie plots? Kristina Paider, award-winning author and Chief Creative Officer of The Hollywood Approach, shares how 28 years of script development experience reshaped her life—and how it can reshape yours. Her framework reverse-engineers the traits of successful movie protagonists and applies them to real-life transitions in a way that feels both strategic and playful.
Central to Paider’s method is the concept of Character DNA—your unique mix of strengths, superpowers, and “flawesomeness.” Rather than relying on rigid goal-setting, she invites high achievers to use storytelling tools to navigate growth, change, and identity with greater creativity. Asking questions like “What would Julia Roberts do?” becomes a way to reimagine our responses during difficult moments, helping us step out of default behaviors and into more empowered, imaginative roles.
This storytelling approach resonates deeply with social-emotional learning, especially in education. Krista explores using these tools with middle school leadership students, helping them articulate strengths, aspirations, and character inspirations. The idea that we’re always editing our personal narrative offers students (and adults alike) a hopeful lens on growth and change.
Whether you're navigating a major life pivot or simply curious about the power of storytelling, Kristina Paider’s insights provide actionable wisdom with warmth and wit. Her Hollywood-inspired framework invites us to live more intentionally—and perhaps even more heroically.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
- Connect with Kristina via her website, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
- Learn more about her books, The Hollywood Approach: Script Your Life Like a Hit Movie and Live Your Wildest Dream and its accompanying workbook.
Is this conversation helpful so far?
ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.
?
Welcome to SEL in EDU, the podcast where we explore how educators bring social, emotional learning to life by sharing stories, strategies and sparks of inspiration. I'm your host, Dr Krista Lay, owner of Resonance Education. Thank you for joining us on this SEL journey.
Speaker 2:This is Jeremy Jorgensen, host of the Y at a 5 podcast, proud member of the Education Podcast Network. Each show on the network is independently owned and the views expressed may not represent those of other podcasts. For the best education podcasts, visit edupodcastnetworkcom.
Speaker 1:A one-time rescue swim led Christina Pater on an odyssey of epic proportion involving international travel, jumping into waterfalls and becoming a guest chocolate chef. Professionally, christina is an award-winning author and screenwriter. She is also a book and speech doctor and the chief creative officer of the Hollywood Approach and speech doctor and the chief creative officer of the Hollywood Approach. Using the art and neuroscience of story, christina helps people live and tell their best stories. She has worked with more than 600 writers in 34 countries. Sel in EDU family.
Speaker 1:I am incredibly excited to welcome Christina. Before I bring her in to talk to you, I just want to share a little personal anecdote that I met Christina through our mutual friend, dr Lindsay Prendergast, who was on the podcast a few episodes ago sharing about her amazing book with Piper Lee, and Lindsay gave us in our Advancing Leaders Collaborative an opportunity to meet Christina and she talked about her new book, the Hollywood Approach. I'm listening to it. I had a chance to work with Christina for an hour in this group and my mind was blown and I'm still thinking about how I can integrate these pieces into my life to show up as my best self. And so, christina, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your wisdom, your expertise and your 28 years of script writing.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here and have this conversation with you.
Speaker 1:I also need to start off that I did not share this with you before, but I enjoy listening to your book. I listen to a lot of audio books and I've listened to a couple where the authors speak their book and I'm like, oh yeah, no, that's not happening and I don't feel that way at all. So I really like your voice. Thank you for being the person to do the audio for your book.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for saying that. I was so nervous recording it that I actually put off recording it for a couple of years and then I trained. I did vocal training and some performance training so that I wouldn't put anyone to sleep in a bad way. So I really appreciate that, Thank you.
Speaker 1:So I think, for those who are still getting acquainted with you and the book, can you give an overview of what the book is and what it's intended to do?
Speaker 3:Sure. So the book and subtitle are the Hollywood Approach. Script your Life Like a Hit Movie and Live your Wildest Dream. And it is for high achievers, high performers, when they find themselves at a crossroad or wanting to plan the next major act or movie or show of their life, whether that's a real show or really more an adventure, a next chapter kind of thing. And so in the book what I do is I break down, I reverse engineer what it takes to be a heroine or hero in a Hollywood movie and I apply those same things to real life.
Speaker 1:And I know having followed you on social media, I've seen pictures where you have boards behind you where there's lines going from A to B to C to D, and I'm like this could actually be my real life. I could put my life up here and start making these lines, because sometimes we end up showing up as our own worst enemy and blocking ourselves in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3:We do. We do, yeah, so it's important to, yeah, definitely, audition options for our lives, think through them. The book goes through self-knowledge. I call it character DNA, story forensics. Your past is really building on your past successes and getting some new insights on how you're wired, where your successes come from, what your unique character, style and challenges are, and then planning things forward in the most exciting way, interesting way, logical way for you, doable way for you. So this isn't like a pre-boxed do this kind of stuff. It's more let's dig into the self-knowledge, let's dig into you and see how you tick and then write your way forward from there. And so, yes, I do use the boards. I use the boards more. I will cover any set of doors, windows, walls with multicolored sticky notes or note cards, just like you see in the. I stopped just short of the pushpins and the red threads between things like FBI and crime scene investigation shows. I stopped just short of that. But I do like mapping things out for life and for screenplays.
Speaker 1:When you talk just now about there being this unique approach, and you came into our session on Zoom and just captured that right away, with a visualization and full disclosure for those who are listening. And I've told you like normally my brain doesn't work that way, but it was the day, your approach and I was all in on this visualization and within 10 minutes, man, I became Emilia Clarke and for those of you who are Game of Thrones fans or have watched she was Ars Targaryen or have watched Me Before you, I combined these pieces of her, and so I'd love for you to talk about that process that you've used and what that looked like either in the book or in your life, and how that works for people. Sure.
Speaker 3:So that exercise, so this is. We're talking now about a live workshop I did with your group and so this is an exercise I do in a live setting because there's a participation component where everyone shares who. You know which star they would see playing them in the movie of your life. And it really started for me back 20 years ago in my very first screenwriting class with my famous to me infamous first professor, robert Powell, who was a former Air Force cop and two-time black belt holder, and he was like seriously badass and so I had learned so so much from him. But in the early days of screenwriting I just was like an unintended thing I was doing. Somebody pushed me into taking the class and said, oh, you'd be great at this and it's one of those things you do and you're like I'm not really sure, I'm 27 years old, I'm not really sure why, I'm not sure what's happening here, but whatever, I'm going with it. And one of the things in those early stories they were all really based on me as the main character and a lot of us in the early days would be writing kind of the maybe the more mundane stuff in our life, right. And so the instruction from the professor was you've got to give the actress a moment, so you've got to give the actress something to do. Being a main character is about the decisions she makes and the actions she takes. So what is she doing? So that led me to start thinking about.
Speaker 3:At one point in these early years around 1997, I had a really terrible heartbreak and I was just mopey and I was like, oh God, this stinks. And I started thinking, okay, who would play me? And so my initial reaction was Julia Roberts. I would love to have Julia Roberts play me in the movie I was writing at the time. And then I started. My movie was not about this heartbreak, but the heartbreak was right, so present with me at this time. And then I started thinking about what would Julia Roberts do as me in the heartbreak scenario, like in the real life scenario, and that started leading to some really interesting answers. So I do talk about that a little bit in the book, but I bring it more to life in a workshop scenario where I guide people through something much more elaborate and wild. But the question I began asking myself 28 years ago is what would Julia Roberts do? What would Julia Roberts do in this scene? And so one of the decisions I made as a result of that was I ended up going on this European trip shortly after this awful heartbreak, and it was around the same time that when how Stella Got Her Groove Back came out.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, that movie, it was just so wild. It was like friends having a great time. So I got back from this trip and my last two days were in Capri, italy. I got back I was living in Scottsdale at the time Got back to Scottsdale, I did not. I was not ready for real life again. I'm just like no, whatever, a week or whatever. It was not enough. And my friends were telling me like oh, if you're going to have these crazy adventures like you got to take us along or something. And so four days later I'm going to ask the question what would Julia Roberts do if this was a movie right now? And I came back and I'm still sad and heartbroken, although a little better, and I, let's say, met a new friend in Italy.
Speaker 3:And so four days later, back on the plane, brought itineraries that's back when we had travel agents still brought itineraries for my friends slapped them down on our ad club meeting and said you want in Put your money where your mouth is. Planes leave on Thursday and one of the two friends came and we just had this total life adventure. It was just like we don't like it there, we'll just leave and go somewhere else. But it was those kind of things and they did for me tend to often involve a one-way plane ticket or maybe a round-trip ticket to an exotic place or island. But I lived such a much more amazing life, I think, and made really way more fun and also financially wise decisions maybe not the wisest ever, but also good for my heart. It was so good for my heart and my soul and that was really one adventure of a lifetime I had. That is a story that just we told it on the plane. We were learning Italian through cassette tapes. It was just such a great adventure.
Speaker 3:But again, it all goes back to that question what would Julia Roberts do? And for listeners it could be what would somebody outside of you do? And you could cast it different ways. You would ask what would Emilia Clarke do? It could be a mentor, it could be Oprah, it could be whoever. It could be a character. It doesn't even have to be a real person, but it leads you to different answers and opportunities and it, at least in your mind, gives you choices of. I don't have to sit here and mope and I'm not talking about spiritually bypassing our feelings, by the way, either. I had done enough. I was with my sadness for a long time before I made this decision. But it's really about having choices. It's about being creative and coming up with new ideas and choices for yourself. And you're like hey, I got airline miles. Isn't that what they're for? It's life's best adventures. I've got time off that is stashed. I work 14 hours a day. I work a gazillion hours a week, so it's part of the creative process, I think.
Speaker 1:As I'm hearing you and thinking back to how I felt it was very empowering, so that you have choices and you could put those into action. I know that through that and, by the way, I just need to let people know I'm talking about Daenerys Targaryen, before she started burning down everything like the empathy and compassion and the service that she wanted to have, and how she showed up so strong despite so many adversities and obstacles. And I don't remember the name of her character in Me Before you, but she was quirky and just owned authentically who she was, and so I merged those two and for a moment I was like how could I connect to this person? And I thought she wanted. She accepted these roles. So there had to be something in those roles that called to her.
Speaker 1:In each of those pieces my imagining of what called to her, each of those pieces, my imagining of what called to her and what do I imagine she would have done I'm like why can't that be me? Why can't I show up in that way? And one of the things that you mentioned in our conversation was that this was not meant to be reductionist but to be expansionist.
Speaker 3:So we're not trying to again bypass something, have like a reductionist approach to our pain, our crossroad, our grief, our challenge in life, our next chapter.
Speaker 3:It's not a simplification of what these characters would do. It's a way to think about okay, oops, maybe I'm stuck, I'm not sure what to do. It's a way to expand our thinking, so I could sit here and do the same thing I'm doing, which is not moving me forward at this time, or I'm bored with it or it's a little bit stagnant but it's a way to expand that and say, okay, what would this actress or character do in her pre-Pyromania days? What would she do in her post-Pyromania days? That, right there, gives you two different answers. We're not talking about arson, people, but just the imagination of it alone sometimes helps you feel better, it helps you open your mind and then you go through the logic of it. You're like, oh, I actually don't want to burn this down, I want to edit it, I want to make some changes, and it helps us see things more clearly and expand the amount of options and choices that we see for ourselves, either through these characters or with these characters.
Speaker 1:The podcast is called SEL and EDU, so social emotional learning. We're thinking about validating our emotions and our sense of identity and our sense of purpose. And then how are we navigating those emotions? You said we're not bypassing anything, the thinking about self-discipline and self-motivation, and so it's not a here I am and I'm stuck, but it's here's where I am and what's next. And that takes us into those responsible decision-making where I hadn't thought about this, but even me just saying, okay, daenerys, up until this point, but not after, this is me setting those boundaries for the responsible decisions and how this is going to impact. So it's channeling that inspiration, but also knowing that personally, I'm setting boundaries, for sure, for sure. I'm curious what led you to actually putting it into a book to be able to share it with other people?
Speaker 3:The scenario we were talking about just now was quite literally the late 90s, 28 years ago, when I began screenwriting. Then, a few years ago now, it was like 12 years ago I reached a major crossroad in my life and it felt like whatever decision I made, there was not going to be going back from that decision. At the time, I was an analyst, a story analyst in Hollywood, so my job was reading movie scripts and giving notes and saying, okay, production company, I think we should consider this, and that would mean a substantial investment of multi-millions of dollars, or I think we should pass. And here's why. And often I was finding that the heroes or heroines were written reacting to everything. They were not making conscious choices and therefore conscious actions. It was always a reaction to an outside situation, an outside person forcing something, something was happening to them and they were reacting versus a series of active choices.
Speaker 3:And when I reached this very critical and very intense crossroad for myself, I ended up using my work as a screenwriter to find my way forward and through, and the experience was so profound that I wasn't talking about it in the middle. But when I got through to a new point, i't talking about it in the middle. But when I got through to a new point, I began talking about it. And when I started talking about it and seeing people's reaction, hearing their questions, their interests, how did you do this? How did you come to this decision of all these things, how did you end up at this place and how? I just feeling how much it resonated. I had to go back and analyze my own process and write this book.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I noticed when I was reading the book is that there is a quote written by Luann Johnson was portrayed in Dangerous Minds by Michelle Pfeiffer. I remember that movie resonating with me so deeply, and I will also say I've interrogated myself, thinking about a savior complex as a teacher. So just knowing that about myself now too, like what are my intentions and how do I support? I remember having her book and it led even my opening conversations with students. You always have a choice. You have a choice on whether you walk into my classroom or walk down the hall and they're like we have to come here because we're going to get. I'm like, ah, there's natural logical consequences, but you're making a choice and one of the pieces that they say in the movie is that you are not a victim. There are no victims in my classroom and I wish, again, I wish we were videotaping because it's Because for listeners I'm throwing up my arms.
Speaker 3:I love that is one of my favorite quotes and sometimes when I'm teaching this material, I will say I will begin with that. It's one of my beginning things there and I love that line.
Speaker 1:There are no victims in this classroom. People have this sense of learned helplessness and I experienced that in my personal life in my 20s and my 30s and that mindset too, in that you have choices, you don't need to be somebody who reacts to things all the time. You can have kind of that ownership and step ahead. And I think that piece in the book really resonated with me, because we all do have choices and sometimes we just need those extra little nudges of inspiration, and that's what the Hollywood approach in the book is doing for people. What have you been hearing from people that has really resonated with them as they're reading the book.
Speaker 3:So there are numerous things, but I think there are a couple that stand out. One we were talking earlier about the idea of self-knowledge, and I have a section in the book called Character DNA. Through a series of exercises, examples, stories, I help readers understand their own character DNA in their particular story or challenge they're currently facing, and one of the components of that is what I call flawsomeness. And so flawsomeness is the highly scientific formula of our flaws plus our awesomeness. Now, these would be the kind of things that in old school ways like if we're ever doing a job interview where we say, oh, I work extra hours or I'm a perfectionist it's like where you say the thing that's a double-edged sword but makes you sound good in the employer's eyes, and that is not the point of this. But it has some similarities and the idea is that for every flaw we have within ourselves, like, there's also another side of it that is awesome. So there's a spectrum of it side of it that is awesome. So there's a spectrum of it. And I have found that, first of all, people love the term because it's fun and it's light. So, again, the book really appeals often to high achievers who have maybe done a lot of personal work, personal growth work, perhaps, and many times very likely even therapy, and this is deep work but it's not heavy. So we talk about flawlessness and in Hollywood right now the relativity to this is that if we can identify our own flaw in our current pursuit of our goal and if we can neutralize that flaw even a little, we're going a long way. We're just adding a lot of fuel to the fire to get to our goal faster and easier, and sometimes identifying those real flaws are difficult. But people like this because it really resonates and it's a big topic in Hollywood right now Hollywood producers, buyers of movies, makers of movies really want to be clear on what the character flaw is. So if we think of Maverick, for example, we know Tom Cruise is like a solo lobo. He is a lone wolf kind of guy. He's a little bit rogue and he's got to work on that. He's got to figure out how to work with other people, not ruffle all these feathers along the way, and he's the best at what he does. So that's one example of that. But people love to talk about flawsomeness as a concept and it really works If we can really get center with ourselves, have a quiet moment, think about how are we most getting in our way of our own success? That's a way to really catapult ourselves to success. That's one of, I think, 14 things I have in there. And then I'm trying to think of like the next one.
Speaker 3:People do like to talk about plot twists and dark nights of the soul and how we address them, the strategies we use. What do we do when we reach that low point? Here we're climbing the mountain, we're successfully climbing the mountain and all of a sudden we hit like a mudslide or a downturn or something that takes us not where we thought we were going to go but ends up putting us on another path. And that is a concept. The dark night of the soul is a concept recognized universally by shaman and medicine people around the world, universally by shaman and medicine people around the world, and they describe it as the spiritual death, the figurative death that enables us to emerge and have this rebirth.
Speaker 3:Into the next chapter I share in the book. I hope we don't all have to have the deepest, darkest, worst dark night of the soul, because that can be really painful and that's not something we want to anticipate. But when we do think about, okay, what can go wrong? There's lots of research that shows that we can start neutralizing that, mitigating that, before it happens. And if it does happen, if it really does hit the fan and does happen, there are strategies, just like in the movie, just like in the Hollywood movies. What do we do when it all goes wrong? And so we learn what to double down on, where to pivot, where to change our actions so that we can still get to that goal.
Speaker 1:I'm imagining the hero's journey piece, that cycle that people go through and how it's this universal piece and that you know it can look different for different people. But then knowing that if the shit does hit the fan, that, like you said, there are strategies that you can leverage and people you can call on and some beautiful things can come from that, and relying upon the perseverance and resilience and navigating what that can look like, and knowing that there's those choices still exist and that you have a sense of agency in all of that.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I think that's something that adapting that mindset of. Okay, I am writing, I am the screenwriter of my life, I am the writer of my life story and here are some technical things to know and here are some fun things to know from a movie perspective and here's what we do with onscreen heroines and heroes. So it makes every movie a masterclass on life and decisions and character. And they can't. Some people just can't ever watch a movie the same way and I hope that's good. I know, after I worked with my original professor, like I can't, unless I just really get lost in it and either way is fine. There's no right or wrong way.
Speaker 3:But yes, I think the feeling of going into it and the anticipation it's like a camping trip, when you know it's going to be raining. If we plan and we have an extra tent or extra rain coverage and we all have raincoats and rain boots and then we have warm snacks or some kind of. I always have to go to the snacks, but the campfire and the hot beverages or whatever that make us more comfortable in that cold weather, it becomes a richer adventure, so to speak, or it can. The point is to start seeing more options and opportunities and making a conscious choice. The point of this book is opening your mind to ideas and new pathways.
Speaker 1:When I read books I think about okay, how does this infuse into my life? How can I use this to connect to the work that I'm doing with schools? And I'm so excited because I'm working with a middle school leadership group right now, fifth through eighth grade. They're the sweetest kids with so much energy and we're at a point where they're collaborating with each other. They're talking. We've done a VIA character strengths assessment so they know their top five talking. We've done a VIA character strengths assessment, so they know their top five strengths. We've talked about leadership and what leadership quality they aspire to.
Speaker 1:We just got done a section on navigating stress and managing stress through different activities. We're moving into fitting in versus belonging, and being able to advocate for yourself and what you need and how to have those conversations. And being able to advocate for yourself and what you need and how to have those conversations, but also how to advocate and stick up for other people. And in my brain. In two and a half weeks, I'm going to take some of these principles from your book and ask students to create a slide with their top strengths, the leadership trait they aspire to, and then what three people would they want to play them? And I'm hoping to, and we'll see if this lands well, but think about your goals for life. Where do you want to go next? What are some of the struggles that you encounter in advocating for yourself or for other people, and what would these characters do, and how could you leverage that mindset and channeling that to help you move forward? How can they actively continue to show up as their best self by accentuating their positives?
Speaker 3:When I have taught this to younger people, I'm consistently astounded at their ability to see themselves and so on and so forth. And I think that we're also our brains are hardwired to go toward the negative right. And so one of the things in my character DNA you'll see it's front-loaded with the good things, it's strengths. There are three sections to my character DNA. It's strengths, it's superpowers, and then it's flawsomeness, and it's not flaws, it's flawsomeness. And so I think just really we don't need 10 flaws, just one, in this goal now. And I think, like the context of that for young people and for everybody, especially anyone feeling vulnerable, is so important, because we need to front load the good stuff in most cases and just pick one piece of flawsomeness. Maybe it's time to try to be an A minus and look at our actions and be like how can I operate a little bit differently? Obviously I'm using myself as an example, like with the perfectionism there. Maybe the question for them is what's a little thing that we can do to change or improve? That's a nice way of doing that.
Speaker 3:You may or may not have gotten to the chapter on mentors. I think for young people, but for all of us I say young people. It's like it's no different, we are just taller young people, that's all. Young people with more experience. Mentors are so important and I like thinking of mentors as real life mentors in what we want to do. I also like thinking of mentors as TV or movie character, mentors of people we've read about in the news or heard about in family, family situations.
Speaker 3:I had two major mentors that I never met in my swimming goals and they were so profound and amazing and I thought about these women and what they did with their lives and their swimming at just in unimaginable obstacles and they were so inspiring to me and I knew their names so I would think about them when I would do morning swims, every day. I would think about these people I never met but knew of them, one through a client, one through my mother, neighbor of my mother's at their lake, and so they can just be so powerful, like the imagination too. So imagine I've never met these people, but I'm imagining this 97 year old woman who swam in like a freezing lake every morning from May to October and she was like legendary right, and so never met her. I know her name, she's not with us anymore and I, but the imagination of there is a human woman out there doing this, and so for kids, they have just such great imaginations and if you just open yourself up again, it's expansive.
Speaker 3:There is no way I could have found these people by just showing up to do what I was doing and I happened to hear the stories doing what I was doing and so having the mindset of being open to mentors, not only people that we physically know in our town right now, but opening that up and being clear on what we admire about them. Is it their courage? Is it their sassiness? Is it these kinds of things?
Speaker 1:I'm revising what this is going to look like in my head. I'm going to see them for two and a half weeks and I was going to create these slides and give them spaces to put three different people, making it clear that you don't have to know these people in real life. A little box under each of the where they can put the pictures. For just very briefly, why did you pick this person? What does this person offer? So the slide is actually the positives, but I'm wondering now too, if the flossomeness piece is in the notes underneath the slide. Like that it doesn't take up the space. The slide is the positive. And then this is just a little ancillary note to keep you on, because I don't want it to have as much weight and letting the students know that you can keep processing this and thinking about it. So they'll have some thought, they'll come in, they'll have part of their slide done, we'll work on some more together and they can keep revising it after I love that.
Speaker 3:I think that's a really key point and I find over and over again now, as I used to teach, I used to teach and be involved in goal setting when I worked in corporate America and I helped grow a company from $10 billion in sales to $15 billion in sales in a four year period and we use smart goals and we use biannual check-ins and things like that. And the more I work with this now in real life, in real time, I think it's really important to allow that space for editing. Look at the show as a season and also it doesn't have to be perfect. You can keep on casting throughout the season. If you meet someone who's more inspiring, somehow closer to you, resonates more with you, great, Move your people around or add to your roster, and there's not one way to do. There's not just three spots and that's it. Ever there can be more or maybe you find that's the right number for you, but I think really playing with that and having that idea of again an expansive, editing, evolving show, I think that works for people.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to follow back up and to say, okay, this is how it worked. And to offer for educators here's something that you can try, and I really appreciate the pieces that you've just added in for me to ensure that other people can change, that they don't have to have met that person. And to start small with the flossomeness piece, because again, we beat ourselves up enough. I think we're not good enough at yet. I really do want them to focus on their strengths, so we'll wrap back around again. I can't wait to hear the wraparound. I know that you also offer coaching services for writers, and so if somebody wanted to get ahold of you to learn more about that process, to have you as a mentor, to have you as a coach around the writing process and storytelling, what's the best way to get ahold of you?
Speaker 3:Yes, that's right, I do writing, coaching for speakers and authors and I am Christina Pater on all of the channels. That is my website. If you have show notes, I'm sure it'll be in the show you can reach me on. I'm on LinkedIn a lot. You can also see some of my viewpoints and theories and philosophies on how I approach writing, editing and working with clients. I'm in a really collaborative. I really apply a Hollywood collaborative style to business and nonfiction work. I'm on Instagram and Facebook as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I have two more smaller questions, and this next question is not small, but I don't want to leave without acknowledging that you just had a really amazing celebratory win in your life. I did Share that because that needs to be shared and I feel like I should have started with that, but I was hoping to hold onto it. Do you have this amazing win and can you please share?
Speaker 3:that Sure, I can share it. So I think the bigger picture of it, too, is I. The story that is my personal story, that I share in the book is going to be a TED Talk. I've also written a feature film on the story, which was just named as a quarter finalist in the Wisconsin's screenwriting competition and it is as of. This recording will be considered for the semifinals and potentially I don't want to jinx anything, but it is in the consideration set for going forward in this competition, that is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:I'm so happy for you and I feel like saying hey, julia Roberts, you can say it, pop her into the ether because I'm so excited for you and that's an amazing accomplishment and so congratulations on that.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I would like to add, though, because we were talking about this earlier with this, we did not talk about this piece in it. I've been writing feature films for 28 years. I have only just 34 days ago from this recording put my own work, my own screenwriting work. Obviously, I have a book, a workbook, an audio book and different things my own screenwriting work. I've only solo put it out there about a month ago. Today, after all this time and the difference is, as we were talking about coaching, coaching and mentoring I finally got myself. I've been taking classes forever, but private, one-on-one, let's move the ball forward, type of stuff. So I am walking more of my walk, and I am ever inspired by my clients who are crossing that threshold and putting their trust in someone to help them read the label outside the jar, because it's a thing we can't do for ourselves.
Speaker 1:And seeing the impact that can happen when you do release your work into the ether and let people get a chance to experience and interact with it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when we go for it, that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:So my last question I love music and believe it is soul healing, it's a connector, and so I'm curious what's on your playlist? Just what's been?
Speaker 3:feeding you. I actually make a soundtrack for myself every time I'm doing something, so I have one for this movie I just made. I sometimes I'll do it for my life if I'm doing something else. And lately, the people who keep making appearances and reappearances are Cher always classic Cher Lady Gaga, dua Lipa and Lizzo are in there with the regular mix Pink also. We got to have Trust Fall. Trust've trust fall is got to be on every playlist for the next while. But yeah, those are my peoples. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:And I need to have the students create a playlist for their current life or for the life they want or for the life they're stepping into.
Speaker 3:Oh goodness, so many good things.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your time, your energy, your willingness to share your experiences in support of other people achieving their dreams and being able to show up as their best selves. I appreciate you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I love this conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on this episode of SEL in EDU. At Resonance Education, we equip educators with the knowledge, skills and resources to design learning experiences that foster students' academic, social and emotional growth. We believe every small action to build connection, understanding and growth creates a better world.
