Here is the full transcript of author Natasha Graziano’s talk titled “Scripting is the Secret to Love, Money, and Happiness” at TEDxBocaRaton 2023 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I’m so excited to be here today. Who is ready today to find a life hack that is going to help you to achieve your dreams faster? Say yes. Amazing.
So excited, I threw that out of my head. So today I’m going to take you through a series of something so powerful, an idea that I want to share with you across the next 15 minutes on how you can achieve your dream life, on how you can attract all you desire in your life. Scripting is something that I learned from a very dark place and it transformed my life. Scripting is the art of writing your future as though it has already happened.
It is the way that you desire something, but write it and believe it as though it’s already yours. A few years ago, I found myself in a really dark place. I found myself as a single mom. I was alone.
I was suffering. I was overcoming a drug addiction. I was at the lowest pace of my life, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. And it was from that place that I realized something has to change, but I’d always been journaling.
I’d always been writing, writing, and I thought if I continue writing about my really depressing life right now, it’s just going to turn me off even more. I’m ashamed of who I am. I don’t want to be reminded of the place that I’m in. And that was when I started to write in a new way.
I started to script. I started to write about my future as though it already existed, a new future, a way that it could be. So I share this with you today to show you how you too can change your life. I never dreamed I’d be up here speaking on a TED stage, a best-selling author, but here we are.
A Scripting Example
January the 2nd, 2021. This gorgeous man with beautiful floppy hair, tan skin, and his 40s held me and Rio in his arms. He kissed Rio and said, “I love you.” He kissed me and he said, “I love you.”
We’d only been together a short time, but it all felt so right. He was the one. He fell deeply in love with me, and within a few weeks, we knew we’d be a happy family altogether. It was true love.
It was magical. And it all came true. I share this with you because it shows dreams do come true. There is a science to scripting, and I’m going to dive into that with you right now.
The Definition of Scripting
The definition of scripting. In the context of computer programming, scripting refers to the process of writing a series of instructions or commands that are interpreted or executed by a computer program or script interpreter. You are the script interpreter. Life is a movie.
You get to choose your character and write your script. So who do you want to be today? We decide who we want to be in this lifetime. You just have to start again and write your story.
Is there a scientific way and evidence behind it to help you manifest your dreams? Absolutely. It’s funny because when brain scans are done, it proves and shows that your brain doesn’t know whether it has happened and is a memory or an imaginary one. And that therefore affects your behavior, your body, and your ability to receive.
So by writing it down in the past tense, which is the key to scripting, you are able to let your brain know, let your subconscious mind know, that this has already happened and you keep reminding it and reminding it every single day. The science says that when you put your pen to paper physically and write your goals down, you are more likely to achieve them because it activates the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in your brain in charge of behaviors, emotional regulation. It’s pretty cool.
Here’s a citation, in fact, from an article that I love in the Harvard Business Review that discusses the science behind writing down the goals in the past tense. Oettingen from 2014 on “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation” says, “When people write down their goals in the past tense, they’re more likely to mentally stimulate the experience of actually accomplishing them. This can help people feel more positive and motivated about their goals and can lead to better goal attainment.”
It is right there. When you write it down in the past tense, when you script out your story in detail, you not only get more motivated, you get the will and the drive, you create momentum in your life and you are more likely to attain your goals. And who doesn’t want to attain their goals faster? In fact, there’s an article in Forbes that says over 80% of people admitted to abandoning their New Year’s resolutions by February.
February. Why are we giving up so soon? Because we don’t have a ritual, a practice, which is like an accountability partner. When you script, when you write it down in the past tense, you believe it.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. When I was a single mother, trying to get out of that place, to be a role model for my son, wanting to evolve and be somebody in the world and be a role model to more than just one person, I never thought I’d get there. But I knew if I wrote the story, it didn’t matter whether it was true, it was whether I believed it.
And I did. Day by day, 1% better. That’s all we need to do, is be 1% better every day.
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” Napoleon Hill.
Who knows Napoleon Hill? Beautiful author.
I wish I’d had the chance to meet him in this lifetime. This is very, very true. If you can see it in your mind, look around us, this room, the lights, the event, anything you see, the clothing that we wear, it was once an idea in somebody’s mind. It was once a mere thought, which somebody birthed.
The same when you script. Write it down. So now I’m going to go through the scripting process with you. Write this down so you remember, take a screenshot, whatever you want, so that you can practice it later.
The Scripting Process
Number one, you want to script who you want to be and what you desire. You must get crystal clear on who you want to be. Don’t leave it to society or history to tell you who you want to be. Who do you actually want to be?
Number two, be honest about who you are today. Your current self-concept. Identify the gap between where you are today and where you want to be. There usually is a gap, but that’s okay.
There is always a gap between what we desire and where we are now, but you want to shorten that gap and scripting is a very fast way of doing it. Number three, remove the blocks and limiting beliefs. If there is anything in your mind, anything buried, usually between the ages of zero to seven, they are stored in our subconscious mind. Things that have happened to us, small things, large things, whatever it may be, and they come out in our later life and feel like resistance, like we can’t do it, like we feel unworthy of something.
Why? Because it was a memory that’s stored. We have to work on redoing those memories sometimes, removing them or letting them go. Number four, my favorite part of scripting.
You’ve got to tell a friend. Even now, you’ve done the work, you’ve done the three steps before, pick up the phone and imagine you are telling a friend. You can do this in any way you’d like. I love to stand in front of the mirror and pretend I’m having a phone call with someone and say, “Hey, you won’t believe it.”
“I met the love of my life. We got married and I moved from London with my son all the way to America. It happened in just one year and we did X, Y, Z. We moved into my dream home” and I continue describing it to my friend on the phone as though it’s real.
When you do this, it feels so real. You bring it to fruition faster. You add feeling to it. That is the translation between you and your desire.
Finally, now you’re ready to script your story. Now you can get your journal out and instead of writing in your normal way, in the present tense or the future tense, which puts distance between you and what you desire, now you write it in the past tense and you script this new story. Now there are rules to scripting.
Rules of Scripting
How? Script onto paper by hand. I described that already, the part of the brain that activates. It’s so important that where you can, you do this using a pen and paper as opposed to typing. Of course, if you have to type, then that’s perfectly fine, but pen to paper is proven to be more effective and very old-fashioned too, so I quite like that one.
Number two, what? Specify what you want. Life is a movie. You get to choose your character and write your script.
Choose who you want to be. When I had my breakthrough, standing in front of a mirror, tears pouring down my face, I did not think I was going to get out of it. I had an autoimmune disease. I was bedbound for so much of it.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to get out of it. My story was saying I was unwell. My story was saying, “Natasha, you are never going to amount to anything,” but I did not believe it. I stood in front of the mirror and I said something different.
“You are going to get out of this,” and I started writing. “I healed. I got out of this mess. I got out of the debt that I was in.”
I changed my life, and here I am today with you, sharing the idea that worked, that’s enabled me to have a bigger impact in the world, and it will enable us all to have a bigger impact in the world. When do you script? You script before bed. You script first thing in the morning.
When to Script
Why do these particular moments have the most impact? Because when you are falling asleep, when you’re really relaxed, usually before bed, or we hope so, you’re relaxed, you’re calm. In that place, you’re going towards the alpha state, which is a slower brainwave, and then you’re going towards the theta state, which is after the alpha, and then into delta when you’re asleep. These are more impressionable brainwaves.
It’s slower. Your subconscious mind is more impressionable. You can rewire your brain as such in these states. That’s why meditation is so powerful.
Choosing to write before bed is a very prominent time to do it, and then your subconscious mind while you sleep will start to solve the problems in your life and start to help you to get nearer to the desired goal you’re writing down, and all of a sudden, your life is being mirrored to what you’ve written down. You people have entered some places that mirror neurons, and we can do that as a whole separate TED Talk, mirroring neuroscience. It’s phenomenal.
Your life will be reflected. So everything you are writing down, you start to see opportunities that were never there before. You start to see places that are appearing before you, things are getting nearer to you, and you wonder why, because you are writing it down, you’re writing it down, you’re feeling better about it, and all of a sudden, it’s starting to come to fruition. Don’t just do it once. We want to do it every single day.
First thing in the morning is also a lovely time to do it. You feel very motivated and inspired for your own day. You write your goals as though you’ve already achieved them, perhaps for the week. You can write it ahead of time for a year ahead.
You can write this ahead of time for three years ahead, as long as it’s in the past tense. We always do it in the past tense. You can do it in the first person, which would sound something like, “I had the most incredible year. I achieved X, Y, and Z,” and it felt like you must always dive into as much detail as possible.
You can also do, like I did in my original journal, you saw me reading, where Natasha met the love of her life, or your own name got the promotion you wanted at work, etc. You can write it about yourself as well, as long as it’s in the past tense, and we saw from the Harvard Business Review why that’s so powerful. The golden rule is to set it in time and space. You must write the date you wish to achieve this by.
So underneath it, say, “I wish to achieve this by July 1st,” or you can say at the bottom, “Achieved by July 1st,” and then put the year. Be specific on when you desire to achieve it by. When you are specific, specificity is another way of your brain not going into procrastination phase and the, “oops, I didn’t do my New Year’s resolution” phase. It actually commits to making it happen.
It prioritizes it from the subconscious mind to the conscious. Here’s something that you can do in your own time. You can write out different areas, your love life in the past tense. Script it out.
Script your future self. You can write down your impact in the world, how you want to inspire people, what you did in your life. Imagine you are on your deathbed. What do you want people to be saying about you?
What is the legacy that you want to leave in the world? Do you want people to be saying, “They were an amazing human who inspired the world”? “They were an amazing family person.” “They did something great.”
What did you do? Write it down. Write it down in the past tense because it is possible. Everything started as a mere thought and a dream.
I’ll leave you with this final quote, this message. Always remember, five years ago, you dreamed of being where you are now. That is the most prominent words that I ever realized that right now I’m standing in the dream of where I wished to be five years ago. Everything that I do in my life now is because I scripted it.
We can script our life in every facet, in every angle and achieve it. So today, script out who you want to be in five years from now and every day write it. Write it again and again and again in the past tense until it comes to fruition. Thank you so much for letting me share this idea on scripting.