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BEING PROACTIVE

Anthony Zuiker is quick-witted and persuasive. He can also bounce back from seeming defeat. If not for these qualities, the CSI fad might never have arrived. Zuiker is a good example of the person who continually scans for the right opportunities.

Zuiker was born in Illinois, but he didn't stay there long. When he was six months old, his mother moved the family to Las Vegas. As he grew up, he hung out with friends at the casinos that lined the famous strip. Little did he know that he would one day grow rich from this very setting.

It wasn't until he went to college, attending Arizona State and the University of Nevada, that Zuiker realized he had a talent for writing. “I got my writing start by writing people's essays for money in college and high school,” he told Eric Estrin in an interview for The Wrap.1 “I would charge $300 to write ten pages in one night, and I was booked solid for years.” He also invented board games and wrote tournament-winning debate monologues for himself and his friends. One such acquaintance used Zuiker's monologues to help him to get acting parts in Hollywood, while Zuiker remained in Vegas.

There, despite his talent, he worked as an $8-per-hour tram host for the Mirage casino. Every night he rode with tourists on the forty-second ride to Treasure Island, just down the strip, an occupation that got old fast. Zuiker had degrees in philosophy and communications, yet he knew he was going nowhere. Occasionally he made a few bucks selling an ad for a billboard. But then his Hollywood connection paid off.

An agent from the prestigious William Morris Agency called Zuiker because she'd heard about his writing talent and wondered if he wanted to try his hand at a screenplay. Zuiker was intrigued. The agent offered representation if he could come up with something good, so he went right out to a bookstore to find a how-to guide. He'd never tried anything like this before, but, undaunted, he sat down and wrote a screenplay.

To frame a story, Zuiker called on what he knew: his mother was a casino pit boss, and he was aware of “runners” who took bets to the casinos and sports bookies. In a place like Vegas, he was well acquainted with gambling addiction. He pulled this together into a story about organized crime and sent it to the agent. He felt pretty good, but to his disappointment, the agency passed on it.

What's notable here is that Zuiker did not just give up and dump his work in the trash. He seemed to know that the opinion of one agency was not necessarily the final word. He liked what he'd written, so he used another connection to try to get his screenplay read. The producer initially brushed him off but apparently decided to have a look, because he soon called Zuiker about making it into a film. He purchased it for $30,000.

Zuiker was pleased until Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where he'd also sent it, told him they wanted to represent it. They were ready to make a deal for this screenplay for $970,000, but in the eager blunder of a naive beginner, Zuiker had already signed the original deal. He tried and failed to get the rights back, so he couldn't collect on the bigger prize. Although his screenplay was turned into a film (which doesn't always happen after the purchase of rights) and he was involved in production from start to finish, he did not like the end result. The Runner went straight to video. Zuiker looks back on that experience with mixed feelings, but he's aware that this small success spurred his interest in trying again. In fact, CAA had signed him as a client, which was itself an accomplishment. However, as he would soon discover, it was no guarantee.

Around this time, in the spring of 1999, heads of the major television networks were engaged in their annual battle to find series that would blow all others out of the water. They were aware that the Internet had claimed the attention of younger viewers, and that cable networks were gaining a fair share of the audience as well. Each network jockeyed for the top of the heap, but that meant finding talented writers who could offer an idea “with legs.” ABC had Lost and Desperate Housewives, both surprise hits, while the Fox network had imported American Idol from the United Kingdom and turned it into an audience grabber. CBS had Survivor, with its seemingly endless renditions, and NBC ran a strong block on Thursday nights with ER, which had made George Clooney a star. No one foresaw the newcomer who was about change the playing field.

Zuiker was growing frustrated. He had tried a few scripts, but while some sold, nothing really gelled in a way that gave him confidence. He was still in Las Vegas rather than Hollywood, but now he was married. Jerry Bruckheimer's office called to see if he had any interest in writing for television, and while he said he did, he actually watched little television and did not know how to pitch or write a series. Although he had a future meeting set up to talk with Bruckheimer, Zuiker had nothing concrete to say. In other words, he was stalled.

To this point, Zuiker had been scanning and sifting. He'd worked his brain with the appropriate exercises in thinking and writing. He had learned a lot about Hollywood and the kind of thing an executive like Bruckheimer would expect. He also wanted to succeed. He was primed and ready, but he had no workable idea—the perfect position for a snap.

One evening in 1999, Zuiker had plans to attend a basketball game in Las Vegas with several buddies. He'd been mulling ideas about series, but nothing had really struck him. His wife asked him to stay home with her rather than go to the game. He did, and they watched a Discovery Channel cable show about crime scene responders, The New Detectives. Zuiker was fascinated. As he watched how these teams used science to process crime scenes, an idea hit him: this could be the basis for a fictional series. Snap! He could pitch a show to Bruckheimer about forensics. Faced with an impasse, Zuiker had taken his mind off the problem, which ironically had given his brain the chance to go to work. Now it was sifting, but without the clenched desperation of someone overly focused on a problem.

He set his fictional crime scene unit in Las Vegas—what city offered a better venue for a wide variety of crimes?—and started writing a proposal for Crime Scene Investigation. Zuiker interviewed cops, visited the crime lab, and was invited along to crime scenes. He was unsure whether the idea offered a constant sense of excitement, but everything he saw looked promising. He even got to participate in some trace evidence collection. After he had experienced a dramatic moment when a suspect who was hiding at the scene nearly scratched him before cops swarmed in to place her in handcuffs, he was convinced this was a great idea for a television series. As Zuiker outlined a treatment, he added a fresh angle—a snap-zoom lens effect to show the gory evidence in startling detail. The more he thought about how unique this show could be, the more excited he grew. It felt like a sure thing. Now he just needed the right people to open doors—a bit of luck and synchronicity.

That fall of 1999, Zuiker pitched the idea to Bruckheimer, using the full force of his enthusiasm to persuade. Bruckheimer was entranced. He agreed that the project had real potential. He took it to ABC because he already had an agreement there to work with them, but the executives from the drama department did not share the vision. They passed on it (to their later regret). Zuiker was disappointed but still certain his show would find a home.

Jonathan Littman, a top executive for Bruckheimer, put in a call to a friend at CBS. He knew that as they neared November, the pitching sessions would have concluded and the networks would have made their decisions about the pilots for which they had commissioned scripts. Most of the executives were exhausted and awaited their brief break before the pilot scripts arrived. Nevertheless, Littman knew how to ask for favors, and he called Nina Tassler, a CBS programming executive. Despite her protests over hearing another pitch at this late hour, Littmann assured her that, whether or not she bought the series, she would find the session worthwhile. Since Littman was a friend, and since he'd told her the show was about forensics, she agreed to give Zuiker a hearing. Although she enjoyed forensics shows on other networks, she had purchased none among the recent slate of candidates.

Littmann accompanied Zuiker to the appointment. Zuiker was ready. He had already broken many script-writing rules, and now, rather than sitting down across from Tassler, he perched himself on the arm of the couch where she sat. Then he removed his glasses and closed his eyes, as if he needed to see inside his own head to pull out the magic. He began to describe to her the arena of forensic medicine. He had created a squad of crime scene responders, a Vegas-based crime scene investigation unit supervised during the night shift by Gil Grissom. The lead character was an odd guy devoid of people skills who nonetheless inspired loyalty among his crew, due to his Sherlock Holmes-style knowledge and approach. The show would be about the use of forensic science, Zuiker told Tassler, to solve crimes. The viewers would see intricate details of a crime lab that had never before been part of a TV series, and would in fact see the scene as the responders saw it, with blood spatter, wounds, decomposition, and bugs. It would be fascinatingly icky but also educational. Viewers would learn about DNA analysis, glass fragments, bullet comparisons, explosives analysis, and the processing of trace evidence.

Zuiker described his snap-zoom effects that followed a bullet trajectory from the initial penetration and throughout a body, for example, or showed how a blow to the head produced a specific type of blood pattern on the wall. Grissom might deduce from the slightest evidence that a suicidal jumper was not a suicide after all. He might decompose a pig right there at the crime lab or reconstruct an apparent drowning with an artificial water chamber. As Zuiker described all this, he gestured with excitement and bounced on his perch. Sometimes he got up to act something out. Tassler was hooked. She'd already emptied her budget, her slate was full, but right there in the room—the dream of every writer making a pitch—she bought it. She wanted to make this show. She hired Zuiker to write a script as fast as he could, and by December he produced the pilot. At the same time, actor William Petersen was in a deal that asked of him only that he listen to Tassler's pitches. She sent Zuiker on his way, and Zuiker worked the same magic on Petersen for the role of Grissom. Despite his reluctance to act in a television series, Petersen wanted the lead in this series.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was the last show to be picked up for development for the fall 2000 season. It was slated for a Friday night, and there were plenty of doubters. Zuiker was an unknown writer, and it was a unique type of show with an unproven track record.

However, the ratings started out strong and remained there, especially among the coveted young adult audience. The show would go on to launch an entire industry worldwide and become one of the most successful shows in television history.2

But Zuiker wasn't done. During a writers' strike in 2007 and 2008 that stalled TV shows for three months, he considered how the typical attention span for young audiences had shrunk, so he devised an innovative way to keep them engaged with reading a novel: the “digi-novel.” Starting with a typical novel as the foundation, the story features a retired FBI agent, Steve Dark, who returns to hunt down Sqweegel, a unique serial killer who dresses in white latex and uses contortions and butter to squeeze out of tight situations. About every twenty pages, the reader could go to a website to see a video-based cyber-bridge from one narrative scene to the next. There was also a social community experience to assist readers to talk about the characters and events, as well as to access film stills, to watch behind-the-scenes production, and even to discuss ideas with the creators. The idea was to make a novel into a multidimensional experience. Zuiker released this unique “cross-platform” project in September 2009, calling it Level 26: Dark Origins. He embedded special codes at specific intervals in the text to prompt readers to go to a website to see one of the twenty film clips. “The future of business,” Zuiker foresees, “is the convergence of different mediums.”3

He wanted to tell a story that was “too hot” for television and that would give readers of mystery and crime a richer overall experience than novels typically yielded. He thought it would attract more readers from the generation that enjoys video games and engaging visual experiences. Zuiker, with plans for two more such books, believes that within the decade, every television series will have an interactive component to let viewers or readers continue the experience from within their own imaginations. (Apple immediately created a touchscreen application to make digi-novel access simpler for readers, and in 2010 CSI devoted an episode to the digi-novel's villain.)

Zuiker moved into opportunity, always thinking, always scanning. Despite a routine dead-end job, he had pondered ways to do something more. Thus, when doors opened, he was ready. Each new venture gave him the experience and confidence to believe he could take on the next one, and rather than accept the status quo, he moved into opportunities—or created the conditions for them. He also gained experience and knowledge that fed his mental database for this arena. It gave him the means to efficiently and effectively sift through ideas to identify those that would work. His brain absorbed it all and packaged the snap.

THE HAPPINESS QUOTIENT

It takes a bold person to put ideas into action. World-renowned psychologist Nathaniel Branden declared his clients to be healthy once they had accepted that nobody was coming to direct their lives; they were their own director.4 That is, when we embrace responsibility for our decisions, we realize what's at stake and can become proactive, absorbing the demands of discipline and commitment as second nature. We recognize discipline not as drudgery or penalty but as an essential ally in our striving to become more. It is the frame for the life we're building, and we can move toward the future with a sense of purpose—even of destiny and adventure.

The idea of destiny is interesting. Many people think it means that a path is already laid out and they need only step on it; the right people will come and take their hand to bring them toward fulfilling their purpose. However, it is much more complex than this romantic (and passive) notion. The philosopher Aristotle proposed that humans are born with an inner purpose, like an acorn is meant to become an oak tree. He called it entelecheia or entelechy, which means “having its end within itself.”5 That is, the thing is real in its fullest sense. It has the qualities of persistence and completion.

Although this has been interpreted in many different ways, Aristotle addressed the concept to the human psyche, or soul. The potential is within us, so anything of which we are capable is our potential. Some possibilities will became realities, some will not, as determined by factors such as our culture, our physical traits, our economic means, and so on. Not all possibilities are equal in how likely it is that they will be realized in our lives. Aristotle specifically associates entelechy with pleasure and happiness. That is, you find the thing that brings out your fullest nature or expression. He also added another dimension: something is actual when it is done well. It exhibits stability, endurance, and excellence. In sum, we all have the potential to resonate to a particular manner of existence, but it will develop for us less by chance than through our effort.

Some people have interpreted entelechy to mean that the completion of any person is what they do at work. It is their calling. The late folklorist Joseph Campbell gave this an elegant label: he called it our bliss. By this, he meant our sense of purpose. On The Power of Myth, a televised interview with Bill Moyers, Campbell urged viewers to direct their lives toward the special track that was waiting for us. Once found, the life we should be living “is the one you are living.”6

Each of us has skills and talents that collectively move us toward authentic self-expression. Some people know the first time they put pen to page that they were born to write. “I knew from my early childhood that I wanted to be a writer,” said British mystery writer P. D. James, “and began, as many must, by telling stories to my younger sister and brother in the nursery…. Then at seven I produced and edited a family magazine.”7 Others feel most at home with law or plants or children. Mary L., a marketing director, came into her own after years of trying other occupations. She was delighted that she had finally found something that utilized her creative energy. As soon as she entered the field, she felt at home. To anyone who asked, she explained that in the process of reaching into herself, she had created something that others enjoy.

Entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen is the embodiment of bliss discovered early. He was always trying things out and tinkering with tools. He was eight when he heard the tale of David and Goliath. He liked the way a small guy would boldly challenge someone of Goliath's stature. “Here's a little guy with a really big problem, a Goliath of a problem, and he realized he could take a stone and a slingshot and solve that problem.”8 In fact, the biblical hero's weapon of choice—a slingshot—impressed him so much he later named one of his inventions after it. Overcoming dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, he often felt like David against staggering odds, especially when he presented ideas to corporate executives who dismissed him. But Kamen, it turns out, is a visionary. He is responsible for numerous devices, such as a portable dialysis machine, a stair-climbing wheelchair, a thought-controlled prosthetic arm, and a unique water filtration system. Most renowned is the Segway PT, a self-balancing motorized scooter on two wheels. His bliss, which calls on his technological expertise and humanitarian streak, is to use technology to improve the world. It all began with a simple device.

One day when Kamen was in high school, his older brother came home from med school. He appreciated Dean's skill with machines and offhandedly suggested that he try devising an automated method for delivering drugs to patients. Inspired, Kamen set up a shop in his parents' basement and created a prototype for the AutoSyringe, a wearable infusion pump. Years later, when he was thirty, Kamen sold the patent for $30 million. With the money, Kamen created DEKA Research and Development Corporation, staffing it with three hundred engineers dedicated to research and development—that is, playing with ideas for new products. In other words, Kamen has funded a brainstorming arena, meant to create even more innovation. In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, just one of his many awards and recognitions. Despite receiving no college degree, he has several honorary doctorates.

In a way, Kamen had simply re-created his childhood home, where his father, Jack Kamen, had worked day and night to illustrate comic books like Weird Science and Tales from the Crypt. His mother taught accounting, his brilliant brother achieved his MD and PhD on the same day, and his younger siblings were also tinkerers. So, Kamen emerged from this inventive atmosphere with a sense of business, an appreciation for hard work and persistence, and a relentless focus on his own ideas. In junior high, his hero and role model was Sir Isaac Newton. In the early years of college, he declined to waste time in classes; instead, he believed that his tuition had paid for access to the faculty as business consultants.

In addition to his succession of machines that earned him enough to purchase his own private island, he started a robotics competition for high school students. Called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), its intent was to show kids how cool engineering could be. “We've got to create a generation of kids that are as passionate about innovation as they are about football.”9 Even so, he insists that it's not about science and technology per se, nor invention for invention's sake. It's about people and their stories, especially their needs. For example, he'd like to perfect a human launching device that would assist SWAT units to get to the tops of buildings.

FIRST sounded to some critics like an offbeat idea that would have difficulty catching on, but in twenty years, it has grown from a local to an international competition that attracts large corporations to look for future employees. “Science and technology and engineering and innovating,” Kamen stated on a morning news program, “it's for everybody. It's critically important, it's accessible, it's fun.”10

On DEKA's website, Kamen is credited with holding 440 patents, many for medical devices. On his two-acre island in Long Island Sound, he has worked to make it “carbon-negative,” that is, off the grid. This is where he uses the Slingshot, a no-emission water purifier and source of power. Kamen lives by a moral imperative of improving the quality of life for as many people as he can and hates the idea that anything is impossible. He thinks we must live as if we believe we can succeed. This means working hard, thwarting the demoralizing effect of failure, and keeping your vision alive—even if no one else can see it.

BLISS ALONG LIFE'S WAY

We can think of bliss as both the stimulus and the goal that gets us through an obstacle course—life! It's the idea that our style, background, and personality best match a particular vocation or avocation, and when they cross the right path, we recognize it. The more we work within our bliss, the more satisfying and right it feels. Although we might hinder our ability to reach our bliss because of fear and bad habits, we can also use discipline and self-awareness to achieve it.

So, first things first: we must learn a few things about ourselves. We must discover what depletes our courage and our energy. Is it fear or self-criticism? Is it insecurity about our abilities or capitulation to someone who discourages us from trying? Are you worried, bored, lazy, or disorganized? Perhaps rigid, intolerant, or too much of a perfectionist? On the flip side, we must also learn about our personal strengths. Are we open-minded, energetic, alert, and eager to try new things? Can we boldly take risks and ignore what others might say about us? Are we self-starters with an internal reward system? Can we reframe setbacks? Self-correct? Allow ourselves to be challenged? We must learn how we hinder ourselves on the path to success as well as how we facilitate it. Our self-evaluation must be honest and realistic. But even within that frame, limitations can be stretched and remarkable things can occur.

When Liu Wei was a ten-year-old in China, he was playing hide-and-seek. He came into contact with a high-voltage wire and received a severe electric shock. To save him, his arms were amputated. After such a traumatic loss, some people would give up, but Liu quickly learned to use his feet to accomplish basic skills. “For people like me,” he later said, “there were only two options. One was to abandon all dreams, which would lead to a quick, hopeless death. The other was to struggle without arms to live an outstanding life.” His dream was to become an accomplished pianist, so when he was eighteen, he took on this daunting challenge. Not only did he master this skill with his toes but he also became a prodigy. He was twenty-three when he entered the televised show China's Got Talent, inspired by similar shows in the United Kingdom and the United States. He impressed the judges and won the contest. In interviews afterward, Liu said that he didn't think too hard about how others regarded him, whether they thought he couldn't achieve much or felt sorry for him. “It is enough for me to do the things I like,” he stated. Finding himself faced with a challenge that many might view as insurmountable, he worked his way around it so he could do what he loved.11

Because bliss is inner-driven, we know when we've reached it, and it feels as if we've slipped into the most comfortable clothes we've ever owned; it's a pair of well-worn walking shoes. Once we pull them on, we want nothing more than to get going. Bliss becomes our driving force. We are complete in our purpose. We have discovered the activity that most fully expresses and satisfies us. It gives us that Aristotelian telos: when something exists “actually,” it is in the form it is meant to have.

Successful people like Zuiker, Kamen, and Liu sensed the seeds of their purpose within themselves and moved eagerly toward goals that developed it. Whether this meant practice, practice, practice, immersion in research, or taking a road trip to introduce themselves to the right person, they didn't hesitate or second-guess: they moved. Why? Because they foresaw the great joy they could derive from a specific activity. They were persistently attracted toward their future selves. Such people become the “prime mover” of their lives as they respond to an inner imperative that feels increasingly more real as they draw close. Whatever training or experience may be required, they devote themselves without a second thought, and even this commitment sizzles with energy. In the process, their brains develop neural circuits and pathways that support their activities. When the spirit becomes willing, so does the flesh, and it starts with an attitude about discipline and goals that can be taught and nurtured.

Innovators stay alert for improving their chosen field, as Zuiker did with the digi-novel. This helps to maintain excitement in their daily endeavors. Historian Natalie Davis uses curiosity as her ultimate guide. “It just hooks in very deeply…I may not know what is personally invested in it, other than my curiosity and my delight.”12 Their entelechy is, to them, a sacred journey. Some will sacrifice anything to it.

So, entelechy or bliss means that we feel something within us that drives us forth. We coordinate our inner experience with our external situation to develop what is our unique function. Positive feelings + continuous opportunities + inner momentum = progress toward bliss. Back to the acorn metaphor: given the right conditions, an acorn will become an oak tree, not a maple tree or a zebra. Its function or purpose is to be an oak tree. It contains an internal order that evolves according to a genetic design. It will reach its purpose only when it is an oak.

We move toward balance and fulfillment. For example, someone whose bliss urges artistic expression may respond strongly to color and texture. One man who stumbled across poetry as a boy and developed his talent said, “I was enveloped by it. It seemed the most complex, rich, full-of-possibilities sound I'd ever heard. It put images right into my brain, and I wanted to do that, too.” A mathematician knew that working with numbers just felt right. “Numbers came easily to me and it seemed right to see the universe in terms of the regularity of math. I'm not sure I could do something else.”

The actor Ving Rhames, who has appeared in Pulp Fiction, Con Air, and other films, tells the story of how he defied odds that would have put him in the streets among drug dealers. His dream had been to play football in the NFL—a common dream for many boys. However, he soon learned that his bliss was something else.13

Rhames grew up in Harlem surrounded by violence, crime, and drugs. By the time he was eleven, he sensed something in him greater than his situation suggested. He was determined to make more of his life than what he saw among others around him. He appreciated all that his mother had sacrificed for him. Still, he was not quite sure in what direction he would be going.

One day, he and a friend followed a couple of girls, trying to talk to them. They went into a youth center, so the boys entered, too. They found themselves in the midst of a poetry class. This was not what they had in mind, but Rhames began to listen. The professor talked about the great black poets, such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. Rhames was impressed. He began to attend readings for the Dance Theater of Harlem, and one of his teachers told him he was gifted. Feeling confident, he auditioned for the High School of the Performing Arts. To his great joy, he was accepted. This introduced him to a world he had not even known existed.

When he performed a scene during his junior year from A Raisin in the Sun, he sensed he was in the right place, doing the right thing. According to him, it felt as if God had intervened to lead him straight to the thing he was meant to be. Rhames continued to receive scholarships, which only confirmed his sense of direction. By the time he was physically large enough to think about being a professional football player, he no longer cared. He knew what he wanted to be, what he was meant to be. “I look at my life,” he says, “and I know that some presence or power has had a hand in it. If you just allow that hand to guide you, you'll be fine.”14

THE RIGHT MOMENT

Rhames found his way to acting because he crossed paths with girls who led him to a poetry class. This illustrates one more concept in the “bliss” category: synchronicity. This occurs when events synch in such a manner that they seem magically to work out in just the right way at just the time we need them. Whether some metaphysical element is involved, who knows, but that's often the feeling that people report when they see how a single connection, just when they were ready, seemed to transform their lives. Synchronicity is meaningful coincidence, and it's not something we can predict or control, but it frames many eureka moments.

There's an amazing story about a man in need of money who brought a barrel full of books to Abraham Lincoln when he was a young man. Lincoln himself tells it: “One day a man who was migrating to the West drove up in front of my store with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it, and paid him, I think, half a dollar for it.” Lincoln put it away and forgot it until he was going through his storehouse later. He emptied the barrel and found Blackstone's Commentaries. He picked them up and started to read. “The more I read, the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.”15

Lincoln went on to become a lawyer and then president of the United States. Such things occur often. It can be as simple as someone just saying the right thing to make us think of some new direction, or leaving a book open at a page that makes an idea pop. When we're working toward our inner potential, we may discover that our efforts fit into a larger dynamic. Famed Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung crystallized the concept of synchronicity in 1951, and it has been absorbed into many philosophies since.16

We cross many paths in our lives, some of which mean nothing, while others offer entirely new directions. It's often a matter of one of these chance encounters occurring at a specific point of our development. Had Lincoln been engaged in another profession when he emptied the barrel, the law books might have meant nothing. Had Rhames come into the youth center at a different time, or with a different teacher or subject, that particular incident might have had no impact. No one knows when an event in our lives will actually be synchronistic. However, as Pasteur said, chances like these favor those who are prepared.

When people begin to sense their bliss, they often work harder, watching for opportunities to deepen it. Thus, they create better conditions for snaps to occur. As an undergraduate at Princeton University, Josh Berman had focused on public policy, winning a Ful-bright scholarship to Australia to study the educational system there. He loved politics, urban planning, and educational planning. He also went to both law and business school at Stanford. Still, his true love was writing. As the urge beckoned, he looked for opportunities to fulfill it. Then, synchronicity occurred. For a story for the Stanford Business School newspaper, Berman interviewed former NBC entertainment president Warren Littlefield. When Littlefield saw the final article, he was impressed. He asked Berman to consider working at the network. Berman said yes.

He gave up his other career directions and moved closer to his bliss, based on how right his direction felt. When this opportunity was offered, because he was prepared and eager to succeed, he accepted it. “I started in Hollywood at the age of twenty-four as a summer associate at NBC,” he recalls.17 He then became a development executive for NBC Studios. When NBC ran a contest, Berman spotted another step up in his plan. He penned a spec episode for Seinfeld and won the contest. He knew this could help him move into a solid writing position, so toward this end he wrote and produced a clever spoof of Ally McBeal, a popular show on the Fox network. NBC soon made him a writer.

“At that point in my life,” he says, “despite having a fourteen-hour work day, I couldn't fall asleep unless I wrote. I could've written anything—it could have been a letter, it could have been a script—but that was my way of relaxing and clearing my head. I loved it so much that I thought if I could make a living writing, there would be nothing better.”

In 2000, Berman read the pilot script for CSI. He appreciated its element of mystery. “I love being able to craft a story where you don't see the whole picture until the very last piece is put into it.” His agent submitted samples of his material, and when show runner Carol Mendelsohn read it, she invited Berman for an interview. She then hired him as an executive story editor. He soon became a coexecutive producer, and then executive producer. After several successful seasons, Berman left CBS and signed a deal with Fox to write new pilots. He had reached the “snapping” point.

“For years and years,” says Berman,

I worked on procedural shows, like CSI and Bones, and shows that I created called Vanished and Killer Instincts. A lot of these shows are heavily researched and you might have an inspiration for a plot-line, but you don't really have an “aha! moment” with those shows because they're structured almost like a legal brief. Everything has to be meticulously thought-out.

But when I was trying to come up with a new TV show to write, I was literally at my desk and my eyes fell on a photograph of my grandmother, who had helped to raise me. She was the most inspirational person in my life. And I thought, “Oh my God, I have to write a show about my grandmother”—I didn't mean literally my grandmother, but the spirit of my grandmother. For me, what was so amazing about her was that she was a Holocaust survivor, she was under five feet tall, and she was overweight, but she carried herself like a supermodel: She'd survived the Holocaust and had her entire family murdered by the Nazis, so after that, other problems in life paled in comparison. She carried herself like she owned every room she entered, and she made me believe I could do anything I wanted.

In that moment, I wanted to write a show about my grandmother, a supermodel in a plus-size woman's body. So I thought, why don't I just take the risk? Networks' jaws might drop, because that's not what they're expecting from me, but I had to write it. I knew that was going to be my next project.18

As he sat there pondering, the perfect title, Drop Dead Diva, popped into his head. He wrote up an outline and created characters and a pilot episode. He later sold it to Lifetime.

There's a beating heart within our creative development with a life of its own. It's a radiating hot spot that warms us as we approach. Then it inflames us.

As each example in this chapter shows, one of the most important qualities is mental flexibility. We must be able to shift when opportunity beckons. This brings us to the idea that there are many types of attunements to bliss.

Developmental psychologist Howard Gardner presented the concept of multiple intelligence during the 1980s. He disliked the assumption that intelligence was a unitary, cognitively based capacity measureable by standardized instruments that produce an Intelligence Quotient (IQ). The IQ tests, he thought, placed too much stock in language and logic. Gardner believed that there were other types of intelligences, all of which are worthy of recognition. There were artists, musicians, athletes, shamans, craftspeople, and others who demonstrated competence that relied on some sort of intelligence. “I wanted to broaden conceptions of intelligence to include not only the results of paper-and-pencil tests but also knowledge of the human brain and sensitivity to the diversity of human cultures.”19 The competences he had in mind did not lend themselves to methods that measured ordinary forms of logic or language. They might not be measurable at all—at least not by means we've developed thus far. Gardner devised his own definition: “An intelligence is the ability to solve problems, or to create products that are valued within one or more cultural settings.”20

Gardner lists eight criteria for counting an ability as intelligence, including the presence of core components and its place in evolutionary history. It should also have a distinct developmental progression and a susceptibility to encoding within some symbolic system (language, art, music, or gestures, for example). He offers nine different types of intelligence, from linguistic to spatial to musical. He even includes intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences, which are now regarded as part of “emotional intelligence,” as well as “existential intelligence” for the abstractly inclined. Although his theory is controversial in that empirical support is lacking for some areas, his work, for our purposes, reminds us to remain open about snap abilities.

For example, naturalistic intelligence involves an attunement to our natural environment. Poet Annie Dillard demonstrates this in a poetic narrative, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.21 She describes how she walked through the woods for long stretches and sat observing the intricate manifestations of nature. She had no agenda for what she wanted to see but just relaxed and remained alert to whatever was surrounding her, overhead, or at her feet. Dillard allowed nature to spontaneously appear as it was, even if nothing at all happened. Thus, she developed a keen sense of vigilance and witnessed remarkable events among insects, wildlife, and plant life that most people fail to see—even if they had been in the same area with her.

Dillard developed a deep focus that transcends ordinary day-today awareness. It fully involved her so that she was able to feel the flow of natural life. And her learning, while engaged and alert, was also relaxed and satisfying. As with Dillard, the reward for developing our own particular form of intelligence in accord with our bliss is this: We feel in harmony with our life process. We know why we were born. We know where we want to go, and we have momentum into a future. As we absorb and become our bliss, the conditions for snaps improve. But there is one more important element.

Although entelechy moves us toward our potential, achieving it is not inevitable. It is not synonymous with fate, though the possibilities are ever before us. Sometimes, however, a lack of faith in ourselves or some adverse circumstance can thwart us. An acorn will become an oak tree if the right amount of sun, water, nutritional soil, and space are available. Likewise, our bliss needs careful tending. It's an ongoing process in which attention must be paid at each step.

Each person, we've noted, experienced an awakening that snapped him or her into action. Sometimes it occurred early, sometimes only after trying other occupations. However, all had the right attitude about wanting to grow, and they were able to recognize the road to opportunity, as well as to move at the right moment. Changing their lives, their locales, their self-beliefs meant nothing. Surrendering to their muse was their priority.

The ability to act on opportunities that lead you to your bliss involves effort and enterprise. Opportunities are there as part of the meaningful arrangement of events that respond to your talents. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will come, but the student must then take advantage, as Zuiker, Kamen, Berman, Lincoln, and Rhames all did.

KEY POINTS