What if you were just one small adjustment away from having the life you want?
In the movie How do you know, George (Paul Rudd) gives Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) a can of Play Doh for her birthday, and tells her how Play Doh was invented.
Joe McVicker of Kutol Chemicals invented a putty-like wallpaper cleaner that sold well until vinyl wallpaper was introduced after World War II. Vinyl wallpaper was easy to clean with soap and water, and Joe’s putty cleaner was fast becoming obsolete. The company’s future looked dire. Then his sister-in-law, Kay Zufall, a kindergarten teacher, gave her class some of Joe’s wallpaper cleaner to play with because it was easier for them to shape than the standard classroom modelling clay. It was also non-toxic and less messy. They both saw potential for repurposing Joe’s wallpaper cleaner, but it was still missing a magical element.
“What if you make it bright yellow?” Kay asked. And that’s what they did. One small adjustment, and Play Doh was born. It was 1955. Joe became a millionaire before his 27th birthday, and more than two billion cans of Play Doh were sold over the next fifty years.
“We’re all just one small adjustment away from having the life we want,” George tells Lisa in the movie, ‘How Do You Know’.
The movie, How do you know, was not such a resounding success, going on the record as one of the biggest flops of 2010, but George’s Play Doh story sticks (oops, sorry) in the mind. “We’re all just one small adjustment away from having the life we want,” George tells Lisa in the movie.
George isn’t talking about a business success outcome. He’s talking about Lisa’s happiness and her sense of purpose and connection with life.
Does Lisa know what small adjustment she needs to make to have the life she really wants? And does she make it? Watch the movie to find out!
So what if you were just one small adjustment away from having the life you want? What might that adjustment be, and would you make it?
The catch is that we’re generally blind to the adjustments we need to make, otherwise we would make them. And if we’re not blind, we lack courage because we haven’t discovered the small adjustments we need to make to overcome our fears.
What if your small adjustment was a shift of focus, a new way of looking at a situation, a change in approach?
The answer is in your dreams. Your dreams reflect your mindset and how it results in the life you are experiencing.
Just as a mechanic can look at a broken engine and know what small adjustment is needed to make it work, or a chiropractor can look at your stiff neck and know what small spinal adjustment is needed to free it up, or a Kay Zufall can see that a small adjustment to colour can change a family fortune and bring creative pleasure to hundreds of millions of children, a professional dream analyst can look at a dream and identify the small adjustment that you can make – the one you are currently blind to – that can bring positive, sunshiny yellow changes into your life.
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