It’s funny how you can do something and it ignite a response from people as they discover a way to get themselves off the ground. Since i put the collaborative screenplay writing project out to the masses of young writers in the field, there are now dozens of similar screenplays coming out of the woodwork as people invite others to help them write their own. A lot of those writers are posting their own script ideas and forming groups as suddenly they’ve been shown a way to make it happen for themselves.

One of our writers, Edward, is 16 years old and from Hong Kong. His English isn’t great and up until a few weeks ago, he had zero confidence. Since I encouraged him, he’s now got one of his first ideas up for everyone to write with him, which has a great premise. It’s entirely true that there is so much talent out there which just needs to be found and supported so it can reach the light. So many people never go for it and so much talent is lost in the ether because those that own it just don’t have the belief and confidence in themselves or the world in general.

So you show them a way, and naturally, there is hope that wasn’t there before, and massive excitement as someone realises their dream is now within reach. Virgilio is the same – 8 long years have gone by and with some tech help, the completion of UseYourEars.com is in sight for the first time. Jake’s band have come to discover how much bigger their music can sound and have a new belief and vision in themselves. Matt, Hailey and Persia have found a way to get directly onto TV commissioners’ desks, so they’ve upped their game. When we find a way, we find hope.

Please don’t ask me about Russell Brand. The guy’s a complete cock but when it comes to freedom of speech and taking a joke, my line is clear: put him back on air straight away. Forget the sad little Daily Mail rent-a-self-righteous-crowd brigade, as there is nothing more ridiculous than the British public in one of their periodic fits of morality. Nobody would be half as interested if they weren’t trying to escape the mental gloom of the recession.

As we go along in this life, our aim has to be create prisoners of hope, and be one ourselves, as the Psalmist said. We have to be the change we want to see in the world, as Ghandi taught. If someone needs a break, you need to be their break rather than waiting around for someone else to step up. My own life is about helping others find a way.

There’s this amazing seen in The West Wing where President Jed Bartlett is furiously explaining how despite being crap at basketball, his coach imprinted in him that he should get in there because “winners always want the ball, Jed”. The context is about whether the White House will get involved in the case of a high-flying army private disobeying an order to stop having a relationship with her senior officer. After a lot of wrangling, his judgement at the end of the episode is that “Winners always want the ball; i don’t want to hear in future that there is something too sticky for this White House to get involved in. We want the ball, because winners always want the ball.”

I love that attitude. We have to want the ball to get in and play the game – to ultimately win it. If you don’t get in it, you can’t do anything at all, let alone win the thing. That goes for all of us. We have to decide how we will be in terms in our attitude to problems, situations, opportunities and the bigger picture. If we want to see and do big things, we have to get in there, off our fat ass, and make big plays. We need to take responsibility and the initiative to be the change. Forget everyone else and their apathy. Without us, nothing happens. Without you, it doesn’t go anywhere. The world belongs to those who roll up their sleeves and make the effort to get down in the dirt with those who need them to. You have to be somebody’s miracle if you want a miracle to happen for them.

The beautiful biblical scripture of “no weapon formed against you shall prosper” has come to mean a great deal to me. Over the last few years i’ve watched my enemies, critics and opponents just dissolve. One by one they slip away and lose their footing. There is nothing they can do against the tide and so they hang around as the passage of time sweeps them away. My Father has used most of them to prosper me, which is miraculous. Everything they have said and done has formed into a part of me and the situations have always turned around.

Even now, there are people i don’t like or want anywhere near me who read this site every single day following my moves. They linger and can only sit by the sidelines, trying to find an opening back into my life, be involved in it somehow or just wait to hear i’ve suffered a life-changing disaster that will vindicate them. What’s left of their little collection is waiting for me to fall, to learn the lesson they demand, to slip up, be humiliated or for something to happen that lets them get the better of me somehow. Others are just simply curious as to who i am and where i’m going. That’s fine by me.

There they are. There you are. Watching. Waiting. I’ve already won, and you’re wasting your time. It’s not going to happen so just move on with your life and assume the quiet anonymous existence you were destined for. There’s nothing for you here.

If you try and break me, you’ll just end up breaking yourself. You’ll never beat me. Why? Because i’m not there with you, and i don’t think like you. We don’t share the same mindset. What you think hurts me is something i want.

The truth is that i’ve learned a very powerful secret in the last few months that means they will be waiting forever - because it makes anyone undefeatable. Nobody is invincible, but when you change the parameters of the battle, you can ellipse your opponents or those who would do you harm by re-defining the whole field. They’re out there somewhere else and you are miles ahead. Suddenly the battle only has one person fighting, as you won the battle and just left. You marched right through them.

That secret is that assuming a different mindset where everything is positive, In that world, the negative things your opponents want you to experience don’t actually exist because they are re-defined in a different light. All their weapons and intentions for you are gone. They have nothing to fight with as you have disarmed them. They want things in your mind heart and spirit to change for the worse, and to do that you have to make an agreement with them to see things the same way as they do. The battleground is your own mind, which is why i wrote about victory being decided in your own mind rather than the situation or minds of other people.

These opposing people think in negative terms of good and bad, mistakes, fear, regret, being victims of cruelty and disaster, failure, humiliation, criticism, hoarding, frustration, impatience, rejection, suffering, apathy, depression, loss, unfairness, doom, expecting the worst and helplessness.

But these are just perspectives that we choose to adopt, or glasses we see the world through as only one side of the coin. None of these are facts or certainties, they are subjective and voluntary choices we adsorb ourselves into. We have the choice as to what we believe and how we react, and therefore how things affect us. It may sound like cheesy rhetoric, but its unfortunately accurate. The world and everyone else around you brainwashed you into behaving and thinking that way, and you don’t think there is another way because you’ve never seen one.

Someone getting the better of you involves you seeing the world the same way as they do, and that’s the secret. In fact, it requires it as a necessity.

If you don’t see it that way, they are simply lost out in the cold somewhere, fighting a losing battle with only themselves for company whilst you’re running faster and faster like an ever-fitter athlete on a different track. You become separated from their miserable reality that is ruled by all those horrendous things they choose to be rules of their lives. They just can’t connect once you’ve completely risen above it to be somewhere else. When the rules of the game are different, and you change the terms, the people who want to harm you (deliberately or inadvertently) can’t actually work out why you won’t go down or even how you see the world. They simply can’t comprehend and run around in circles.

Criticise me, and you’ve helped me see where my weak points are, meaning i can strengthen them; Try to intimidate or humiliate me, and i know you have a problem with needing power and controlling your temper, so i won’t put my assets in your hands because they will be at risk; betray others or lie to me and you help me to keep myself safe from you; act foolishly and you show me i am wiser than you and i learn from your lesson; If i fail, i learn persistence and make things better because i have feedback on my actions. Anything potentially negative you could do works for my benefit and nothing escapes the net. Nothing is pointless.

If all things happen for a reason, and we learn from everything, then there is no such thing as suffering – because you’re learning, It ceases to be suffering, or even negative at all. it’s for a reason and it will ultimately benefit you. Failure is no longer failure – it is feedback. Mistakes are just the version before you get it right. Choose a new perspective on scenarios in your life and you change the rules of the game. You’re ahead of your opponent s because they are trapped in a brainwashing cycle of negative thinking.

Even being attacked recently worked for me. It showed me i was much tougher than i thought, and as the police pointed out, much much tougher than the ordinary person is. It showed me the basis of all victory is in the mind, and the winner is the one who isn’t afraid at the end. It also paid me very handsomely indeed, financially speaking. I should have lost completely, but i won on all fronts.

The key to is acceptance and submitting to the circumstance, and the peace of mind it brings. If you’re in a place of suffering and can do nothing about it, you can fight it, or accept it. It’s either happening to you, against you, for you, or just happening. If it’s just happening, as life does, then you’re behind the steering wheel as to what the situation is. You choose the perspective. Say “yes” to it instead of “no”, and suddenly the whole game is different. You change the rules, and the world is under command once again. It’s no longer happening to you, as you’re in agreement with it. If you’ve got yourself into (yet another) stupid situation, then you have to be brave enough to say “yes” to the consequences because otherwise you’re fighting yourself in an endless spiral.

It’s ironic that a lot of people go around trying to shield themselves from pain or discomfort in any form by closing off, avoiding, evading, shutting down, curling up, staying distant and putting obstacles in front of themselves deliberately – so they don’t end up feeling any of those negative things. To achieve what they want, they actually have to do the opposite and assume that positive mindset to banish the scary thoughts, situations and feelings. Re-defining the landscape is the only true way to exorcise and marginalise them so they don’t affect you. Mulling and wallowing in them “protectively” is actually just making them breed beyond control. What you’re trying to do is making the opposite happen.

By the way, if you’re one of those few people that i don’t want anything to do with, let me throw you a charitable bone. If you want to be involved in my life again somehow (very unlikely if it’s a character fault that got you a smack), you need to earn my respect first and foremost. The vast majority who have got the boot tend to have done something profoundly morally offensive, cowardly or downright stupid, instead of having some character. I can deal with personal hurt, but when it’s part of something bigger than is pathetic in itself then my righteous outrage takes over and i’ll just write you off as a unwanted fuckhead. If it’s something that hurts but i respect you for it, then you won’t have a problem with me. Respect is everything to me, as i don’t really have that many people i feel i can look up to and i find it hard to really respect most.

A piece of wisdom i heard in a film last week has really buried itself in my spirit. You can’t “steal” a heart, as a heart only goes where it wants to. I often wonder if i’ve “stolen” people’s hearts as i learned to be very manipulative when i was young simply as a way to survive my environment. But understanding that freed a lot of my guilt because again it is a choice, even if the heart doesn’t seem to have any control over itself. In ordinary life, and not counting incidences of violence, you can’t force anyone to do anything. Even when there is a gun against your head, you still have the choice to let the person shoot you or resist. You can’t “steal” anything unless someone lets you have it.

Nowadays as the years go on, that manipulative ability of mine is a lot more noble and manifests itself as persuasiveness. The difference between the two is your intentions. When your motives become more positive and benign, you can alter and redirect that negative way of behaving into something far more useful and profound. The same goes for attention-seeking (PR and marketing are the business forms) and other types of childish neurosis many of us carry into later life.

As much as i am passionate about debate, I don’t have to prove myself or correct others now either, and it’s getting increasingly funny watching other people who are on a constant mission to do it, like the idiot sales guy from Apple who chewed my ear off last week about IPTV (very amusing when he googled me once i’d let him hang himself). I just write it off, and write them off. You can’t polish a turd, and you can’t teach a chimp advanced particle physics. You can’t force the harvest of a crop that isn’t in harvest season, and you can’t walk through a door until it’s been opened.

Some people just never learn, and never will. 80% have absolutely no imagination, and another 10% have very little. That leaves the rest of us 10% who walk on a very different path for different reasons, and i’m deeply grateful to be set apart as one of them. If i’d believed any of it, or blindly swallowed the same bullshit as most of us did, i’d be one of the sheeple working 9 to 5, desperately trying to find a reason and a purpose to exist other than the opportunity to dress up occasionally, and/or pretend i’m a crazy party animal on a Saturday night. Luckily for me, every day is a day off, and every day is a working day. Every day is the weekend and a party. Hence why i don’t give a shit about the weekend arriving – i live it 7 days a week already instead of one day a week.

The truth is that hope is NOT “out there” somewhere. It is not in other people, our history, our future or even waiting around the corner. Hope is inside you, right now. You just have to learn how to let it flow out of you like a river that never dries up. Hope costs nothing, can never be used up, and can’t be stopped. If you’re looking and waiting for hope, you’ll be waiting forever as you’re looking in the wrong place. We have to be a source of hope for others, so we can all be a source of hope for each other. If you want the light to shine in the darkness around you, you activate it by being a source of light in someone else’s darkness. That way, the light shines for both of you.