Scripting the Life You Want: Manifest Your Dreams with Just Pen and Paper

A downside of modern times is popular mythos that we can be anything we want, even if it seems impossible; sometimes labeled "toxic positivity." This mythos is one in which a middle-aged peacock farmer in India becomes the country's Prime Minister, or a child crippled with polio in Saudi Arabia their first astronaut. Yes, those scenarios are *possible* but the physical elements alone are tragically daunting. Such mythos also allow dominant paradigms to continue unchanged, as in the American Dream in which any person, if they work hard enough, can become a millionaire -- ignoring the tragically unfair hurdles of systemic racism and poor quality free or low cost education, to name just two. Christyn Royce's Scripting the Life You Want: Manifest Your Dreams with Just Pen and Paper come perilously close to supporting this mythos, and the book suffers as a result.

Royce (who's legal name is Matt Smith) is a former actor now offering workshops and coaching based on this book and the LoA. He is completely sure that creating a daily practice of writing out a "want" script and list filled with desires and actions to carry them out will manifest those desires into reality. This feels very akin to what magickal practitioners do as part of spellwork, athough Royce says it isn't the same.

Deeply problematic is the authors "research" and discussion about quantum physics and related sciences. Royce has no credentials in this area and relies on blog posts and other sources lacking professional peer-review. All of this information was presented as fact, not supposition, and it undermines the author's credibility.

What I did like was Royce's tone; his positive framework was refreshing and kind of fun. Scripting is as much a kind of biography as it is personal development, and that's a strong selling point.

The book is very much in the mold of all of the works based on the so-called Law of Attraction, so if you find value in that framework, Scripting will be of interest.

~review by Lisa Mc Sherry

Author: Christyn Royce
Inner Traditions, 2020
pp. 224, $16.99