Whether you live in a world of hurt, or one of joy, you should realize that this "world" you refer to when you experience things is almost exclusively in your mind. All your life you have been observing, and based on your KNOWLEDGE created patterns in your brain consisting of connected neurons.
It does not matter whether you acquire these patterns from people or movies, or any other form of human experience: they are there, and the bulk of them form your subconscious mind. Like the Matrix showed, your subconscious is where you spend most of your waking hours. It takes conscious thought to recognize the programs (or agents), and to rewrite them into something more to your liking.