Time Warp…..Living in Dual Universes

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Wow….I can’t believe how long it has actually been since I wrote my last blog, getting lost in a time warp wasn’t what I expected to happen last summer when I embarked on all out massive action to fix the issues in my life.  The thing I love most about my life is discovering everything the Universe and Life have to offer.  I love stretching the boundaries of time and space, finding out what is possible and finding out that very little in life is impossible.   Today’s entry is kind of warning about trying to stretch time too far while trying to create the life of your dreams.

Last summer and late fall I took on three full time jobs that left me with next to zero time for sleep.  I literally worked around the clock 7 days a week, catching no more than 3 to 4 hours of sleep per day.  It seemed to work pretty well with no ill effects for about 4 months, but in late January, I went from consciously creating what I wanted in life to just going through the motions, I had deprived myself of time to think and because I live by “Thoughts become things”, I no longer had time for my thoughts to become reality.  When I was at each of my jobs, I seemed to perform just fine, pretty much like a robot going through the motions, in between jobs I was dead tired and just plain irritable, yet when I arrived at the next job I became energized and ready to go.  That’s where the time warp stuff comes in, I had replaced valuable and extremely important dream time (unconscious, sleeping dream time) with an overnight job.  In the light of day, the overnight job and all that happened overnight felt like a dream, it felt like I never really was at that job and it really was just a dream.   Guess what ?  Replacing your valuable dream time with a remote control 3rd shift job is not a productive way to create the life of your dreams if it steals your real, unconscious dream time from you.

I find valuable lessons in everything that happens in my life, and the experiment of the past six months has taught me that while it is possible to exist on little or no sleep it blurs time and space and steals the opportunity from you to organize your life and create the things you want in your life.  The other and more painful thing I discovered is that an existence of this type steals  valuable time from your important personal relationships, and disrupts the connections with those closest to you.  So while it was an interesting and valuable experiment, it was not sustainable long term if I was going to get back to the place where I was firing on all cylinders and living the life of my real dreams.

While I was lost in the time warp, the Universe kept on working and helped me land in a place that is what I had dreamed of the last time I was firing on all cylinders.  While moving through this time warp, I landed  exactly where I wanted, I have inserted myself into the career that was my life long dream, with a company that is exactly what I dreamed of in all regards, from the management, ownership, compensation program and industry.  As a matter of fact, I recently spent a day in St. Cloud with the owner of the company I work for and his son who manages the sales team.  As I sat in the meeting and listened to them talk about their vision for the company, the new services we were adding, the sales approach with prospects, etc.  I had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake, it was as if they had performed Spock‘s Vulcan mind meld to find out what I was thinking would make their company perfect for me.  This truly is the opportunity, company and industry I have spent my whole life dreaming about and now that it’s here I am throwing everything I have at it.   I still have a lot of personal challenges to deal with from the economic melt down of the past few years but the path is now clear to get back in that place I call “Groovin”.

So it really feels like I have been living in two different Universes, the Universe of my dreams and the remote control Universe where I just go through the motions in interesting, fun jobs but not the career that I have now found.  It is amazing how thoughts and dreams do come true, and how God and special people are working behind the scenes on your behalf.  I don’t think it is any coincidence that I found the opportunity of my dreams and on Friday of this week, a special lunch was set up for me with someone I have wanted to connect with my whole life, and while it seemed like it would be impossible and that the time would never come, receiving an incredible text message from a very special person last Sunday confirmed the time had arrived.  Having faith and believing always works, it may not happen as quickly as you would like but when the time comes, it seems as if it was instantaneous.  Which always reminds me of what Wayner Dyer says   “Infinite patience brings immediate results”, thing about that one, it really works and has served me well. 

So after not blogging for a while I feel like I have just been rambling again, but if I can offer any advice today, it is to make sure you don’t let yourself fall into the time warp.  Don’t ever give up your personal dream time, all those experts are right you really do need a good night’s sleep and not just for your physical health but more importantly for the health of your life’s dreams and for time to create the life of your dreams.  Over the years, I have used a technique that has always worked for me and always brought me what I wanted and needed in my life.   Saying a prayer in the form of a conversation with God about your dreams and desires right before going to bed is the first part of this technique.   When I was 12 years old, there was nothing I wanted more than to play baseball and hit like my favorite baseball player Rod Carew.  I hadn’t done much praying in my life at that point but when I started out the season as a 12 year old in the Babe Ruth league with no hits in the first 4 games, I turned to God, I prayed every night and went to Church on Sunday and focused my thoughts on hitting while sitting in Church.  Within a week of starting to pray, I went 4 for 4 in a game, 4 hits that were solid line drives, that season I went on to hit .675, about 300 points higher than Rod Carew hit that year.  I have been a true believer in prayer ever since.  The other part of my technique is writing what I want in my life down on paper which I also review every night before going to bed.  Sometimes I write things down, misplace the notebook I wrote it in and find it years later, only to discover that everything I wrote down came to be.  Now that I am emerging from the Time warp, I am focused again on my prayer and my notebook of dreams.  

I spent a lot of time driving the past few weeks which has given me quiet time alone to think, dream and analyze my life and the challenges of the last few years.  Two things popped into my head, the Time Warp that I wrote about today and Daydreaming.   In regards to Daydreaming, I thought about the power of Daydreaming and how the only time I got in trouble in school was all the times I got caught daydreaming.   Somehow, the teachers had it all wrong, Daydreaming is good, not bad.   As a matter of fact, if our schools were truly enlightened they would teach kids how to daydream and set aside time each day specifically for daydreaming.  More on daydreaming in my next blog entry, which I know will be soon, I also intend to get back to writing regular entries in my blog again as there is nothing better for your soul and dreams than writing about your thoughts.   Sweet Dreams to you !

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Love Train

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The Beatles had it right…”All you need is Love” !  I will admit that I didn’t know what this meant back in the 60’s when I was in grade school but I finally understand that “Love” really is all you need to accomplish anything you want in your life.  1967 was the famous Summer of Love and I was definitely in love, with a 1967 Red Mustang , to this day that is my dream car and was the first time I “loved something”.  Love was always a difficult word to define, understand, experience or use but over time I finally get it.

Love isn’t something that just happens, I don’t think love is something that happens to you, I believe Love is something you create.  Love is a choice, it is a decision you make in your life but once you understand it’s power and use it the right way it can deliver anything and everything you could ever imagine.  One thing I still don’t quite understand is accepting Love from others.  It is one thing to Love someone or something or some activity it is another thing to feel the Love someone else.  I am not sure I can define or describe that kind of Love, I am not saying that people like my family don’t Love me, but I am not sure feeling the Love of someone else for you is the same as Loving that person and giving them your Love.  You see Love isn’t about being loved, it is about Loving someone or something.

Let me explain where I am going with this and why I feel like I finally “Get it”.   I have embarked on a new career in a field I absolutely, positively Love.  My new career is selling Cinema Ads, the kind that run on the screen before the main movie starts.  My job involves going door to door, cold calling on businesses of all sizes most of which have “No Solicitors” signs posted on their doors.  There was a time in my life that this would have scared the hell out of me and I can honestly say it would still scare the hell out of me if I didn’t Love my product, Love my company and Love my prospects, yes I said Love my prospects !.   I have spent the last few weeks knocking on at least 20 doors a day and with only a couple of exceptions, everyone has greeted me kindly and only once was I told I should have read the sign on the door about soliciting.  I truly believe that since I have come to understand the true meaning of Love, it has served me well.  I know that if I didn’t go into each business I call on thinking I was going to Love the people and Love handling their advertising, I wouldn’t have been greeted so kindly.  I also know that Loving my job, every part of my job, makes everything go better, I know that without this Love for my career, I wouldn’t be as happy as I am sitting in this hotel by myself tonight.

Love can serve you in many ways.  One of the things I am working very hard on is using Love in every portion of my life no matter what the situation is.  When my son or daughter call me  in the middle of an important meeting with an urgent message which turns out to be they need money to buy gas to go some place fun, I pause and think what Love means in this situation, does it mean be kind or get angry for the interruption ?  it always, means to be kind.  To me that is the definition of “tough love“, deciding to be kind when it is really tough to be kind.  When I am in a tough situation and trying to negotiate with a mortgage company, a creditor or anyone that isn’t exactly trying to be your friend, I have recently taken the approach that I am going to send my Love to the person I am talking to and my experience so far is that without fail, the Love comes back to you in the form of the result you had hoped for.

April 26th, 1980 was an incredible day, that was the day I married Suanne Fodstad but it was also the day I really listened and took to heart 1 Corinthians 13 from the Bible.  This passage is in my opinion the best definition of Love there ever was and as I have re-read it the past couple of days, it is truly amazing to me how it applies to everything I have been doing to turn my life around and get back on track.  If you have never read this passage or have forgotten what it says it is worth re-printing here for your review:

1 Corinthians 13

¹ If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Faith, Hope and Love….. there it is.  Can you see what I mean about how this can apply to every area of your life.  Just in the way you do business or deal with others, if you do it with Love you cannot fail.  A dear friend of mine from High School sent me a great power point presentation today called “Life on a Train’, I don’t think she had any idea how much I love trains, and love riding them but this presentation she sent me compared Life to a long train ride and it was so right on, it was just another one of those moments where the light clicked again and everything in my life has started to make sense.  That power point presentation got me thinking about Love and what it has meant to me recently as I have tried to apply it to everything I do.  Then that mental Juke Box of mine picked up Love message and combined it with the train analogy from the power point and wouldn’t you know it, it flipped on the turntable in my head and started playing the O’Jay’s classic  “Love Train”  which led to me writing about Love today.   So let me leave you with the words of the O’Jay’s  Start a Love Train  and Please don’t miss this train at the station, because if you do, I feel sorry, sorry you. Join hands Start a Love Train, Love Train….it is all you will ever need to get everything you want in life…..I love you !

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Creating Your Own Reality

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It used to bother me when people would say things like “Tim is in a world all to himself” or “Tim lives in a fantasy world” or “He’s always so lucky, but some day his luck will change”.   Up until the point those comments started bothering me, I really did live in a fantasy world and in my fantasy world every fantasy I dreamed came true starting in High School.  You see everything in my life was created in a thought or a dream so when I had great thoughts and great dreams that is exactly what my world was made of, when I started listening to people make comments like I mentioned earlier, I started thinking that maybe they were right, the minute I started thinking that way, I got exactly what I was thinking of.

I have spent alot of time analyzing my 51 years of life here on Planet Earth, especially with the trials and tribulations of the past three years.  I had to find out why 48 years were about as perfect as a life could be and then the last 3 years were as ugly as life could be.  I say ugly only because they were so dramatically different then the first 48, while it wasn’t great it was a lesson I needed to remind me about how powerful our thoughts are and why it is so important to create your life as you want it and not by what others may think is right for you.

So let me tell you about the reality I created the last 51 years, including the last three which were also my creation.  Growing up in Crystal, Minnesota I was always fascinated with all the things you could do in life, I wanted to experience everything.  In the fourth grade our class took a field trip to the North Hennepin Post Newspaper, I thought the News paper business was really cool after that visit, so I went home and started my own neighborhood newspaper.  The first paper I created was on a manual typewriter with 5 pages of carbon paper(for those who don’t remember, carbon paper was something you could put between two pages of paper and make a copy of the first by either pressing hard with a pen or typing), because I was trying to make so many copies, my fingers got very sore from trying to slam down the keys so it would go through all 5 copies.   Later, I graduated to a printing press that I found in the Montgomery Ward catalog.  I remember sitting in front of the TV with a TV tray watching the Batman TV show and setting type letter by letter in my little printing press.  It was a fun little operation and I had several subscribers both in the neighborhood and at school who were willing to pay 5 cents a copy.

My next dream come true was when I decided after spending time growing up at the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale it was time to open my own theater.  I loved the theater business from time my mother started working at the Terrace when I was 2 years old.  I was at the Terrace alot and took my time to learn how they did everything including getting to spend time with the Union Projectionist in the projection booth learning how to run the projectors.  So in the 5th grade, I opened the Hollywood Chief Theater in my basement showing silent films I took out at the public library on my Super 8 projector.  This venture was so succesful that I opened a second theater in my backyard, called the “Bike-In” theater which was created by stringing a large white sheet between two trees and pointing the projector out the back window of our house. 

Moving on to 6th grade, I decided that it was time to get with the latest technology after seeing my favorite disc jockey from my favorite radio station at the State Fair broadcasting live.  You guessed it, I signed on my own radio station WTIM using at first a CB radio and broadcasting the latest top 40 hits so all the kids in the neighborhood could hear them on their walkie talkies.  Later that same year, I found a kit at an electronics store called Lafayette Electronics for an AM Transmitter so I could broadcast on real radio.  The kit was very specific that your antenna should not exceed the 12 inches of wire that came with the kit, well I would have no part of that because I needed the whole neighborhood to hear me so I strung a 50 ft antenna from my house to the highest point I could climb to in one of the trees in our backyard.  I guess this radio empire was the beginning of my mini-media empire, because the next thing I did was buy an FM transmitting microphone from Radio Shack, now I was big time, AM and FM.  But that was just the start, 8-track tape players were all the rage and I was fortunate enough to get an 8-track tape recorder for Christmas that year which led the way for me to open up yet another business I called Sound Dynamics.  Today that business would be highly illegal and would be called Tim’s Pirate music company, I had no idea that I was pirating music by buying a vinyl album, recording it to 8 track and then selling to my friends.  I did quite well with this business adding cassette tapes to my 8 tracks.  So by the time I had graduated 6th grade I was operating 2 radio stations, 2 movie theaters and a record company.

I went to Hosterman Junior High in New Hope Minnesota for my next three years of school.  Alpine skiing was huge back in the 70’s and I loved watching the Olympics and the coverage of skiing including the local ski show hosted by local weatherman Barry Zevan.  I went skiing for my first time in 7th grade and by the end of the first day, I was skiing about as good as most of the people on the hill at Snowcrest ski area in Somerset, Wisconsin.  My dream was to become a ski racer and have all the girls admire me especially petite blondes which I decided was what would be the perfect fit for me.  At that time, Cooper High School had a ski racing team , the High School was for grades 10 to 12 while the junior high was 7 to 9.  I  heard that you could be on the High School ski team if you were good enough in 9th grade so I convinced my friend Steve Banker to try out for the team with me.  Steve and I had skied together quite a bit with the boy scouts, so what the heck, I thought we should give it a try.  And just as I had dreamed it, Steve and I made the ski team as 9th graders and by the time we were in 10th grade we were co-captains of the Cooper High School ski team.  Now you tell me that you can’t create exactly what you want.  I went from never having skied to the captain of the High School team, my first year in High School, pretty powerful life creating powers I had and you have as well.

While I loved sports, the media bug was still in my system so I started a film company to make ski movies.  I learned to ski backwards so I could ski down and look up the hill to film my friends.  I learned how to edit film, sync sound from a cassette recorder and eventually made 3 feature length Super 8 films with sound.  My friends hated my new film company because we would take a trip to Montana or Colorado to ski and I would spend half the time making them film me or letting me film them crashing off jumps and cliffs.  It was quite the deal for a junior high kid and it was exactly as I dreamed it would be.

Once I made it to Cooper High School my thoughts turned to having the greatest High School experience ever.  My favorite TV show was always “Leave it to Beaver” and I always wanted to be just like Wally, so while I continued to ski race, my real passion was Baseball, Blondes and good grades while having the greatest high school experience ever.  I had always loved baseball but was never able to keep up with the star athletes from my junior high days but after buying a book called “Show the Coach” and attending a summer of Baseball Camp, I was the starting 3rd baseman for the Cooper High Junior Varsity team and wouldn’t you know it just as I had dreamed not only was I the starting 3rd baseman but I had the perfect coach in Ted Leuer, who recognized how much attention I paid to playing the game right.  For the next 3 years in high school and 1 year of college I played and enjoyed baseball more than I had ever dreamed of.  But the point is I dreamed it and knew it would happen exactly the way I wanted it to happen and it did.

As for the Blonde, my bride of 30 years plus walked into the Terrace Theater in the Summer of 1974 and I saw the vision of the woman I had always dreamed of.  It took me almost a year to convince her to go out with me but just as I had dreamed and thought about constantly, we went out for 5 years and got married and moved to South Dakota where I had the job I had been dreaming of, I was morning disc jockey and Basketball Color announcer for the radio station.  I was living the dream and things only got better.   I dreamed of waiting about 8 years to have kids and knew that I wanted 1 son and 1 daughter which is exactly what we ended up with.   I won’t bore you with all the details but for the next 20 years, I got the houses I dreamed of, the cars I dreamed, travelled all over the world to every place I ever wanted to go, built multiple companies that I had dreamed of.  I even played a half season of 40 plus baseball.  During those amazing 48 years, I can’t tell you how many times things would happen exactly as I had dreamed they would or thought they would.

So what about the last three years ?  Well, I dreamed about those as well.  Unfortunately, I forgot how powerful my dreams and thoughts were.  I can tell you when it all started, I had paid off everything, I had zero debt, I had a ton of money in the bank, things were going incredible.  I can actually remember the exact moment that my thoughts changed to thoughts of what has happened the last three years.   I was on a Northwest Airlines flight flying from Minneapolis to San Francisco, sitting in First Class enjoying my status and thinking about how fortunate I was to have had all my dreams come true, then a thought popped into my head, a thought like I had never had in my whole life, “What if I lost it all ?” started going through my mind, which was something I never, ever would have even considered.  Things got weird after that thought popped into my mind, about an hour out of San Francisco, the Captain came on the PA system to tell us that the plane had hydraulic problems and we were going to have to make an emergency landing.  The minute I heard that, the thoughts of doom and disaster just got worse.  We dumped fuel and as we landed in San Francisco, fire trucks raced down the runway beside us.  The Captain had done an incredible job of landing the plane and nothing serious happened to anyone but my thoughts of loss grew stronger each day after that event.   As time went on, I noticed I had started to worry about crazy things like the election between Bush and Gore, my thoughts of impending disaster continued to grow leading up to the morning of September 11, 2001 as I sit in my home gym riding my Lifecycle watching Good Morning America as I saw the second plane, crash live on TV into the World Trade Center everything changed and for some reason from that day forward I was never able to get 100% back in the groove.   I had thoughts of my business failing, of losing my home ,of losing my cars and losing everything I had worked for my entire life.  It was at this time that I should have thrown myself into the good stuff like I have for the past 6 months.  I had created my own reality and what I had worried about starting in 2001 came to pass in 2009.  Talk about a wake up call !   Thoughts really do become things and that is why it is so important to choose them carefully.

Today,  I am seeing signs of the thoughts I had six months ago coming true, I dreamed of the perfect opportunities coming my way and sure enough they are, on a daily basis.  But the most important thing I have learned through all of this is that we really do create everything that happens in our lives.  It is easy to create exactly the life you want and it is just as easy to create exactly the life you don’t want.  It’s your choice, choose the good stuff or worry about the bad stuff.  I can tell you I am done with the bad stuff and totally focused on the good stuff including getting in the best physical shape of my life.  It’s kind of funny on this physical shape thing because, I have watched what I have eaten in the past in many attempts to lose some weight but for some reason over the past 9 years it never worked well.  Now that I am back in the “Groove”,  40 pounds has effortlessly dropped from my body primarily because I knew it would and visualized myself being in the best shape of my life for the 35th Class reunion of Cooper High School Class of 1977.  I will have a lot more to report on creating the life I have always wanted to live and boy do I intend to live, for at least another 70 years !  I hope you will consider my story and take some time to thing about the life you want for yourself, think about the good stuff and don’t ever, ever worry about anything bad.  Speaking of the Cooper High School Class of 1977, it was the greatest group of people I have ever met, and I spent most of my life telling the world about these special people.  I know many of them, maybe without knowing it have created exactly the lives they have wanted.  A few worried about things they shouldn’t have and have had to deal with the reality that brought them but I hope they have found what I have in the power of creating your own reality through visualizing the good stuff.  Thanks for spending a few minutes with me, you know I have been thinking of you.

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Those Who Inspire Us……

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I have to be the luckiest guy on earth, throughout my life, incredible people have shown up on a regular basis with life experiences that are extraordinary and extraordinarily inspirational.  As I have searched for what my true purpose is in life, I always thought I wanted to inspire people through books, audio programs and public speaking, I was foolish enough to think that I had done something inspirational and that I could speak from personal experiences.   While I have had many successes, many challenges and many comebacks in the past and hopefully in the future, my experiences are nothing compared to the people that have shown up in my life that truly were an inspiration and whose examples of conquering challenges in their lives have kept me going and made my challenges minor in comparison.

As I thought about all the incredible people that have come into my life at various times to inspire me, it became clear that the best way for me to inspire others was by sharing with the stories of those that have inspired me over the years.  In an earlier post on my blog I spoke about some of the people that inspired me as I was growing up through my high school years, including former Minnesota Twins Shortstop  Danny Thompson, my American Legion Baseball Coach Ted Leuer and many others.  Today I had an opportunity to think about those who have inspired me in the years after I graduated from High School and one of the first persons that came to mind was a life insurance salesman from Spearfish, South Dakota.  I moved to Spearfish in October of 1979 after taking a job as the mid-day announcer at KBFS Radio in Belle Fourche, one of the first people to welcome me to Spearfish was Harvey Krautschun, I was just 20 years old and Harvey was the most positive and energetic person I had met in my life.  At first, I thought Harvey was just being so cool because he wanted to sell me life insurance, which I bought shortly after our first visit, but I soon discovered that Harvey just loved people and loved making a difference in everyone’s lives.  Over the 2 years I spent in Spearfish, Harvey and I had the opportunity to become good friends, heck Harvey even returned the favor, and bought some radio ads from me and had me record his commercials.

After leaving Spearfish in the Spring of 1981, Harvey and I stayed in contact, or should I say Harvey kept in touch with me,  every time I would think about calling Harvey, he would call me before I had the chance to call him.   Harvey’s calls were always different than any other calls I would ever receive,  Harvey never called to talk about himself, he always called to check on me and more importantly my family.  After every call I got from Harvey, I always found myself wondering why I hadn’t taken the time to find out how Harvey and his family were doing.  In the 90’s when I had started a fairly significant company in the Floppy disk replication business, Harvey tried hard to convince me and my partners to move the company headquarters to South Dakota, he made arrangements for a trip that flew me to Sioux Falls and  Spearfish where I met with City and State Government officials who wanted to do anything they could to get us to move our company, I was all for it but my partners just didn’t think it made sense.  That trip was the first time that I realized what a great business builder and supporter of local communities Harvey was.  Later in the 90’s Harvey became be a state legislator and ultimately the Speaker of the State House of Representatives and many thought he would end up as Governor.

Here’s where the story gets interesting, throughout the 90’s Harvey called me on a regular basis and as usual was only interested in checking on me and my family, and again I always wondered why I never asked about Harvey and his family.  Harvey never missed a beat calling including throughout 1995 and 1996 which I would later find out was a very difficult time for Harvey, even though he didn’t mention his challenge even once to me during his calls of 1995 and 1996.   In July of 1995, when a newborn colt jumped into an 8-foot pond, Harvey’s wife Joy jumped in to save the colt.  While trying to save the colt, Joy’s heart suddenly failed, Harvey rushed to her side and began mouth to mouth resuscitation.  Harvey and Joy’s son, Bart, rushed to find additional help, calling an ambulance.  Bart returned to his mother’s side and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her.  Father and son together fought to save Joy’s life.  The massive heart failure pushed her into a coma.  Harvey stood by Joy’s hospital bed as she lay comatose for a month, fighting for her life.  Because of his constancy and commitment to his wife’s life, even as doctor’s began discussing terminating life support, Harvey’s devotion remained unmoved.  He was determined to see his wife awake again.

Joy awoke from her coma.  Her recovery from the massive heart damage would entail months of hospitalization and therapy.  Joy did recover, and today she is living with her family even though doctor’s had believed she would not live.  Harvey and his family made a commitment to Joy’s life and it was that commitment that saved her.  Harvey is truly incredible and an inspiration, even while faced with incredible turbulence in his own life he still found time to call and check on me and my family without mentioning the challenges of his own family.

I found about Joy’s accident and illness in the summer of 1997, I had done quite well with my sales career and had taken 3 weeks off to travel the west with my wife and two young children.   I had a tire blow out on my 31 foot RV that was towing an SUV as I was driving down a mountain in Wyoming at 80 plus miles per hour, while it scared the heck out of me, I was able to pull the vehicle to the shoulder and get the help that was needed to tow the RV to Spearfish, South Dakota.   The first thing I thought of was, I am going to call Harvey to tell him how successful I have been and how much fun I was having taking a long vacation with my incredibly healthy family.  Of course, I would also have to tell him of the trauma caused by the one day delay in our trip because of the flat tire.  I called Harvey and of course Harvey was thrilled to hear from me and offered to take me to lunch.  While having lunch, I bragged about my success and the health of my family and could tell Harvey was sincerely happy for everything that had come my way.   I finally had made it a point that this time I was going to ask Harvey about his family, I did and he finally opened up and told me Joy’s story.  I can’t tell you what a wake up call that was,  I was so caught up with myself that I had forgotten about those who had done so much for me over the years.  Harvey was always there to check on me, to lend me advice and be sure my family was doing well and I never returned the favor.  Inspirational people like Harvey help remind us of what is important and most importantly their stories remind us of how trivial most of our daily issues are.  I have spoken way too often in this blog about the challenges I have faced financially over the past three years, but my family is healthy and while we had a very tough time with the death of my mother in-law, none of our daily challenges come close to those of the people who have shown up in my life like Harvey Krautschun, Terry Lyles, Marian Braun and Kathlyn Hunt.  I want to share more with you about the people who have inspired me and continue to inspire me on a daily basis.  I hope their stories will inspire you and help you realize that challenges of any size are manageable and that miracles do occur when you KNOW they will.

Groovin’

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The transformation taking place in my life is amazing and I can’t get over all the cool stuff that is going on in my head.  It has proven to me once again that we can and do create what happens in our lives, we decide if we are going to be happy or sad, tired or energized, everything revolves around our thoughts and as Mike Dooley says “Thoughts become things”.  The real key to all this magic is being conscious,  or at least consciously filling your mind with the good thoughts and the good input from outside sources.  TV, Radio and Newspapers can unconsciously fill your head with doom and gloom, shape your opinions about our leaders and take you out of the “zone”.

9th grade was my breakthrough year when I was playing baseball, prior to that I dropped the ball, especially when the game was on the line, I struck out, especially when I shouldn’t have and no matter how bad I wanted it I couldn’t get a hit.  Then two things happened, I started praying two to three times a day, and I got my hands on a book that talked about athletes performing at their best when they were in the zone.  As I look and think back to that time, the praying part was much more than just asking God to help me with my baseball skills as I took the praying seriously and really went into a state of total focus on asking God to help me but also repeating to myself what I wanted to happen, which in this case was I wanted to hit like Rod Carew.  The other thing was reading that book that talked about being in the zone,  the zone was when an athlete got himself into that perfect state where he was firing on all cylinders and everything was working perfect which allowed him to perform at the highest ability possible.   I have never  forgotten these particular strategies in my life and as I talked about in a  past blog, the things I learned on the Baseball field have served me well in life.

If you have been following my transformation through this blog, then you know that I was pretty much in the zone for the first 47 years of my life, just about everything I dreamed about or wanted for my life came true, I had mastered being in the “zone” of life because I “Knew” I could make things happen and I knew things would work out exactly as I planned.  Then I lost my way, I gave into listening to people tell me I wasn’t being realistic, that things weren’t going to be as good as I thought they would, I listened to the negative news on talk radio, TV news and read it in the paper and those thoughts became things and my world wasn’t so good for three years.  In July of this year, I decided to take massive action, including not letting any of the outside media or opinions of others affect what I “knew” was the truth.   The transformation has been incredible, I have effortlessly lost over 30 pounds, I feel better, I am positive and I have so many opportunities coming my way it is truly incredible.  But nothing explains this better than the music that plays in my head.

In August,  I was very stressed out one morning even though I had started down this path of knowing, I still let myself slip but I was enough on the right road that music started playing in my head when those stressful thoughts entered.  The Beach Boys ” Don’t Worry Baby” and the lyrics “everything will work out” played in my head and corrected my thoughts.  That worked so well that I wrote a blog post about the power of music and how hearing that song in my head, set my thinking straight that day.  The transformation and music continues, things have been going so well that I wanted to come up with a term other than being in the zone to describe this state I have been able to get myself into.   So while I was out walking my trusty companion “Flash” the golden retriever,  the juke box in my head started playing that old classic by the Young Rascals “Groovin“.   I immediately knew that was what I was going to call this state of mind, so right now I am “Groovin'” and on my way back to the incredible life I knew I could have.

I am not sure if you remember my “Don’t  Worry Baby” post but I got so excited about my mental juke box that I started talking about all the great lyrics of those songs  that have played in my head.  So after “Groovin” played on the juke box and wouldn’t stop playing, I started thinking about the lyrics and they are amazing especially when it comes to creating the world you always wanted for yourself.  Check this out…Groovin’…on a Sunday Afternoon (I choose to be Groovin 24/7)   I can’t imagine anything that’s better, The world is ours when we are together (I took this line as the World is ours when me and my thoughts are together)  There ain’t a place I’d like to be instead of Groovn’.  And it only get’s better as the song goes on…There’s always lot’s of things the we can see…we can be anyone we want to be..And all those “Happy” people we could meet just…Groovin.   We’ ll keep on spending sunny days this way, we’re gonna talk and laugh our time away…I feel it comin’ closer day by day…Life would be ectasy…..Groovin.   If that doesn’t describe my personal transformation of the past few months, I am not sure what does.  Those words are perfect if you are trying to start “Groovin” or getting in the zone, whether it is “We can be anyone we want to be” or “I feel it comin closer day by” these are incredible affirmations that will help you get in the zone or as I like to say “Groovn”.

So fire up your personal juke box in your head,  remember those songs that touched you and had a positive impact on your life and maybe even find some new ones that take you where you want to go.  For me, there is no place I would rather be than….Groovin !

If You Are Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands !

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Just thinking about all those happy songs we learned as kids put a big smile on my face.  One of those songs stuck out because it included the name of my Blog “You know it”.   If you aren’t happy you will get happy fast singing that song and clapping your hands, whether it brings back memories or just makes you feel silly for singing and clapping you can’t help but put a smile on your face when you sing it and clap.   Being happy and  knowing it isn’t something that just happens,  you have to intend to be happy and know your happy (and then clap your hands).  Where the heck am I going with this ?  When the song popped into my head, it just made sense to use it as the title for today’s post and it was fitting because it is what I am all about, being happy and knowing it.

I started down my path of reclaiming the old Tim Braun sometime in late July, instead of focusing on all the bad stuff that had happened the past two years, I made up my mind to focus only on what I wanted to happen and what I wanted to attract to my life.  I cut out all the negative including news and talk programs on radio and tv and even the newspaper.  I excused myself  from conversations with people that slipped into discussion of negative events or thoughts and I totally focused on everything good.  Today, I had a few minutes to reflect on all the good stuff that has come my way since I changed my thinking in late July and I am happy to report that “Thoughts really do become Things”.  I attracted two full time adventures (some might call them jobs), while those two adventures take up 16 hours a day, I really enjoy both of them and this week, on the same exact day, I not only got promoted but got significant raises after less than a month on the job at both places.  If that wasn’t enough, I got an email out of the blue for another incredible opportunity that just happens to involve my favorite sport  “Baseball” and a huge name in the game.  The timing on this last opportunity was unbelievable and no one can tell me any of the events of the past couple months are just a coincidence, there is a direct connection between my thoughts and what has shown up in my life.   It is exactly the way things always used to work for me.    And there’s even more,  if you followed my blogs on the miracle I needed, that showed up just a couple days later, you know it involved foreclosures and a certain high profile mortgage company.  Now I am not paying attention to the news, but my wife informed me today that not only is the Minnesota Attorney General investigating this company’s practices but all 50 states have now opened an investigation into this company and others.  Truly amazing things are happening and it is all a direct result of changing my mindset to know these things were going to happen for me.

I know this can work for you too !  After 51 years of experience, I not only want to create the life I had dreamed of but I want to help others to do  the same.  There is nothing I enjoy more than getting people fired up and believing in themselves and knowing they can create the life they want.  I think that is probably the main reason I am enjoying my little adventures so much,  whether I am interacting with customers at the gas station in the middle of the night or talking to young sales people at the mall kiosk early in the morning, it is always fun to see the transformation in people when I share my secrets with them.

Sleep ?  who needs sleep ?  The number one question I get these days is ” When do you sleep ?” and that is usually followed by “How can you always be so happy and energized working all those hours ?”  Well first of all, I don’t really get tired and secondly, I am not working, I am on an adventure and adventures get me excited and energized.   To be honest, I might get a little sleepy from time to time, but everything that is happening is exactly as I dreamed it over the past few months and in my dreams I was never tired.  When you are happy and energized you can do amazing things.  Are you happy right now ?  Why not ?  did you try clapping your hands ?  Come on…you are happy and you know it !

I do need to spend a little more time writing my blog as I miss writing daily and the power that comes from writing is hard to do without.   What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail ?  Anything is possible and after reminding myself of the power I had for years and that it really does work, I intend to ramp things up and continue to share the progress, not just on paper but also through my video blog which I will be launching soon on You Tube and linking here.   Make it a great day and do yourself a favor,  make up your mind to know your happy and while you are at it, clap your hands.

1977

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I have to say that 1977 ranks at or near the top of my all time favorite years.   I was blessed with having the best classmates on the face of the earth and in my opinion the greatest collection of teachers and coaches ever assembled in one High School.  I was incredibly proud to be a Cooper Hawk whether as a student, baseball player, ski racer or cross-country runner, Cooper High School was the best and in particular my senior year 1977 was the absolute best year of school I ever had.

Over the past 50 years, I have made thousands of friends and had the opportunity to talk to thousands and thousands of people in my travels not only around the United States but around the world.  To this date,  I still talk about my experience at Cooper High School and what I find is that I can’t find anyone that has had a high school experience to match mine.  It’s true many people have fond memories of high school, but none compares to my experience.

Every chance I get, I drive by Cooper High School trying to re-live those incredible days, some times I will throw on the Bruce Springsteen CD and play “Glory Days” over and over.  I like to go sit in the dugout at the baseball field and re-live the great times I had playing with the greatest baseball teams and coaches ever assembled anywhere.   Don’t tell me the Yankees or my Twins had a better team or mix of players than the teams I played on in 75, 76 and 77.  Whether it was playing baseball, running cross-country, making films in speech class or sitting in Humanities class there wasn’t one moment I didn’t thoroughly enjoy.   This incredible environment made me strive for great grades and winning performances in sports.  I am not sure I can explain this because I haven’t seen anything like it anyplace but at Cooper during my time there.

The other amazing thing about Cooper High School was that the friendships I developed during that time have endured, all of my best friends went to High School with me, when I moved to my second home in Maple Gove in 1986, the whole neighborhood filled up with Cooper High School graduates.  The strong bond that connected us in High School carries on to today, my class in particular holds formal reunions every 5 years that are well attended, informal reunions yearly at the Crystal Frolics in July that include Heidi’s home tours of all the old home we lived in during the time we were in High School and of course a run to everyone’s favorite mexican fast food restaurant Zantigo.   Because there was so much time (5 years)in between our last reunion we even had an all class 50th Birthday party and this weekend we are having an all 70’s party.

When I share my love of the class of 1977 with other people they always think I am from a small town, with a very small class, the opposite is true, Cooper is in New Hope, Minnesota a large suburb of Minneapolis and our graduating class was at least 700 in size.   The friends I made, the teachers who taught me and the coaches who coached me have all played important roles in my life,  The success at Cooper High School set the stage for the success I enjoyed in my life.  Specifically, I had a network of friends that supported me and were always behind me every step of the way, you can always depend on a Cooper Hawk to have your back.

1977, what a year !  Besides my incredible experience in High School, I enjoyed my hometown, my jobs and dating my girlfriend Suanne who has been with me since 1975, married since 1980.  I long for a Saturday night dinner at the Nankin Chinese restaurant followed by a movie at the Mann Orpheum Theater on Hennepin.  I miss meeting my classmates at  Happy Joe’s Pizza in Crystal and I really miss letting all my classmates into the movies at the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale where I worked as an usher.

The late 70’s was of course the dawning of the disco era with dancing at Scottie’s on 7th, I had one of those White Suits (just like Steve Martin’s) and all the craze was the silk shirts imprinted with different pictures and of course you were not allowed to button the top three buttons on the shirt.  I never got into the gold chains but believe they were huge at the time.  My all time favorite Baseball player, Rod Carew was the American League MVP in 1977.  I drove a 1977 Mustang Mach I that is still my favorite car.   1977 and everything that went with it is still my favorite year.  Everything was firing on all cylinders not only was the year great but the expectation of being able to go out on my own and pursue my dreams was forefront in my mind.

I was truly in the zone in 1977, I had a picture in my mind of what I was going to do with my life and I “KNEW” I could make it happen and I did make it happen for the next 30 years almost exactly as I dreamed about it in 1977.  I know how strong my dream was and how good I was at visualizing exactly the life I wanted so I am dubbing my system for creating the life you want, System 1977, if you can remember how you felt  when you graduated from High School and can remember the dreams you had and the plans you had, you can return to that feeling anytime you want and once you do, you can create the next 50 years to fit your  dream.  I know I had the unfair advantage of being a Cooper Hawk and having the support of the greatest classmates on the face of the earth, but I know everyone has the power to create the life they want and the best way to describe the feeling you need to have is taking yourself back to a time in your life when you were full of dreams and expectations and about to launch into the world.

For me,  1977 and everything about Cooper High School is etched permanently in my mind and nothing means more to me than having the opportunity to return to those days whether it is communicating with my classmates, having dinner with one of my incredible coaches or sitting in the dugout at the Baseball field.  My time at Cooper, confirmed for me that the world and life could be anything you wanted to make it.  Thank you Classmates, Teachers and Coaches, you mean the world to me and I appreciate everything you have done for me.

The Lost Art of Dining with Friends

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Last night my wife and I had a terrific evening dining with my American Legion Baseball Coach (33 years ago)and his wife.  While we arrived at the restaurant fairly early we found ourselves all alone at the end of the evening in the dining room.  Usually when I go out to dinner with anyone whether it is my wife, friends or business associates it seems like I am watching the time to make sure the whole affair is limited to 60 minutes or less.  I am not sure where the 60 minute time limit came from but I know that I have felt bound by those time limits for most of my life.  The 60 minute self-imposed time limit was most apparent to me during my travels to Europe from 2002 – 2006 especially in Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France.  My wife and I would go into a restaurant, eat our food and would be ready to leave after 45 minutes but it usually would take almost another hour to get our check so we could finally pay and leave.  This was interesting because it forced us to start talking and relaxing while we waited for the check to come.   The more we dined out in Europe the more we noticed that everyone else came to dinner for the entire evening.  Now I know this is not unique to Europe and I know there are many people in the United States that spend more time at dinner than I do but I believe in the US the opposite is true at most restaurants, even if you want to make a long evening of it, the wait staff is usually quick to bring your check, ask if you need a box and clean up your table to hurry you out the door so the table can be freed up for someone else.

Last evening, we really spent the entire evening visiting so much so that it took me almost two hours to eat my French Dip sandwich.  I can only really recall two such evenings in the last 10 years where I truly spent the evening dining with friends or should I say visiting with friends and the dining was secondary.  Last night was fantastic as I had a chance to talk to my coach about the old days and spent a little too much time telling him and his wife about everything I had done personally.  I felt bad for talking so much but I think I just wanted to let him know everything I had done with my life and that he was an inspiration for my success and an example for me to remember when I felt sorry for myself or was facing a tough challenge in my life. 

The other all night dinner I recall took place in Cannes, France where I was fortunate enough to be invited to dinner with a group of guys, all of them English who were a big part of the British Invasion (Music) of the 60’s and 70’s.  The group consisted of former managers, agents , publicists and record company executives who had been involved with all the huge names of the era, Janis Joplin, The Who, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Ozzie Osbourn, ABBA and more.  I spent the evening listening to all of their stories and thinking that a book or movie could have been made just about our dinner conversation.   I remember just sitting back and listening and enjoying everything so much.  Several times during the course of the evening, I got apologies from people in our group who would say to me “I hope we are not boring you with our stories”, they actually thought no one else would be interested in what they had to say, but I couldn’t get enough.  The restaurant we were at had only two tables, the large table we were at with our group of 6 and a smaller table for 2.  The only customers of that restaurant that evening was our group of 6 and the couple that sat at the other table.  Our dinner and evening lasted at least 6 hours and the couple dining at the other table was there most of the evening as well.   The wait staff never tried to move us along, they simply brought more food and wine as the evening progressed.

The “Art of Dining with Friends” may not be lost everywhere in America but from my experience there are very few people who still go out with friends and enjoy an extended evening of really enjoying their friends company just at a restaurant.   After last evening and after thinking about what I observed in Europe, I plan on tossing out my 60 minute dinner limit, start searching for restaurants that would enjoy and accommodate a group of friends who linger at their table late into the evening, I am also going to toss out the movie that commonly was a part of going out to “Dinner and a movie” and of course I am going to start tracking down friends to join us for long leisurely dinners.

In these days of “Social Networks” that are primarily electronic, I believe that returning to evening long dinners with friends could really help people connect face to face with people again.   I am not knocking the electronic “social networks” as I think they are terrific way to reconnect with old friends so you can make plans for an evening of Dining with Friends.   So what’s the point of me writing this particular entry ?  I guess I am just trying to say that too many of us spend way too much time isolated at home or rushed to meet some self-imposed time limit on a meal, I guess that is why we have so much “fast food” in the United States.  Now I am thinking maybe I am the only one that hadn’t taken time to spend a long evening with friends, maybe it is only me that had lost the art of dining with friends, regardless I am going to make a point of at least one evening a month where all I do is find a group of friends that will join me to eat, drink and visit for entire evening.

Thinking Big in Broken Bow !

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My first job after college and Broadcasting school was at KCNI Radio in Broken Bow, Nebraska.  I was so eager to start working in radio that I took the first job I was offered which just happened to mean I would have to move from the big city to tiny Broken Bow.  I was very excited about the job because I was going to get to do everything at this station, I was the morning announcer, the sales manager, the production manager, the chief engineer and weekend janitor.  I took on all these jobs for a whopping $ 400 per month plus 10% commission on every ad I could sell for the radio station.  On top of the jobs at the radio station, the local American Legion found out that I had played baseball in college and I was immediately recruited to coach the Broken Bow American Legion Baseball team which was a big deal for this town.   I don’t think I could have had a better situation, I not only was thrilled to be working in radio but coaching the Legion team gave me the opportunity to keep my baseball dream alive, I even took batting practice with the team to keep my hitting skills sharp. 

Living in Broken Bow was the first time I had ever lived away from home, but even though I was never able to find a nice place to live, everything was offset by my new career and the opportunity to coach the baseball team.  I was having so much fun that I didn’t even think about how little money I was making even though I was engaged and scheduled to be married in less than a year back in Minnesota.   My fiance and my mother would come to visit me once a month and my fiance made it very clear to me that there was no way she would ever move to Broken Bow, so I had a little situation on my hands and wasn’t quite sure what to do because even though I loved my job and coaching, my future wife meant even more to me. 

Because of my limited funds, I used to live on what ever was on sale at the grocery store, I remember eating nothing but baked beans for a week because they had been the feature item at the store.  Once a month though I would treat myself to an afternoon in Grand Island, which was the closest large city that had a McDonald’s, a movie theater and a mall.  My once a month afternoon treat consisted of going to lunch at McDonald’s (pretty great stuff when you are stuck in a town without McDonald’s), then I would go to the bargain matinée at the theater and finally would spend an hour or so at the book store at the mall looking at baseball books.  One day while looking through the baseball books I came across a book that had been misplaced with the baseball books, the book’s title was “The Magic of Thinking Big”, I remember looking at the book and telling myself I had to take my last $3 and purchase the book.  The Magic of Thinking Big was the first true personal development book I had ever purchased.   I took it back to Broken Bow that evening and I read it cover to cover, twice before going back to work on Monday morning.  This book opened my eyes to so many new possibilities that I had never thought of.  Before reading the book, I thought I would spend my entire life working for this little radio station in Broken Bow, after reading it I had made up my mind to improve my skills and find a way to get a better job in a more desirable location.  

Within weeks, I was actively Thinking Big and looking for a new opportunity, then I got the call from Brown Institute that a job had opened up in Belle Fourche, SD which was right on the edge of the Black Hills.  The job paid twice as much and in addition to my regular on-air duties I would also be the new color announcer for all of the High School and College basketball games broadcast by the station.  By the time you figured in my sports announcing duties, my salary was going to be more than 4 times what I was making in Broken Bow and on top of that my bride to be loved the Black Hills.  Let me give you a little time line, I started at the station in Broken Bow in May of 1979, in August fo 1979 I read the Magic of Thinking Big and by October 1, 1979 I had moved to Spearfish, SD, had a great new apartment just blocks from the campus of Black Hills State College and I was making almost 5 times as much working at a radio station filled with Brown graduates, including many from Minnesota, most in my age group and they all were either recently married or engaged.  It was a fun station, I was working with great people and my bride to be was thrilled with the idea of moving to Spearfish. 

I know that was kind of a silly little story but I hope what it illustrated is how important our mental programming is and how easy it is to do great things when you change your programming.  Like I said, I was totally content with my Broken Bow job because I didn’t know there was something better out there for me.  But once I read that book and started thinking Big,  incredible possibilities appeared almost by magic and my life improved dramatically in just a few months.  It really was from that point forward that I started investing almost every extra penny I had in books and tapes that would help me be more successful.  You know what ?  the stuff really works but you have to keep at it and make personal development a life long habit.   The mistake I made along the way was forgetting about my personal development once I achieved my biggest and most unbelievable goals.  When I stopped focusing on my personal development in 2001, it started a 9 year descent that ultimately took me to the bottom.  And it took hitting rock bottom for me to figure out why, but it is so clear to me now that I have been able to really dig in and refocus my efforts on my personal development habits.  In just the short time I have been really focused I have had some truly amazing opportunities appear magically, I have had money show up that was unexpected both in my mail box and also handed directly to me in a parking lot by a friend who for no reason whatsoever handed me $200 (2 clean ,crisp $100 bills) and told me to get some gas and take my wife to dinner.  The piece that is truly amazing is that this money started showing up when I started writing my life scripts on paper, praying for at least 20 minutes a day and listening to nothing but personal development CDs in my car (no talk radio to get me bummed out about the economy or our elected officials).  Thinking Big, focusing positive energy on what you want for your life and making prayer  a habit will yield some amazing results as long as you know in your heart that it works.  Knowing is the most important piece of the puzzle, it is not enough to merely believe you must “know” that your situation is going to improve and know that you are going to achieve all of your goals or something better. 

So whether you are in Broken Bow, Nebraska or Key West, Florida you can create the life you have always wanted, you just having to take the leap from “wanting” to “knowing”you can have it and amazing things will start to appear in you life. 

E-5…Life Lessons from the Baseball Diamond

E-5  (Error Third Base) the last thing you want to see on the scoreboard in a tight game and your name penciled in as the 3rd Baseman.  Throughout my life I  have always processed the events in my life by what I learned playing baseball.  To the uninformed I know that sounds crazy but as I have grown older and really started to pay attention to everything, it was my baseball experience that helped me succeed in life, helped me to not give up and today it is helping me deal with the last three years of my life that have been filled with obstacles and crisis.

Last night I was at beautiful Target Field, the new home of the Minnesota Twins and enjoyed a great Twins win but more importantly observed the fan reaction to errors made by the Twins Shortstop and the Twins Second Baseman.  My son in particular was ripping both players and talking about how lousy they were and that we shouldn’t bring them back next year.  Being older and wiser, I thought to myself all of the good things these two players had done this season and for that matter over their careers and I also thought about how either one of these players could be the hero in tomorrows game.  Baseball is a game where you can fail 70% of the time and be called a superstar and earn $25 million per year.  It is also a game where one minute you can be the goat and the next minute you can be the hero.

Before yesterdays game, I spent about an hour on the phone with a close friend and business associate who has stuck by my side and helped me get through some very difficult times both personally and financially.  This particular friend has stuck in there and helped me even when everyone else has given up, but his patience has been tested on a regular basis as it has taken me much longer to get things turned around than I had expected.  On the call he told me that everyone else that knew me that he had spoken with no longer believed me or trusted me.  Hearing that was awful, a crushing blow to me on a day when I actually had made some substantial progress on a number of fronts.  This was particularly tough for me to hear because for 47 plus years I had a reputation for being incredibly honest, having the highest integrity and being the one person in the world that could be trusted beyond a doubt.  Everyone’s perception of me changed when my business failed and my personal financial situation hit the crisis level. Now I never changed, personally I think I have conducted myself through this crisis with honesty and integrity but people don’t see the honesty and integrity when you can’t pay them back when promised or when a Nationally known personality whose products you have developed appears on Oprah and the big sales rush from the Oprah appearance never happens.  Wayne Dyer says that you must be able to proceed “independent of the good opinion of others” and he is exactly right.

So back to Lessons from the Baseball Diamond, so two things happened after that call yesterday with my friend and business associate, first I was more motivated than ever to hit the Grand Slam and un-do all of the damage that has been done over the past three years and I thought about all the errors I made as an infielder playing baseball and how I was able to overcome every one of them by using them to motivate me to work hard (and have my coach Ted Leuer hit me even more ground balls)and to redeem myself in a clutch situation in another game.  You know it always worked for me and watching the Twins this year and watching the media and the fans attack virtually every player on the team at one time or another including Twins Superstar Joe Mauer it has taught me and reminded me to proceed toward my goals confidently and quietly without worrying about what people think or say.

Along the same lines, you always hear about how easy it is to kick people while they are down or go after the people at the top, if you step back and observe you will see how true this is.  People for whatever reason love to kick people while they are down, when a closer for a baseball team blows a save the fans and the media go nuts, so much so it amazing these guys can come right back and strike out the side the next day.  More baseball talk…so the Twins traded for a new closer in July his name was Matt Capps, from the minute we got him my son didn’t believe in him and didn’t trust him, I didn’t know much about Matt Capps but when I saw him run to the mound and pitch to that first batter, I liked what I saw, he looked confident and he went right after the batter and got a save.  The next day he was the goat and lost the save and I think the game and my son all but gave up on him.  Matt Capps never gave up on himself and he continues to battle and be himself every chance he is given.

So many people that don’t understand the game of baseball can’t figure out why I am so in love with the game, but to me it’s not just entertainment, it’s life unfolding before your eyes.  Now I am sure there are lessons in football, hockey and basketball but I don’t think it is the same.  Many people say Baseball is too slow to watch, but that is exactly what makes it much more than a game, in between every pitch you have the opportunity to think about what just happened, think about what is going to happen and in my case think about what each pitch represents in life.  Crazy ? right ?  I don’t think so as the other thing that I think is more true of baseball than any other game is the people and personalities it produces.  I have had the opportunity to meet many of my heros from the game including Brooks Robinson #5 whose number I always wore through High School and College, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, Danny Thompson, Torri Hunter, Jerry Kindall and many others, they all were and are incredible people off the field as well as on. 

Lesson #1 from the Diamond, don’t let life’s errors or the fans comments get to you, those same people will love and adore you like no one else when you get the clutch hit or break out of the slump.  And the more upset those fans are, it just means they are that much more passionate about you and your success.  Use those errors and slumps as lessons and know that if you are in slump now, you are probably due for the big hit at any time.