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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Expecting and Needing a Miracle….

Image by The Hennessy's via Flickr

Here I am…..working about 22 hours per day frantically trying to turn around my current situation.  Some of the best motivation and therapy has been writing as often as I can in my blog.  Yet, just when I thought things were really starting to fall my way, another crisis hits this afternoon.  Notice I said “just when I THOUGHT”,  had I made up my mind that “I KNEW” things were turning around  I don’t believe I would have been facing this crisis today.  While I don’t want to share all the details with you at this point, I will say that there would be a lot fewer foreclosures if the banks would actually take the time to hire and train employees to talk to, understand and negotiate with homeowners.  Worst of all those employees all need to be on the same page and need to stop outright lying to people who have done what the media has said to do, “talk to your bank”.  My crisis revolves around a mortgage company employee giving me a deadline to get documents to him , which I did by beating his deadline by two days.  Today, I called the company to make sure they had all the documents, even though, I had requested in my fax cover letter that they contact me immediately if anything was missing.  Well, guess what ?  today the mortgage company’s representative tells me that I didn’t get the documents in on time, when I told him I got them in two days before I was told they needed to be in, he just said well it wasn’t soon enough and you can’t stop the sheriff’s sale of the property.  For the first time in a very long time, I lost my temper and really went after the guy, of course that did absolutely nothing for me. 

For about an hour after that call I was in a terrible state and unfortunately my daughter called me at the wrong time and I yelled at her even though she had nothing to do with the situation.   After that, I  felt absolutely rotten about two things, yelling at the mortgage company and yelling at my daughter, both were wrong.  Once I calmed down and had a chance to compose my thoughts, the first thing that came to mind was “I need a Miracle” and I need it quick.  Since the mortgage company decided my paperwork was too late, I have just a couple days to come up with a very large amount of money so I can keep the property.  I had no intention of sharing this much detail with you in my blog but the more I thought about it, I thought there are thousands of people in this same situation that may benefit from hearing what I have to say.

First of all, nothing is impossible, absolutely nothing.  Second, I have been faced with situations even tougher than this and no matter how worked up I got, a solution always seems to appear.  So I have to remind myself to stay calm and stay focused on knowing the answers and solutions will appear.  I also have to remember Diet Mountain Dew and Pastor Peter Geisendorfer-Lindgren of Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Maple Grove, Minnesota.  What does Diet Mt. Dew and Pastor Peter have to do with miracles ?  Let me tell you,  over the past two years when things were very rough for me, Pastor Peter would invte me to meet him in his office for our drink of choice  “Diet Mt. Dew”, we had incredible conversations, I always felt a sense of peace roll through me and most importantly we prayed together.   I always left his office “Knowing” everything was going to be alright and it always was.  

So let’s get back to the “Miracle” stuff, when I was thinking about writing this entry this afternoon, my plan was to leave out most of the details of my crisis but to talk about expecting a miracle, almost like a little test.  I thought, I will give everyone a quick summary of the situation and then I will focus on expecting the miracle with the idea of writing about the miracle actually occurring in a few days, that way I could really inspire people by showing them the miracle first hand.  The problem with that scenario is that sometimes miracles don’t show up exactly the way you expect them or when you expect them.  I have been blessed with countless miracles in my life, so many that I can’t even keep track.  These miracles have been small and large, some expected and some were just plain surprises but all of them were blessings from God.

Let’s make a miracle happen right away.  I know it’s possible, as it happened to me and it has happened to many people I know.  One miracle in particular is the subject of a screenplay I am working on getting placed so a film can be made.  The business associate who brought me the screen play happens to be the subject of the screen play.  Her miracle was what I would call an ultimate miracle but it shows the power of faith and knowing you can create miracles.  Let’s call the associate KH, and let me just give you a quick summary of her miracle.  About 10 years ago, on Christmas Eve, KH had a heart attack even though she was young and healthy, her husband was able to perform CPR as he had just finished a CPR class the week before, the ambulance just happened to be down the street and arrived in less than 2 minutes, KH had died, her heart had stopped and the paramedics had to shock her heart to get it started but without the CPR she wouldn’t have had a chance.  Once she arrived at the hospital and the tests came back, he heart was so damaged that the doctors told her they were putting her on an emergency transplant list.  Since the next day was Christmas they told her that the soonest they could perform the surgery was the day after Christmas.  KH was devastated, she couldn’t talk because of the tubes and breathing apparatus that were inserted in her body.  But KH had faith and knew she needed a miracle.  Since she couldn’t talk she spent all day, Christmas day, tracing the letters to the word “Miracle” in the palm of her hand, all day long without fail she kept this up.  The next day she woke up feeling horrible, the nurses told her she need to go in for tests on her heart to find out how much more damage had occurred.  The last thing KH felt like was more tests.  After the tests were completed, the doctor stopped by to have a talk with KH.  The Doctor didn’t know how to explain it, but the tests done that day, the day after she traced “Miracle” a thousand times in her hand showed that her heart was fine, there was no damage and she didn’t need the transplant.  KH told me this story over dinner at a Friday’s restaurant, I was so glad that the lighting was low because I was in tears most of the time she was telling me about her “miracle”.  I really don’t believe in coincidences, and I truly believe that God made sure that KH and I would meet to show me that anything is possible and to remind me that Miracles really do happen.

The next 48 hours are all about miracles for me, I will be praying, visualizing, writing in my journal and writing personal scripts to myself but most of all I will be letting go and letting God take over.  God has never, ever let me down and I know that this situation won’t be any different.   If you really need a miracle the first thing you need to do is “Expect it” and secondly you need to “Know”  it’s going to happen.  Some people call it faith, I call it knowing and the other thing that helps is being able to spell miracle in the palm of your hand.

I expect to be writing about my miracle in the very near future, I hope that you will check back and share my miracle with me.  Regardless of what you are facing, your thoughts must be positive and you must know your situation is only temporary.  I have been there and while I have searched for what my purpose in life is, I truly believe that the challenges I have faced were meant to happen so I could share with you how to cope with and conquer any challenge you may face.   Anything and Everything is Possible !

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Breaking free from my addiction….

When I was in Junior High School there was nothing I wanted to do more than make the 9th grade baseball team.  I loved baseball and played it just about everyday at the field behind Thorson Elementary School on the border of Crystal and New Hope, Minnesota.  When it came time for the coach to pick the team I missed the cut by 1 person but ended up being added to the team when another guy got kicked off the team.  So I spent the year being treated like I was the guy that shouldn’t have been on the team but made it because of somebody elses misfortune.  When school got out that year, I made up mind that I was going to find a way to make the High School team  the following year without being the last guy.  While paging through the Sporting News classified ads I came across an ad for a letter called “Show the Coach”,  I call it a letter because that is exactly what was sent to me when I mailed in my $2 to get the letter.  “Show the Coach” was a blueprint for how to make the team and much more, the principles I learned in that letter helped me succeed at many things I did in my business career as well.

“Show the Coach” was written by a guy who had been a lifelong minor league baseball player and later went on to be a “Baseball Clown” that performed at Minor league and major league stadiums.   One of the guidelines for showing the coach was to take care of yourself and not drink alcohol or soda.  I was so committed to following this blue print that I went through all of High School never drinking any alcohol or soda, all I drank was milk, water and orange juice.  This was really the start of a discipline that I have carried with me most of my life.  All through College, Broadcasting School and my first year in the radio business I never touched a drop of alcohol.  Things changed when I got my second radio job and moved to Spearfish, South Dakota.   I was on the air for 5 hours a day as a disc jockey.  All of the DJs drank bottomless cups of coffee and were chain smokers, for my part I stayed a way from coffee and cigarettes but I would drink a six pack of Mountain Dew on each shift.   I also drank a little beer when the sports director and I would be out doing play by play for a basketball game.  At that time they had drive thru windows at the liquor store, so on the way back from every game the sports director would drive thru and get a six pack for us to share.   That pretty much was the extent of my serious alcohol drinking period.  After I left Spearfish, and for the next 29 years up until today, about the only drinks I have are on vacation and they all have those little umbrellas in them or occasionally a lime in a bottle of Corona.

It was very interesting during those 29 years to be a non-drinker.  I can’t tell you how many times I would be at dinner or lunch with someone who had ordered a drink when I didn’t that would look at me very seriously and say ” you don’t drink ?” or “why don’t you drink?” as if I was a recovering alcoholic.  Many times it was recovering alcoholics that asked me the question.  To this day I am convinced that many people that asked me those questions were convinced that I was a recovering alcoholic.  I still think it’s funny and for that matter empowering when you can tell someone that you don’t drink because you never got started because you cared too much about your High School and College Baseball career.

I turn 51 years old this week and after all those years of feeling that I was so strong that I could never get addicted to anything, I have to admit that I did develop an addiction a little over 10 years ago that I finally realized had a huge hold on me and was negatively affecting my life.  I am serious about this and this isn’t a joke,  I have many friends who have been through recovery and I don’t want them to think I am making light of their situation by what I am about to say.  About two weeks ago, I was thinking about what I was doing in the late 90’s that made everything go right, I was in fantastic physical condition, I was focused and KNEW everything was going to fall my way and I was not addicted to anything.  So what had changed in the last 10 years ?  primarily I wasn’t the confident, knowing person I had been when I achieved my greatest levels of success, I was 45 pounds heavier and I had developed an addiction that I believe caused the weight gain and attitude change.  For the last 10 years, I was addicted to Diet Mountain Dew which I think was as bad or worse than alcohol or drugs.  As I look back, my day revolved around Diet Mountain Dew, it was the first drink I had the morning and I usually drank the equivalent of 2 six packs per day.  I was thrilled when the SuperAmerica gas station chain announced their Mountain Dew club which gave you every 7th, 20 ounce Mountain Dew free when you purchased six.  I hate to admit it but I was averaging 5 free Mountain Dews per week.   Diet Mountain Dew had a hold on me and it affected everything I did, I haven’t slept well in 10 years, I gained a ton of weight, my memory isn’t what it used to be and I couldn’t do anything without having my diet Mountain Dew.  I truly was addicted if in no other way than I couldn’t break free of it’s hold on me.

So two weeks ago, I gave it up and started an intensive course to focus on the things that led to my success and knowing in the 90’s.  The Diet Dew is gone, the weight is leaving as well and my creativity and memory is back.  I am sleeping better and I know I am in for a big change that is going to lead to the next 10 years being better than ever.  Addictions of any kind can hold you back from achieving great things, it doesn’t matter if that addiction is drugs, video games, soda, food, sex , alcohol or whatever, addictions will hold you back and destroy the life you really deserve to have.

Look closely at your life, are you addicted to something ?  it doesn’t have to be obvious or for that matter one of the usual addictions.  Freeing yourself from your addictions will allow you to move to the next level, you can become someone who KNOWS not just believes that they can do amazing things.