Is this a Test ? Trying to figure Why….

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My life has been filled with so many wonderful things and so much abundance that I shouldn’t feel anything but gratitude for everything I have been blessed with.  for 48 of my 51 years in this life, things happened in a magical way, everything I visualized came to pass quickly and usually in a way that was even better than I had imagined.   I have always looked at every event in my life as having a purpose and tried to take negative events and turn them around to work for me.   This way of managing my life served me well and helped me become the person I am today.  In my early 20’s I became hooked on self development books and audio tapes and spent every extra penny I had on going to seminars, buying books and buying tapes that had a positive message.   My purpose and mission in life have been shaped by quotes that have stuck with me, like Zig Ziglar saying you can get everything you want in life by helping enough other people get what they want.  I have always tried to focus everything I have done in life on serving others and it always seem to come back to me.   My Grandfather was a big tipper and always did extra things and gave away money even though he didn’t have any extra money to give away, he would always say ” It will come back to him”, my Mother and Grandmother believed in the same philosophy.  Both my Mother and grandmother were totally selfless in their service to others.  I watched my Mother give up everything in her life to care for my Uncles, my Grandmother and any one else that needed help.  She always worked multiple jobs, very seldom having the opportunity to enjoy life outside of giving everything of herself to others.  I know she did this because she enjoyed being of service to people and I know people took notice because even today I will run into people who see my name when I am sending a package at FedEx and they will tell me to say hello to my mother and tell me how much they cared for her.   The thing I don’t understand is how some people who give so much of themselves to others never seem to get a break in their lives.  Is it  God testing them…Why does this happen ?

1999 was a fantastic year for me, in that I was on top of the world and firing on all cylinders, everything was clicking, I had no debt, I had a ton of money in the bank, I could do no wrong in the stock market and I could finally give my Mother something special for all she had given to me and others.   I was able to let her pick out a townhouse and buy it for her with the hopes that she would have a great place to live and could finally take the time to enjoy her life and do some thing for herself.  I had never forgotten what my Grandfather had said about it all coming back to me, so now that I had the money I wanted to help everybody I could.  I did some crazy things that made me feel great, like writing regular big checks to my Church and putting them in the offering envelope on Sundays always feeling s sense of satisfaction in having the ability to do things like that.  I signed up to give a large amount of money on a monthly basis to a favorite charity of mine called the “Smile Train” and found way to help people anonymously every chance I got.  I had read for years growing up about mysterious millionaires who handed out hundred-dollar bills to homeless people and always wanted to do that.  I also remember reading a book by Wayne Dyer in which he said that when someone asks you on the street for money, you shouldn’t try to figure out if they are going to use it for a good purpose, you should give freely simply because they asked.  I did that on a regular basis and always got a kick out of the looks on people’s face when I would hand them a large sum of cash just for asking.  It did seem that the more good I did like this that good things started to appear in my life that seemed directly related to my random acts of kindness. I got addicted to helping others, so much so that when I started my 3rd business in 2002, I tried to help people in business that I felt deserved my help.  I raised money for projects to finance people’s dreams, all the time believing that it would just lead to more good stuff.

I never stopped trying to give but in 2008 suddenly, nothing was coming back to me, my business was failing, while some people stepped into help, it wasn’t the kind of help I needed to turn things around.  Having always put other people first,  I borrowed against my home, stopped paying myself from the company and did everything possible to put my employees and my investors ahead of everyone including my own family.  The result was I lost my home of 26 years, lost my business, lost the ability to take care of my wife and family the way I always had.  Things continued to get worse through last year culminating today with the loss of the townhouse I purchased for my mother and an absolutely evil GMAC Mortgage not willing to work with me any way to ease my mother out of her townhouse and into another place to live.  They love the word eviction and they love to use it so much it kills me.  I can handle having myself being evicted but the pain of GMAC Mortgage telling me they are going to evict my mother from her home and knowing it is all my fault creates pain that is almost unbearable.  The last 60 days have been extremely difficult and brought me to this point I am at today having lost my Mother’s townhouse and seating with exactly $2.98 in cash in my pocket and two checking accounts that are overdrawn thousands of dollars.  How could I end up here when I have tried so hard to do the right thing and to help as many people as I can ?  Worse, I have found that many people I thought were close friends were only friends when I had tons of money and could entertain them and take care of them. 

So what is going on ?  Is this just another way of God and the Universe testing me to see just how much I can take ?  Why is this happening ?  Why do so many bad things happen to good people ?  I always believed it was a test, and I believed all the books I read and tapes I listened to that told me over and over that when you are at your darkest moment that you are at the point things are totally going to turn around.   I believed all of that, but the moments just keep getting darker.

So as I sit here this morning putting all my thoughts on my blog,  a part of me is devastated by my situation but a bigger part of me is at ease saying everything is going to be ok.  I have done alot of praying lately and have to admit some doubt had crept into my mind about whether God or the Universe was listening.  But then I woke up on Monday to find an email written in the middle of the night to me from a high school classmate who I haven’t seen since high school (34 years), he had sensed something was wrong and sent me a long email that was not only exactly what I needed to hear but was so intuitive that he had to somehow be connected to me via God to know what was going on.  His message alone was enough for me to continue to believe that no matter what challenge I am faced with I am not alone, God is always there walking beside me.   While I know who walks with me in everything I do, I am still completely at a loss to understand the whys of my situation.  Mike Dooley who is an author and the creator of the Notes from Universe series always talks about focusing on the end result you want to accomplish in your life and not to get caught up in the “Cursed Hows”, I think he is right but I think almost or maybe more importantly we should never get caught up in the cursed “Whys”.  Trying to figure out why something bad has happened to you when there is no logical reason is probably what leads to more of the same.  If I have learned anything from the trials and tribulations of the last few years, it is to not spend time figuring out why, it is unproductive and gets you focused on all the bad stuff that has happened.

Having been to the Highest Peaks in Life and now getting the opportunity to experience the lowest of lows, I do believe that what my friend Terry Lyles has said that everything in life is a gift.  If anything, I know that when I do turn things around, I will be even more focused on helping those in need and having experienced what I have over the past few years, I will be in the unique position of understanding the pain and challenges people feel when they are lost and in what seems like a hopeless spot.

From this moment forward, my sole focus is on the end result I hope to achieve, I am forgetting about why this all happened and while many people have told me that I need to take care of my family first and forget about everyone else, I will put my family first but will never forget about everyone else.  My purpose is to serve others and I intend to do everything I can to get back to that place of serving others.   I do know things are going to turn around, and I know that the last 3 years have been a gift especially since as tough as things were they pale in comparison to the terrible suffering the people of Japan are dealing with, as well as our service men who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.    This is the last time I am going to write about the tough stuff, from here on out, I focused on the good stuff.

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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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Lost in Space

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One of my favorite television shows when I was growing up was Lost in Space.  Lost in Space is what I have felt like the last couple of months when I wasn’t writing and posting to my blog.  I got so caught up in just going through the motions that I truly was Lost in Space.  I really needed the Robot around saying “Warning, Warning Will Robinson”  “continuing to just go through the motions will lead to disaster”.  While going through the motions and working the graveyard shift at a convenience store probably weren’t the best choices I have made recently they have fired me up to enter the new year pursuing all of the dreams that had slipped from the forefront to Lost in Space file.

I have always found the week between Christmas and New Years to be an excellent time to review the past year, think about what’s really important and set the stage for the coming year.  While I had taken all out massive action to attack the problems that led to my personal financial crisis, the solutions I jumped into ended up not being the answer but providing the answers and solutions to what I need to do in 2011.  You see, it is very easy to settle in to something that is easy, the hourly job at the convenience store was fun, easy and an escape from reality.  When I was mopping floors at 3 in the morning, all the cares of the world were absent, the silence was therapeutic and it was easy to just go through the motions.  But my life has never been about going through the motions and getting Lost in Space like I did, wasn’t helping my situation one bit.

So as I sit here, doing what I enjoy most (writing) I am planning my escape from the alien planet and that place in space where I was lost.  In 2011, I intend to focus on the things I do best and the things I have always wanted to do.  I am an Entrepreneur and the failures of the past three years had dampened my spirit and led me to believe that just getting a normal job was the way to go.  Getting Lost in Space was what I needed to understand what it was that I needed to do moving forward.  2011 promises to be an exciting year and I have set up a number of new plans to challenge myself to find my way back to the planet Earth.

I know that was a pretty lame attempt to try to work in one of my favorite TV shows from my childhood, but actually it was that TV show that set me straight.  Part of my daily routine was to lay down at 6 pm to take a short nap before going into my job at the convenience store at 9pm.  I would turn on the Family Network at 6 just as the reruns of Lost in Space would come on.  I ended up not getting a lot of sleep because I got so caught up in watching Lost in Space.   After about two months of this routine was when it hit me that I had become Lost in Space.  Somehow, I don’t think it was coincidence that Lost in Space began airing on the Family Network about the same time I started this routine of working 2 full-time hourly positions that paid just a little over minimum wage.  The Universe has a funny way of working and I believe, the TV show was reminding me of what I was doing to myself.

I apologize for the scattered way my post today is going but it may take me a few days to get my writing groove back in synch.  Before I close things out today I want to share with you an email I received as one of my daily notes from the Universe (www.tut.com) .   It is really amazing what the right words can do to lift your spirits and remind you of what your true purpose in life is.  Imagine how you would feel if you received the email below and took it to heart.  I believe this email is what helped me remember what I was up to before getting Lost in Space.  More than anything, I hope that I can someday find the words to share with people around the world that will help them feel the way I did when I received this email.  Thank you Mike Dooley for your daily notes from the Universe! I hope everybody reading this goes to your website and signs up for your daily notes right now.  Here’s the email:

 

 

 

 

        

     

  

If it’s not yet obvious to you, the real reason for this, and all seasons, is you, Tim. A more perfect child of the Universe has never lived. Until now, only celebrations cloaked in myth and mystery could hint at your divine heritage and sacred destiny. You are life’s prayer of becoming and its answer. The first light at the dawn of eternity, drawn from the ether, so that I might know my own depth, discover new heights, and revel in seas of blessed emotion.

A pioneer into illusion, an adventurer into the unknown, and a lifter of veils. Courageous, heroic, and exalted by legions in the unseen.

To give beyond reason, to care beyond hope, to love without limit; to reach, stretch, and dream, in spite of your fears. These are the hallmarks of divinity – traits of the immortal – your badges of honor. May you wear them with a pride as great as the immeasurable pride we feel for you.

Your light has illuminated darkened paths, your gaze has lifted broken spirits, and already your life has changed the course of history.

This is the time of year we celebrate Tim Braun.Bowing before Greatness,
    The Universe

So this email has set up the challenge for me in the coming year, my number one goal is to give beyond reason, care beyond hope, love without limit; to reach, stretch and dream in spite of my fears.  I challenge you to do the same.  It seems to me that if a person can pull this off there is no possible way for them to fail or to ever again get Lost in Space….

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Change the Way You Feel About Things and the Way You Feel Will Change

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How would you feel if over the course of two days, you poured your heart and soul into writing a piece for your blog that you thought could really help people improve the way they feel in their lives, only to accidentally lean on the alt key on your keyboard and have the whole two days worth of work vanish from your screen forever ?  I have to be honest, when this happened to me this morning my first thought was not a good one, but I quickly glanced up, read the title on my screen and took my advice.  Funny thing, the 1500 words in the body of the blog post had disappeared but the title stayed intact.  I guess it was the Universe testing me yet again.

The way we think and feel about things has a direct impact not only on how things look to us  but how we ultimately feel.  One of my favorite Wayne Dyer quotes is “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at Change”, nothing could be more true.  But as I thought about it, the same could be said for the way we feel about things,  If you change the way you feel about things or events in your life, the way you feel will change.   When I lost my 1500 word blog post this morning, I could have felt terrible about losing all that work, instead I chose to feel like there was a positive reason for losing that work.  Had I chosen to feel terrible, I could have spent the whole day angry, upset and taking out my feelings on the world instead, I feel great, I figured out a way to prevent losing work like that in the future and I am taking a different, more refined approach to getting my real message across to you in this version 2.0 of this blog post.

All of us can feel great 100% of the time, it’s a choice we make as each of us are totally responsible for the lives we create.  I have seen great days turn into lousy days just because a friend or family member chose to feel angry about something that was totally a waste of time.   Road Rage in particular is one of those things,  whether I am riding with people, listening to people on cell phones or driving myself it never fails that when someone else does something stupid on the road, it causes most people to get angry, and that anger usually burns up a good hour or two of what could have been fun and happy time.  I used to be incredibly guilty of the road rage thing, so much so that I would not only get angry, I would transform into a stalker who had to show that person how wrong they were for their lousy driving decision.  Today, I keep in my mind, another Wayne Dyer quote that I repeat to myself as I take an extra breath when these situations on the road happen  “When faced with being right or kind always choose kindness”.  Repeating that quote to yourself and choosing kindness makes you feel totally different then choosing “Right and Anger“.

The way you feel and this “KNOWING” thing I always talk about.  Think about times in your life when you were uncertain about something, you were anxious, stressed, worried and maybe even feeling a little sick not knowing what the outcome would be.  Then think about times in your life when you knew the outcome of something was going to be exactly what you expected, you were happy, satisfied, joyful and confident.   Now think about how you would rather feel, Happy or anxious, Satisfied or stressed, Joyful or worried.  Think the choice is easy, and everyday you are faced with that same choice, only you can decide how you feel, no one else can make you feel sad, it is your reaction to what someone else has said or done that makes you sad or happy.  You are in complete control, and once you  absolutely “KNOW”  you are in complete control, you never have reason to not feel great 100% of the time.

Over the past 5 years when I lost my way from always “KNOWING” to questioning whether I could do it, my health suffered, my family suffered, I suffered, I wasn’t happy and I thought that what was happening in my world was making me unhappy.    But, I was creating my world and was choosing to feel unhappy about what I created.   For the first 46 years of my life, I was very good at creating exactly what I wanted and the only time I didn’t feel great was when I slipped up and thought the wrong way.  Let me give you a little insight into what I am talking about.  Throughout my life I have constantly heard people talk about me as being lucky, always being in the right place at the right time, that everything I touched turned to gold.   When I heard those things, I always told myself those people were right but I knew that I was creating my luck, and everything that went with it by choosing the right thoughts.  When I slipped into the dark days of the past 5 years,   I started thinking that maybe it was just luck and that my luck couldn’t continue since things had been so good.  I would sit through meetings with people who would tell me that I am too positive, too optimistic and that I have to be honest with myself, that I have to get real.  I started to believe those people and what they were saying for no good reason.  After all, my life went just as I had planned it for the first 46 years, it wasn’t until I started listening to people tell me that I wasn’t who I thought I was that things changed.    The most important thing to understand is that the people who told me these things weren’t responsible for my downfall nor do I believe they had any ill intent, they just didn’t understand themselves the power of “KNOWING” that I had come to master over the prior 46 years.   I was completely responsible for the past 5 years, I created it and I own it.   The biggest and most valuable lesson to date in my life is realizing exactly what happened the last 5 years.  The Universe has its way of providing lessons and clues for you along the way, you just have to understand  and learn along the way.

Now that you know how to make yourself feel great all the time, why not give this “KNOWING” thing a try ?   Let’s do this together, as I mentioned in my last post, this stuff is contagious and it is fun when we can all share actual experiences with these life creation ideas.  I know I am going to have another incredible day, I know things are going to fall into place with several different projects I have in the works, I know I am going to lose some more weight today and feel even better than I did at 40 when I was in the best shape of my life.   What do you know ?  Get out a piece of paper and right down the things you know and see how you feel.  Change the way you feel about things, Know the things you feel good about are yours and the way you feel will change for the better.

Related Articles

• Positive Attitude – 5 Steps to a Happy Life (thinksimplenow.com)
• Power Thoughts (momblognetwork.com)
• Waiting to Exhale (beyondhorizoncoaching.com)
• The Baietto Brothers: Make Gratitude a Game (huffingtonpost.com)
• A Way to Live Your Life (socyberty.com)
• Why We Judge (windandheart.blogspot.com)

The Worst…Brings out our Best !

Watching TV for me consists of flipping through the channels trying to find something positive and inspiring to watch.  The History channel, the Learning channel and the National Geographic channel seem to be where I end up most.   Last week while surfing the channels I ended up coming across a commercial from a company called West Bend.  The West Bend I knew growing up made small kitchen appliances and certainly wasn’t in the business of creating inspirational commercials that not only sold their products but left you with a strong message.   This particular West Bend is an insurance company and their commercials center around being your best when you are faced with the worst.  I think it is a brilliant ad campaign and to follow it up with their tag line, “West Bend” “The Silver Lining Company” is even cooler.

Terry Lyles, America’s Stress Doctor and Human Performance Engineer, likes to say “Expect the best but prepare for the worst” . There are the practical applications of this thinking that we can apply to our everyday experience that helps us better cope with what ever we are facing and then there is the deeper and lasting application that can change your life.

I like to think that I have spent most of my 51 years life looking for the good in everything, that certainly was the case for the first 47 when I enjoyed incredible success and happiness in just about everything that I took on.  But over the last few years when my guard was down, I let the opinions of others influence my thinking.  When I was faced with what anyone else would consider a major issue, I no longer tackled it myself, I tried to tackle it by committee, unfortunately the committee wasn’t on the same page with me.  While I was saw the cup as half full, those that surrounding me always saw that cup as half empty and worried about all the bad stuff they expected to happen.  I had done a poor job of inspiring the troops and bringing them to the level that had always served me well.   All of sudden my knowing every situation would work out was outweighed by an army that expected it not to work out and worked hard and ultimately convinced me that in their opinion I was  not in their words a “realist”.  Funny thing though, for 47 years, my definition of being a “realist” worked pretty well for me, I made incredible amounts of money, bought my dream home, improved my dream home with more funds than I purchased it with, travelled all over the world, gave my kids everything and experience they could want and it was all easy because I knew I could create anything I wanted.  For 47 years, everything flowed to me like magic,  friends would tell me that everything I touched turned to gold and that I always landed on my feet when ever there was a down turn and you know what they were right.  Those first 47 years were incredible but it wasn’t the best I could do because I wasn’t as disciplined in regards to managing my thoughts as I needed to be.  I let the outside world seep in to my head, I let well-meaning friends and associates try to bring me back down to earth and they certainly did.

So after 47 years of living an incredibly fulfilling life, the wheels came off because I did not manage my thoughts efficiently or did they come off because the Universe needed to find a way to tell me to “kick it up a notch”  to really bring out the best that I could be.  The past 3 years were pretty horrible by anyone’s standards, losing my home of 25 years, losing many loved ones to cancer and other diseases and losing everything I had created materially during those first 47 years.   I needed the Worst, to shake me up so I could bring out the Best !  and baby you ain’t seen nothing yet !

Truly bringing out your best requires massive action and when it comes to managing your thoughts and getting your head in the right place it calls for massive infusions of “The Right Stuff”.  In my case,  the first thing I did was to quit listening to talk radio and news on TV while removing myself from the political discussion of the day.  Once you do that you realize that the least intelligent life forms on the face of the earth are our politicians and elected officials and it doesn’t matter which party they are in, they are all small thinkers focused on advancing a personal agenda.  The next thing I did was to fill my car and Ipod full of the most positive and enlightening audio material I could find.  And finally, I keep a personal written journal and a video journal to record my thoughts and to remind me of the reality I am going to create.  The next 51 years will be hundreds of times more incredible than my last 51 years.  The Universe has so much to offer and you can find it anywhere.

Let me leave you with a little story from last night while having a conversation with my son.  Another part of my massive action plan is that I have taken on additional positions ( I won’t call them jobs because I don’t see them as such)  that pretty much fill up 20 to 22 hours of each 24 hour day, 7 days  week.  One of those positions happens to be as a night manager at convenience/gas station.  I took the position because I truly wanted the opportunity to interact with people and see if I could make a difference in the lives of people who visit that store when I am there.  I didn’t even care what the position paid, I am not even sure I asked.  I think the person who hired me wasn’t sure what to think as he told me I was way over qualified for the position and I told him that was a good thing that I wasn’t even considering this a job.  I think he thought I was nuts, but he hired me anyway.  Back to the conversation with son who couldn’t believe his dad was going to work at a gas station.  He told he could get me a job working at the place he does unloading trucks and stocking shelves overnight for twice the money.  He also told me that how much you make is much more important than whether you enjoy what you are doing…really ?  The wisdom of a 22 year old ! and an illustration of how one person’s reality is totally different from someone else’s.  The bottom line is I look at everything I do as an adventure, as new experience, as something that may take places I have never been before.  Life is all about experiences and finding new and interesting experiences is most of the fun.  I wonder how much more people would enjoy life if they looked at every single thing they do as adventure that may take them well beyond what most people would think.     Whatever you do, let “The Worst..Bring out the Best” and soon you will understand that the worst is what gave you the best.

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 !

Related Articles

• Because I Believe in Miracles (yimcatholic.blogspot.com)
• Miracle Formula for Success (socyberty.com)
• Expect Miracles & Good Things (beliefnet.com)
• Eight ‘Miracles’ Reported in Pope-Crazed England (newser.com)
• GMAC Suspends All Foreclosures Nationwide (news.firedoglake.com)

D.I.W.I.R.I.V.I.L.I.G.I.

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Absolutely everything is possible if you can harness the power of your mind and put it to work for you. Choosing to always be happy no matter what the circumstances takes unbelievable discipline and personal mind control but it is possible and it can help you handle any challenge that comes your way.  After identifying the cause of my personal and business financial collapse of the last few years, I realized that in my 47 year run of creating exactly the life I wanted, I was always focused on the positive and for the most part always felt happy inside and out.  During the past few years when things started to go the wrong way,  I had people close to me asking me how I could be so happy with all the problems I faced, after a while, my personal mind control gave in and went to the dark side.  I started feeling sorry for myself, I started being sad and unhappy when people talked to me, I started feeling depressed, I started feeling stress and I started feeling overweight and sick.  Look at what I just wrote,  “I started feeling and being”  I did it ! nobody else did it, I made up my mind to feel bad and once I made up my mind that is exactly what I got, sadness, depression, stress and 50 extra pounds of FAT.  Guess what all that led to ?  Personal and business collapse !  I did it, not the economy, not the President or Congress, not the customer who didn’t pay (the customers paid until I changed the way I felt) I was totally responsible for creating the reality of the last few years directly as a result of my thoughts.

It has been a pretty good run since I woke up and realized what I was doing to myself.   I starting writing this blog, I started praying again several times a day, I started writing my life scripts and I started listening and reading 100% positive and productive information.  No more talk radio, mainstream media, newspapers or ridiculous reality shows, all I choose to fill my mind with is positive thoughts.  I can tell you that so far things were really starting to work well, I lost 16 pounds in about 6 weeks, money started showing up in my life in strange places and in strange ways (mostly unexpected, I take that back, I started to expect money to show up and it has),  I added a second full-time job that won’t conflict with my primary full-time job and overall what seemed like an impossible situation a few months ago has dramatically turned around.  Until yesterday, when worry crept back into my mind, I couldn’t figure out why I had feelings of worry and depression yesterday and the more I thought about it the worse I felt.  I went to bed last night for the first time in months not feeling the way I had been during this turnaround.  I woke up this morning and it hit me,  I had let my self-discipline slip, I hadn’t listened to positive input over the weekend, I listened to some negative talk radio, Sunday morning news shows and let some people close to me have their way with trying to get me to feel bad.  On my walk with my dog Flash this morning, I realized that I need to step things up, I need to shut out even more negative and unproductive input and I have to practice thinking positive and happy thoughts again.  I have to feel good and only I can do it.

I thought the best way to keep steady with anything is to have a system so during my walk this morning, Flash and I came up with a system to keep me on track. I am calling my new system, DIWIRIVILIGI,  Dream it, Write it, Read it, Visualize it, Live it, Get it !  those are the steps you need to do everyday to make sure you are creating exactly the life you want.  I know, all that stuff we learned in school is coming back to haunt you, unless you have 100% mastered feeling incredible 100% of the time, you must have a way to remind yourself of what you want and then you have to drill it into your head to keep it active.  This system is what I have personally been doing for the last few months, I have been dreaming about what I want for my life, writing it in a script that I email myself everyday, I read what I wrote to myself, visualize myself doing and having what I wrote, live like I have it and then get what I want when it shows up.   I can tell you that I haven’t been as disciplined with this as I need to be but even so, I can see things showing up on a daily basis that I wrote in my scripts just a couple of months ago.

I am making a commitment to myself to create exactly the life I want moving forward using my system that I have just outlined for you.  I am also adding a couple of modules to my system this week, RI, HI, DI  that would be “Record it, Hear it and Do it”  In addition to my primary system, I am going to record my scripts into a digital recorder, put them on a CD and listen to them everyday along with my other positive input.  I want to engage all the senses in creating an incredible life, I just need to figure out how to smell happiness now !

One of the coolest things I discovered over the past couple months is a web site called TUTs Adventurers Club  www.tut.com , if you go to this site you can sign up to receive “notes from the Universe via email”  They show up in the middle of the night and these emails are the first thing I read each morning.  It has been amazing to me to wake up, read the Universe’s email and see how closely it coincides with what I was actually thinking.  Here’s the email I received this morning:

If there’s something you want, Tim, anything at all, or if there’s something you need, no matter what it is, or if there’s something you’d like to change, please remember that all the bells and whistles of time and space were first hewn and blown in the windmills of one’s mind, long before they were ever dung or heard by hands and ears. Whatever you dream of, live it, live it now, as fully as possible, to whatever degree you can, in your thoughts, words, and deeds. And sure enough, as day follows night, as rains fall from pregnant clouds, and as melodies float from bells and whistles, your dream will come to pass.  It’s a sure thing,     The Universe

Thoughts become things… choose the good ones! ® © www.tut.com ®

I know, I know, Tim. Dung should be “rung.” But “dung” just kind of wrote itself… and made me laugh.

It is really fun getting these daily emails, kind of sets the tone for the day.  So today, take responsibility for creating exactly what you want in your life, it’s up to you, whether it’s up or down you have created it.

Credit Checks, Background Checks….and not necessarily the rest of the story

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“Must be able to pass background check”  This phrase appears in almost every help wanted ad there is today.  Companies have gone crazy over doing complete background checks on job candidates and the companies doing the checking and investigating are making a lot of money in the process but do these background checks really tell the whole story or just give the employer a snapshot in time ?.   I am not exactly sure when all of these exhaustive background checks started, but I do know after personally hiring hundreds if not thousands of people in my 25 plus years of owning and managing companies that I really never learned much about any of the people I hired until they worked for me.   References never really accurately assessed whether a candidate would be a good employee, the only thing that ever worked for me were long interviews and a deep look into the soul of the person I was interviewing through direct eye contact.  I guess I hired on gut feel to be honest, but for the most part my gut feel served me well.   I had my first experience with a background check today as part of applying for a position and it made it very clear to me how damaging these reports can be without telling the whole story about someone.

This happens to be my story and while the message I want to deliver is how you can overcome any obstacle, some obstacles that are appearing for people today are not only unfair but unjust.  In my case, I feel like I have come to a place in my life where I can overcome any obstacle thrown in my path and the trick is looking for the good in every obstacle.  Here’s what happened to me, I have been trying to find any job I can to supplement my income and help me dig out of the financial hole I am in as result of my business failing.  I applied for almost 600 positions and emailed off over 100 resumes, I finally got a call back and an interview with a major  Gas and Convenience store chain.  The first interview not only went great it was a lot of fun and the company seemed like a great company with great pay and benefits.  I got a call back for a second interview which also went great and I was told that the HR department would be calling me to finalize everything so they could bring me on board.   While applying for this job I of course had to agree to the background check and requested that a copy of the report be sent to me.   At the first interview, I told the recruiter that my credit was horrible as a result of my business failure and the foreclosure of my home, she told me not to worry about it that while it would come up when talking to their HR people it would not have a bearing on their decision to hire me.  Let me stop here and mention what I think about the current FICO credit reports,   they only give you a snapshot in time of the most recent history, in my case I personally had perfect credit from the time I was 16 and got my first Daytons Department store credit card until age 47 when the economy tanked and my business failed.   So my credit report stinks because of the last two years, nothing in the credit report mentions my perfect credit for 31 years, my American Express Platinum card with no limit that was never paid late from 1983 until 2007,  the 20 plus cars I paid off early without a late payment, none of that history matters with today’s credit reporting system.   So you have excellent job candidates out there who are unable to get a job because their credit stinks because they lost a job or had some crisis that was no fault of their own.  Go figure, there is no justice in that system.   So that covers the credit check but what about the background check ?

The background check could be even worse than the credit check.  Here’s what happened to me, my background check came back today with an adverse action letter which means that something showed up on my criminal background check that I didn’t disclose in the application.   The application specifically asked if I had ever been arrested, which I never have, it then asked if I had been convicted of a crime with a side note that said if the conviction had been expunged you should answer no, so I answered no.  What the report showed was that I was charged and convicted of disorderly conduct in 2001 and the way it was worded on the report you would have to assume I was arrested and convicted.   But here’s the rest of the story, what actually happened;  on February 15, 2001  I was watching my son who was 11 at the time practice with his ski racing team.  I saw him get on the lift and also saw a gang of about 10 snowboarders follow him up the lift.  It took quite a while for my son to come down the hill but when he did, both of his ski poles were broken in half, he had holes in his ski jacket and he was crying, when I asked what happened he said the snowboarders ganged up on him, broke his poles and beat him up.  I immediately ran to the chalet to look for the security people but couldn’t find them anywhere, I then went to the car and got my son another set of ski poles.  When I returned to the ski run where my son was practicing, a group of snowboarders showed up at the same time as my son, my son immediately said “those are the guys”  I calmly looked over at the tallest one in the group, he was about 6’2″ to my 5’10” and with his helmet, goggles and size I figured he must be in his early 20’s.  I asked him why he had his gang beat up my son, his response was an expletive filled rant and threat that his gang was going to get me next, that was it I lost my temper and grabbed the guys jacket and told him never to threaten me of course then a bunch of other parents showed up and the event was quickly ended or so I thought, the next thing I know the snowboarder has called the police and I find out he is 17 not 22.  When the police arrived, I calmly told the police what happened and asked them what they were going to do to these kids for beating up my son, their response ” it’s your son’s word against these 12 kids” we have nothing to go on, but you sir can not touch a child !  So now I am the bad guy, well it turns out the police called the kids parents, they wanted nothing to do with the situation (bet it wasn’t the first time) and I was free to go and was told nothing would happen unless I got a letter in the mail from the county prosecutor.  So for the next 5 months I worried about the situation until the letter showed up charging me with assault and ordering me to appear at the Dakota county court.  This was so unbelievable, I didn’t know what to do so I hired an attorney who I had met at a baseball game (word of advice, don’t hire attorney’s you meet at baseball games, even if they have successfully defending pro athletes in DWI cases).  So the attorney and I show up at court (with my wallet several thousand dollar lighter)  My attorney has a closed-door session with the prosecutor and comes back to me and says that the prosecutor is a friend of his and that he has worked out a deal, all I have to do is plead guilty and they will charge me with disorderly conduct, give me a small fine and clear the record after 1 year.  But I am not guilty I proclaimed, the attorney said this is the best way to handle this, you can never win when there’s kid involved.   So while I disagreed, I just wanted it over, we proceeded to the court room and the judge said, I understand that deal has been reached, the prosecutor said yes and described the deal.  The judge then asked if the victim (the 17-year-old kid) was ok with the deal, here’s the mind-blowing part where I knew I had been had by everyone except the judge,  the prosecutor said, “Your honor I have attempted on at least 40 occasions to contact both the victim and his parents and neither one of them wanted anything more to do with this case, the Burnsville police have also attempted to contact the victim and his parents over 50 times and they had the same result.  So here I am pleading guilty to a crime I am not guilty of, would have easily been found innocent of, because the victim never would have shown up and the best buddy, the attorney and prosecutor both got what they wanted.   I was so upset, I asked the judge if I could tell my side of the story for the record, he allowed me to do so and gave me a look like he didn’t know why I agreed to the plea agreement.   Anyway, the deal was that after one year, this misdemeanor would be removed from record.   For years I was a ski racing official and had to undergo a background check each year before my officials license could be renewed, since I passed the background check without a problem every year, I assumed the court had removed everything from the record as I was told they would.  It wasn’t until today that I was reminded of that ugly incident and it may have cost me the opportunity for a job that I desperately need.  Injustice…only a part of the story and you tell me if this incident should affect my chances of getting a job.

So where is the good in this ?  Well, I have to say that God and the Universe always has a plan and I have to believe that the reason this happened today is that there is a bigger plan for me and that I am not supposed to spend my time working at a convenience store.   The thing is, when things like this happen to you, it is not always apparent why but I guarantee the reason will be revealed to you and you will find that things always happen for a reason.  So I could be furious, I could stay up all night thinking about this but instead I am waiting for something even better to come along and the sign that this happened for all the right reasons.  Joe Vitale is a guru of mine and he says when you are focusing on dreams or writing your life scripts and discussing goals you should always say “my goal is to achieve this or something better”.  The other thing you have to thing about is the old saying, when one door closes another one opens.   Today instead of getting upset about a setback look at it as being just a step closer to achieving what you really want in life, the last door that needs to close before that ultimate door opens.   You are in charge of writing the rest of the story, don’t leave it up to anyone else.

Don’t Stop Believing !

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Sitting here this morning realizing I hadn’t posted a new blog entry in almost a week.  I had a pretty good run there for a while, the ideas kept flowing and I had more material than I had time to write.  My mind was totally blank trying to figure out what to write this morning when just like magic, I am looking at everybody’s daily facebook updates and I see a status update from one of my kids ski coaches “start shopping for airfare now for fall ski camp” and immediately nostalgic thoughts of following my kids to ski racing camps swept over me.  Of course with the personal financial crisis of the last couple years my first thought was feeling bad that I couldn’t do that any more because I couldn’t afford it, then suddenly the song starts playing in my head…”Don’t stop believing…hold onto that feeling” and I immediately was reminded that, “that feeling” is what it is all about.  When you truly believe and know that you can do things, you can !.  I know it sounds simple but doing a thorough analysis and having the opportunity to spend some time with a recent college graduate and incredible entrepreneur I met at Target Field, I know it had worked for me in the past and I know when I focused on “not losing everything”  I lost everything.  When you proceed confidently and know you can do something without a doubt, it always happens exactly the way you visualize it.

Crazy thoughts started popping into my head as ‘Don’t stop believing” continued to play in the background.  I thought about taking a trip to the Caribbean this fall like my wife and I always used to do to celebrate the anniversary of our first date on November 1, 1975.  I thought about going to Colorado in November to watch my son train for the upcoming ski racing season and for some strange reason, a thought came to me to look up the address of our home that we lost to foreclosure in December of 2009 on Google earth.  Now the home issue has been particularly sensitive for me, I haven’t been able to drive by the house we lost and lived in for 25 years, I get physically ill when someone mentions it and for the most part I just had been trying to completely erase it from my mind.   But for some reason this morning, something was telling me to look up the house on Google earth, so I looked it up and there beside the satellite photo was an ad from a realtor saying to look at this listing… so I clicked on it and up popped the listing for the home I lost.  Unlike the last 12 months when mentions of that house made me feel sick, this morning thoughts of hope were rushing over me.  I read the ad for the listing and took a look at all the pictures they had posted.  I think something amazing is happening, first, I thought someone had bought the house and moved into it, second, I thought even if we could have stayed in it I couldn’t afford to fix all the problems that had cropped up with the house over the past few years but when I looked at it, no one had bought it and someone had fixed all the problems with it.  It has a new roof, new windows, the theater in the basement has been restored, the ceiling in the kitchen has been redone and the light fixtures that needed to be replaced have been replaced.  It looks brand new inside and out and my yard that I worked so hard on for all those years still looks great.  Can you guess what my next thought was ?  It was  an unbelievable, I should buy it back thought !  Once again….”Don’t Stop Believing” started blaring in my head. How I could I possibly buy this home back before someone else gets there hands on it ?  To pull that off I would have to come up with millions of dollars to dig myself out of debt, pay everyone back and pay cash for the house because no one is going to give me a loan.  Millions of obstacles, huge barriers and the words impossible haven’t even crossed my mind.  Am I back to being my old self where I could make the impossible happen ? am I going nuts ?  Should my family find some serious psychiatric help for me ?  I choose to think that I am back and better than ever. 

Dreams can become reality, you just have to really believe and know they are going to happen.  I spent the last few years worrying about and focusing on trying not to lose things, trying to keep my business alive and trying not to lose my house.  You might think those were admirable things to focus on but in fact by thinking that way (trying not to lose) I was doing exactly the thing that made me lose everything.  If I had focused on growing the business, improving my home and setting goals for new things to attain, I can guarantee that I wouldn’t have lost everything.   I don’t like to make excuses but it is important to find the cause of your issues, I believe mine all started with a CFO I hired, we would have weekly meetings where he would present spreadsheet after spreadsheet, projected on the wall, showing me when my company was going to run out of money.  Guess what ? we ran out of money and got into a mode of never having any money.  In 27 plus years of being in business I had never taken the approach of looking at when I was going to run out of money and I never did run of money until our focus became “when are we going to run out of money”.  We should have been focused on the things we needed to do to generate money and looking at spreadsheets of what were going to do when the money came in.   A very successful mentor of mine once told me that there are only two things in business: Growth or Liquidation either you are growing the company or the company is going out of business.   I think the same can be said for people as well, either you are learning and growing in your personal experience or you are liquidating everything preparing for things to shut down.  It all comes down to what you think about most.             

As we head into the fall of another year are you heading into the fall of your life ? or are you focused on building yourself up and preparing for another Spring ?  My little journey of the past few years that took me down the wrong path is being quickly corrected, it just took getting the right mental GPS turned on.   No dream is too big, no dream is impossible and fixing the past (including buying your foreclosed home back) is not only possible it easily could become reality if you “Don’t Stop Believing” !