What if I dropped dead tonight?

That's a pretty morbid thought...  at least to me, but what if I did?  Would it matter?  Who would care?  I mean really care?  Why am I stuck already?

Another friend and coworker pasted away this past weekend.  He was a my counter part and about my age, plus or minus.  Another dose of reality that's made me wonder, what if.  Who would care other than me.  This could be my last blog...  would it matter?

The Blessed Life

Today is a new day and we are blessed.  I often forget that and take too many things for granted.  Things could always be worse.  It might only be in the mid 60's in my house, but I have a house and the ability to be out of the elements...  not everyone has that.  I just made a good breakfast (which I rarely do) that included eggs, bacon, toast and orange juice...  not everyone has that.  Some beg for food scraps.  I not only have a job, I have two jobs... not everyone has that.  The realities are, almost no matter what our circumstances, many of us really have a blessed life.

Things happen for a reason, sometimes they just are, we just have to accept it.  Call it fate, call it an opportunity, I don't know...  just have faith that some things just happen and figuring out those whys don't add to our own personal greatness (and I do believe we are all great in our own ways, and that is incredibly important too).  Today, I was led to another list to remind me that although some decisions may be hard and there maybe much to do...  there is always a path to greatness even though some lead us through swamps and treacherous times.

Today I am reminded that:

• Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
• Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.
• Colonel Sanders had the construction of a new road put him out of business in 1967. He went to over 1,000 places trying to sell his chicken recipe before he found a buyer interested in his 11 herbs and spices. Seven years later, at the age of 75, Colonel Sanders sold his fried chicken company for a finger-lickin' $15 million!
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
• Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching.” In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, “I was considered by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.
• Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn’t read until he was seven. His teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.” He was expelled and refused admittance to Zurich Polytechnic School. The University of Bern turned down his Ph.D. dissertation as being irrelevant and fanciful.
• The movie Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before 20th-Century Fox finally produced it. It went on to be one of the largest grossing movies in film history.
• Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15 out of 22 in chemistry.
• When NFL running back Herschel Walker was in junior high school, he wanted to play football, but the coach told him he was too small. He advised young Herschel to go out for track instead. Never one to give up, he ignored the coach's advice and began an intensive training program to build himself up. Only a few years later, Herschel Walker won the Heisman trophy.
• When General Douglas MacArthur applied for admission to West Point, he was turned down, not once but twice. But he tried a third time, was accepted and marched into the history books.
• After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, said, “Can’t act! Slightly bald! Can dance a little!” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.
• The father of the sculptor Rodin [The Thinker Statue] said, “I have an idiot for a son.” Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.
• Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.
• Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.
• Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind was turned down by more than twenty-five publishers.
• Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbusting movie and highly successful television series.
• When the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book was completed, it was turned down by thirty-three publishers in New York and another ninety at the American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim, California, before Health Communications, Inc., finally agreed to publish it. The major New York publishers said, "It is too nicey-nice" and "Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories." Since that time more than 8 million copies of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book have been sold. The series, which has grown to thirty-two titles, in thirty-one languages, has sold more than 53 million copies.
• In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere… son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.” Elvis Presley went on to become the most popular singer in America.
• Dr. Seuss' first children's book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, was rejected by twenty-seven publishers. The twenty-eighth publisher, Vanguard press, sold six million copies of the book.

In closing, I am reminded to never give up believing in yourself! 

Confess Yourself

Throughout my life, I have tried.  Tried to do good, for the most part do the right things for the right reasons.  Sometimes it was fabulous.  Other times, like now, it is like living a slow death.  My gut is churning.  I have been fighting and scraping to work out of this hole of a life I am living in.

There are good days and bad.  I don't need to air the details of the dirty laundry... just assume it is bad to some extent in many areas...  seriously in trouble in others.  Not a place anyone wants to be, yet I am.  The worst part is that I am there and I must get out.  I am struggling with the methods to get to a better place.  There are options...  some are difficult, but they are options on the table.  That's why I struggle.  Decisions must be made, and soon.

That was the bad and ugly...  I have to finish with something good and positive.  We are what we feel and I must end this day on a better note and positive frame of mind. To do so I will turn to two things sent to me in the past 24 hours by my power buddies...  my mentors....  my friends.

First...  I have been talking about getting better and getting back to who I think I once was at least I felt a whole lot better then, felt like I had a life and people to share that joy with).  We think that will require change.  What does that mean?  Change is life.  Things change every day....  the weather..  happenings in the world...  what we have to do at work....  when things stop changing, we might be looking up from six feet under.  It is not change that is the difficult part...  it's action.  Taking actions to move to a better place is what is really necessary.  It is best said this way:

For things to change we must change, however change only occurs the day we move from the desire to change to the decision to change backed by a strong internal belief system and the commitment to do what ever it takes to reach our long-term goal.  Thus the power to change tomorrow is held in the decision we make today to head down a different path and make a commitment to ourselves to stay the course.

Tomorrow will be a better day because I will take action to eliminate one of the aspects of my life that is causing strife.

Second, words of inspiration are so incredibly powerful.  My power buddy (whether she knows it or know) sent this to me tonight:

"From Christ to Edison, the men who have achieved the most have been those who met with the most stubborn forms of temporary defeat. This would seem to justify the conclusion that Infinite Intelligence has a plan, or a law by which it hurdles me over many obstacles BEFORE giving them the privilege of leadership or the opportunity to render useful service in a noteworthy fashion." Page 39 of Outwitting the Devil so see my dear Dan you are paying your dues to learn skills and teaching to live a life of noteworthy leadership your future of power and greatness is so bright. Love you my friend.

Beginning this moment, I will begin looking at myself as the good person I am; the successful person I am; and the mentor to others they so desire.  I am a person that matters. 

Even in the face of darkness, we must learn to control our disappointments. We must learn to deal with adversity with an open mind...  even it someone strikes out against us and not take it personally.  

Love you all.

Challenging the Challenge

Almost before I get going, I am completely challenged in my challenge.  Wow.  I did not expect this to be so hard.  A simple task of removing negativity and limiting words from my life for 30 days.  I've hit a stumbling block right out of the gate.  I don't see that as negative or limiting, I see it as holy cow, how am I going to get through today.

I caught myself very easily slipping into the easier mind set of thinking negative thoughts and having negative feeling when faced with a situation that did not go as it should have.  A situation that has historically has almost always been very negative and unpleasant but has turned around of late and things wee good.  Yesterday, reared it's ugly head and caught me by surprise and today must be dealt with.

I'm not so sure what I am feeling is negative talk or limiting feeling as much as it is me as a manager having to face yet another ugly matter.  One which makes me uncomfortable with because personal feeling are going to really tested.  Unhappiness is likely to be felt by several people. I'm not ready for this in a week that has already had it's share of unpleasantness.  So what to do?

The first thing I must do is to get control of my own emotions and not let the unpleasantness of this situation get mixed in with the realities of actions and conversations that need to take place.  The situation is partially my own fault because I did not get some things done that should have been done long before today.  I know that and have discussed that with those involved...  just a day or so ago.  My fault, I know that and am working to correct it.  I am just irritated by the actions of some as if they did not know and as a result, I have slipped into thinking and being negative about the situation. 

I am frustrated but know what I have to do today, ready or not, things must get done, priorities have been changed and actions must be done today.  Go pay the price.

January's Challenge

This is positively going to be a good month.

My goal for the month is to turn the leaf over...  to start anew....  to live for a renewed purpose.  God works in amazing ways as I was immediately challenged with a very difficult situation at work and this lurking cough turning into a real feeling of being ill.  I couldn't hold my grandson after he came home from surgery so I didn't spread my germs and I wasn't available to help my daughter move into her new house.  How can I be positive?  Simple.  Those are just roadblocks and hiccups that try to break our will to do what's right.

It was first suggested to me that I should write a book in the mid 1980's.  I don't recall the persons name right now, but I remember where his office was on Route 1 in Portsmouth, NH.  I was going through a tough time and decided to continue talking to the marriage counselor my then former wife and I had seen while we were still married.  I really tried to do "the right thing" in all things I did, especially as it related to the kids during that time (and during the divorce of my first wife as well).  For the most part I had been putting on a good show, being tough and happy on the outside, dying on the inside.  I think I hid the dying part pretty well, maybe not as well as I thought.

Today is a new beginning.  Today is D-Day...  Dan's day...  Do it Day... Day one of the new beginning.  If you don't do anything different, you can hardly expect to achieve different results.  If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.  Change is only the result of change.  Thank you Kirk Weisler for the bag of corks, it so easily will help me explain how change can produce results, it's so obvious. (I love analogies and props).  Now to apply the "Cork Theory" to the life I want.

I think Napoleon Hill discussed "definite in purpose" in Think and Grow Rich (I need to verify that reference).  What are our goals?  What is the purpose for which we are?  That's first.  These are some of the thins running through my head.

1. Find a good non-denominational bible based church...  I miss the life of Oasis Family Fellowship and must find a new place to call home.
2. Be a better family member... take charge of my household and the things that surround it.
3. Don't miss the things my kids and grand kids do (I like this one and do a pretty good job now).
4. Be a better leader and mentor to and for my staff.
5. Do more to help those in need of help
6. Share my story with as many that I can find that will listen
7. Have a story to tell worth telling and tell it at a national convention (I  know what this means - it's a placeholder for now)