Photo by j | t

(This post is dedicated to my father. Much love Dad, always, and thanks for passing along that half-full glass)

I was 14 years old, and growing up in Wisconsin.  During this particular summer my dad, who on his days off from the county sheriff’s department was a very good carpenter, asked me to help him build a garage, basically from scratch.

Truth be told, I was much more interested in playing baseball and hanging out with my friends, but I said yes anyway (although I’m quite sure I would have still helped him if I said no!).

It was a two week project, and it was one of the longest two weeks of my life.  I have absolutely no aptitude for carpentry.  In my hands, a hammer was a dangerous tool capable of putting holes where holes shouldn’t be, and bashing fingers into submission.   A drill was a mysterious electric implement that was incapable of creating a straight hole.

Although I was of very little help to my dad, he kept on trying to teach me what he knew (which was plenty). He was well versed in the “measure twice, cut once” school of carpentry, and it was actually fun to watch him work.  Unfortunately, that’s what I preferred to do – watch.

His patience with me, in looking back at these two weeks, was actually quite remarkable.  He tolerated my mistakes, always spent time with me in trying to correct them and never really got mad at me.

I think what happened eventually is the lesson in this piece – that sometimes, you really can’t teach somebody something, and the lesson is in knowing when it is a lost cause.    My dad probably realized early on that I just wasn’t going to catch on, and didn’t push me as hard as he could have.

I just wasn’t going to be “Mr. Handyman”.  And my dad accepted that.

As you would guess, he never asked me again to help him on any of his carpentry jobs.   Luckily, he knew I had other talents that would eventually help me make a living, and encouraged and supported me as I finished high school and got an accounting degree in college.

Because numbers I could work with.  I didn’t need a hammer!  Just a 10-key (at least then).

As I’ve developed as a manager and teacher these past 26 years after graduation I’ve always remembered that garage, and the lesson it passed along – part of being a good teacher is figuring out right at the outset the student’s capacity to learn the material.

By the way, miraculously that garage is still standing, 34 years later.   I bet my dad straightened out a bunch of those nails when I wasn’t looking!

(Note: This is the third selection of my “Joyful Jubilant Learning – The Reprise” series. This post originally appeared on JJL on June 26, 2008)

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As someone who is always trying to “deal with the literal world in a positive way“, I have come to really appreciate the mistakes I’ve made (and there have been plenty).

Now I’m sure your reaction to that is – “appreciate mistakes??” Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?

In my half-full world, the ability to take positive things out of the errors I make is critical to making my life’s journey a fulfilling one (and, in a more “ground level” way, my business career a successful one).  I’ve found that there are four important steps I need to make to leverage those mistakes properly:

1. Acknowledgment
2. Correction
3. Learning
4. Rear View Mirror

Let’s take a closer look at these steps – first, there’s acknowledgment.   The simple admission, to others and most importantly to yourself, that you made a mistake.

I remember back in 1999 and 2000 when I thought I was the best stock day trader in the world. I had an E-trade account and was wheeling and dealing like a Wall Street pro – or so I thought.   When the tech bubble burst around that time I refused to believe I had erred by taking so many positions in risky dot-com companies.   I didn’t bail out in time because I didn’t acknowledge my mistake. I was too proud to admit that day trading was something I shouldn’t be doing. I learned a valuable lesson from this - you have to have the self-awareness to know when you’ve made an error.

Next comes correction.   After you’ve admitted a mistake it needs to be fixed.   This one is most important in my business world.   We provide a service, and sometimes we don’t get it right the first time.   We have to quickly respond and get the customer happy.   There’s a great silver lining to this, one that really contributes to the ultimate benefit of errors – it’s a documented fact that a customer who had a bad experience but it was fixed to their satisfaction is much more likely to be a loyal customer than someone who never had a problem.

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons!  So once you know you’ve gone wrong, correct it as soon as you can.

Then there’s the learning that comes from mistakes.   This always reminds me of that great saying “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” by George Santayana.  The lessons I’ve taken from my errors have been without a doubt the most valuable of my life.

The biggest mistake I’ve made in my career, for example, was to decide to make a cross-country move to work for someone I was just not compatible with from a leader/manager standpoint.   I’ve written in my blog about how I had to pull myself out of that situation to get my “mojo” back, but the other thing I took away from it were two great lessons -  I was never going to put myself in that kind of work situation again, and better still, because of the mistake I now knew exactly the kind of leader I wanted to be and the kind of business environment I wanted to be in.

Yes, we have to learn from those mistakes we make, or we will indeed repeat them.

Lastly, while we need to take the time to reflect on the lessons from our mistakes, once that is done and we’ve absorbed the learning, we must let the mistake itself go, or what I call “put it in the rear view mirror“.  Why?  because if we don’t we can become paralyzed because of the fear of making another mistake.  This isn’t the easiest thing to do sometimes – there have been occasions for me where I would be poised to do something and all of a sudden the memory of a past error (and its consequences) would flash in my head, and I would hesitate.   Most of the time I can stifle it, but there are still occasions when I can’t.

But I try to learn from that too – it’s a constant and consistent desire that keeps driving me forward.  I need to learn. I HAVE to learn.

I hope that this 4-step approach that’s come from my life experiences can help you with your learning too, and as you use them, be joyful, jubilant and brave!

(Note: This is the second selection of my “Joyful Jubilant Learning – The Reprise” series. This post originally appeared on JJL on August 9, 2007)

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While I was in college 30 years ago I spent my summers working for my hometown department of public works.

My job?  Sanitation Engineer, more affectionately known as a “Garbage Man”.

From 7AM to 3PM, five days a week, my teammates and I went up and down the alleys and streets of our town, collecting the trash, putting it into the back of  large compactor truck, and then taking it to a “transfer center”.  On average we collected about 13,000 pounds of garbage a day.

Nothing glamorous here, to be sure.  And it was hard work.  But it taught me a lot about life, and the value of work itself.

Here are the Top 10 things I learned from collecting garbage:

• Contrary to what you might think, grass is heavy.  Fill a container full of it, try to lift it up, and you’ll see what I mean.
• In order to make a policy a success, you must enforce the policy religiously.   Our city had a rule that the garbage had to be in a certain place at a certain time.  We found that if we skipped that house because they didn’t follow the rule, the next week they followed the rule.  If we let them slide and picked it up anyway, they would continue to violate the rule.
• Always wear comfortable clothes. While it’s really tempting, you can’t try to be a fashion plate and collect garbage at the same time.
• You can tell a lot about a person’s personality by the way they arrange their garbage. Sure enough, if we needed to chat with a customer about their mess we had to clean up, they were not easy to deal with. Conversely, there were multiple occasions where the neatniks brought out lemonade for us poor tired workers.
• The adage “One man’s garbage is another man’s gold” is absolutely true.  I snagged a lot of interesting stuff that other people threw out, including some vintage LP’s and 45s.  Thank you, whoever you were!
• Respect your body and use proper technique to lift things. Even a 20-year old back figured this one out pretty darn quickly lifting 13,000 pounds a day
• Sunscreen is a wonderful invention. No, you do not get “bronzed” spending 5 days a week in the sun.  You get burned. Badly.
• It’s always a good idea to be nice to your supervisor. Because I observed this rule, my supervisor always let me take a break and drive the garbage truck every now and then.   Those breakfast buys really paid off!
• Pace Yourself – most things are marathons, not sprints. There was nothing worse than trying to rush through the first third of our day trying to finish early. By noon we were exhausted, and ended up actually finishing late. Ah, youth.
• It’s not proper to be singing “My Sharona” at the top of your lungs in an alley at 7AM. Nuff said on that one.

(Note:   This is the first post in a series I will be presenting here, called, “Joyful Jubilant Learning – The Reprise”.  I wrote a number of posts between 2006 and 2009  for a blog that is no longer active called Joyful Jubilant Learning, led by Rosa Say.   It was a collaborative exercise featuring many other wonderful people, dedicated to learning.   It was a great experience, and I wanted to share with you a sampling of what this group inspired me to write and create.  This post originally appeared on JJL on 8/20/09.  Thanks!)

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I was stumped.

It had to be just the right adjective.   The one that would launch a thousand retweets.

The one that would make the headline bark out “READ ME”!!!

I thought, and thought, and thought.

“Enduring”?  Nah, I didn’t want the wrong connotation (i.e. “to endure the post”)

“Lasting”?   Nope.  It just didn’t look good.

“Rock Solid”?  Negative.   Been there, done that.

I finally settled on “sustainable”, and then hit “publish”.

As I prepped the post for later broadcasting on Twitter, I looked at the headline again.

Omigod.

I had fiddled around so much with a single word that I forgot about the rest of it.

Reading it out loud, it gave off the exact opposite connotation than I intended.

I had to change it, again, and by doing so I had fallen prey to something I swore I’d never succumb to.

The “Obsessive-Compulsive Headline Writing Disorder”.

That is, in a nutshell, putting the cart before the horse.  I cared more about the headline than the content itself.  And worse, I way over-thought it,  and it still didn’t end up being a very good headline. That’s where this disorder starts to hurt.

Now, don’t get me wrong here – I know headlines are important in a world where everything is shrinking to 140 character bursts.

Of course I want you to read my stuff, so I need to draw you in.  However, it’s a Pyrrhic victory if I dazzle you with a headline, you click through, and then read something that doesn’t live up to its promise.

In that case, I may have won a click, but I probably lost a reader.

Nonetheless, that perfectly good logic can get tossed aside when your ego starts flaring up.

“I want more! More visits! Higher rankings! Massive Twitter followers!  Yes, Yes, Yes!!!”

Bad, bad, and more bad.

The minute I hit “send” on that post, after all that dithering,   I realized that quantity was creeping up dangerously to quality, fueled by the ego and their old and dear companions, fear and envy.

As I write this, it is several days after that post, and rather than let this disorder fester, I had to come to terms with it, and by doing so, share what I’ve learned with you.

It’s all about putting what I’m doing here in the proper perspective.   It’s about going back and re-reading my “about this blog” page (and in hindsight, what a great idea that was Joanna, thank you) .

I want to help people (and myself) and build relationships.  There’s nothing in there about writing the perfect headline that will get 100,000 hits.

There’s the big lesson.  It’s going back to why I started doing this in the first place.  Instead of thinking  “What headline  (and thus content)  can I write that will be the most popular”,  it just has to be “What can I write today that can help my readers and perhaps, help me?”

Writing a good headline is still part of the deal, as well as any other SEO strategy designed to get your post noticed – but it cannot take precedence over the content.

I know, you’re thinking, “Well golly Terry, isn’t that obvious?”  Yes it is, when you are thinking rationally, as I’m sure you are as you are reading this post, and as I usually am when I’m not obsessing over a headline.

However, consider those situations where you are sitting in front of your screen, fresh from a few hours on Twitter marveling at the creative power of those “rock stars” drawing hundreds of retweets and tens of thousands of hits,  subconsciously envious,  tapping into a supposedly long-gone childhood need for acceptance,  and fearing that cannot happen unless you too get that kind of attention.

Ah, you’ve been there too?

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(This post originally appeared way back in 2006,  when I was still on my blogging training wheels.  Since about 10 people read it then, I thought I would reprise it here)

I remember how being called nice didn’t exactly work to a person’s advantage, especially in the dating arena. “Oh, you are such a nice guy” was NOT what you wanted to hear from the object of your affection. Then there is the famous expression, “nice guys always finish last” – heck, there was even a movie made with that title, that supposedly “proves” that this is true. Just do a Google news search and it’s still being used as a way to generally describe “wimpy” behavior (especially in sports), like this one I found from the Denver Post.

I’ve also been told, on occasion, that I was “too nice” to people. Too nice?

So what’s with “Nice” anyway? How did it become so pejorative? The problem is, it has too many meanings. Take a look at the list (thanks to Dictionary.com):

1. pleasing; agreeable; delightful: a nice visit.
2. amiably pleasant; kind: They are always nice to strangers.
3. characterized by, showing, or requiring great accuracy, precision, skill, tact, care, or delicacy: nice workmanship; a nice shot; a nice handling of a crisis.
4. showing or indicating very small differences; minutely accurate, as instruments: a job that requires nice measurements.
5. minute, fine, or subtle: a nice distinction.
6. having or showing delicate, accurate perception: a nice sense of color.
7. refined in manners, language, etc.: Nice people wouldn’t do such things.
8. virtuous; respectable; decorous: a nice girl.
9. suitable or proper: That was not a nice remark.
10. carefully neat in dress, habits, etc.
11. (esp. of food) dainty or delicate.
12. having fastidious, finicky, or fussy tastes: They’re much too nice in their dining habits to enjoy an outdoor barbecue.
13. Obsolete. coy, shy, or reluctant.
14. Obsolete. unimportant; trivial.
15. Obsolete. wanton. —Idioms
16. make nice, to behave in a friendly, ingratiating, or conciliatory manner.
17.nice and, sufficiently: It’s nice and warm in here.
[Origin: 1250–1300; ME: foolish, stupid <>science) + -us adj. suffix]

In looking at this, I realize that this “problem” has existed with this word for over 700 years (check out the origin), but what I want to know is, how did it evolve from “stupid” to “kind”? I don’t think the dictionary folks have a clue. In fact, check this statement out from the definition posting:

“The semantic history of nice is quite varied, as the etymology and the obsolete senses attest, and any attempt to insist on only one of its present senses as correct will not be in keeping with the facts of actual usage. If any criticism is valid, it might be that the word is used too often and has become a cliché lacking the qualities of precision and intensity that are embodied in many of its synonyms.”

Yep, I think so.

What to do then? I say, banish the word entirely. Then, “you are such a nice guy” becomes the more direct “you are such an undesirable person for a dating partner“, and “nice guys finish last” becomes “men who lack appropriate skills to compete but aren’t all that concerned about it are probably going to end up last“.

And what about those folks calling me “too nice“? I suppose I could reply, “please clarify, because you are using a cliche lacking the qualities of precision and intensity that are embodied in many of its synonyms“, but I think I prefer the pithier “So What?”. As Popeye says, “I am what I am” (even if it’s a hopelessly imprecise and obsolete adjective).

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Recently I read this quote in Entertainment Weekly magazine:

“I just really want to work when I want to work. Life interferes, you know. When you’re young and all you have is your career, some of your life can be in second place. And then you want your life to take first place, and other people don’t see it that way. They see it that your life has to take second place, and it’s hard. Life is really hard, and it’s the only one you have. I mean, I like doing what I do, and I know I’m supposed to do it, but I don’t have anything to bring to it if I don’t live my life” – Bill Murray

Gosh I can relate to this.    It brought me back to my early 20’s, when I read the similar refrain of “life is hard” in that famous book “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck.     Back then I was looking for my path and purpose, and so that line hit me a little differently than it does today.

For today, I now have the benefit of almost 30 more years.   And I can read Bill Murray’s line “life is really hard” with a huge emphasis on “really“.

It was true. Peck was right. Murray is still right.   There’s always going to be a sturm and drang element to our lives, whether we want it or not.   So the question is always going to be – what do we do about it?

Bill Murray answers it by saying “my life is in first place“.   But he adds something worth paying particular attention to, which I will paraphrase here:

If I can’t bring my life to my work, I’m not going to do that work.  Life is hard enough.

Let’s stop there for a second. That’s an easy thing to say when you already have more money than you can possibly need,  and the main tangible output of  work  (read, money) isn’t an issue.  Mr. Murray certainly is in that category.

How does it play out for those of us who aren’t in that situation?  There’s the rub, as Hamlet would say.

The reconciliation of “making a living” and “living well“.   Working just to live, and living through your work (and all your other passions).

The answer is, we can make this choice, and succeed, in many, many situations.  Not all of them,  unfortunately.  All you have to do is read the papers and you’ll know which ones I’m talking about.

If you are reading this post right now, however,  I would surmise you are one of those lucky people who can make “Bill’s Choice”.

Turning the life/work axis 180 degrees can be as scary as jumping off a 1,000 foot cliff.  Without a bungee cord.

But the choice must be made.  And here’s the really, really good part.  There are thousands upon thousands of people out there, on the Internet, who bravely decided to put “life in first place“,  took a huge risk, chucked their old job and way of life, and started over.

We can all learn from and be inspired by them.  All you need is the Internet, and Google (or your favorite search engine).

For we cannot succumb to the fear, or the frustration, or the seeming hopelessness or impossibility that we can take control of OUR lives and live them to the fullest.

Because yes Bill, it’s the only one we have.

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Curtis Armstrong, aka "Booger"

Remember the character “Booger” in “Revenge of the Nerds“?  I loved that guy.  Mainly because the actor playing him, Curtis Armstrong,  also played a memorable character in one of my favorite movies,  “Risky Business“.

In that movie, Booger (a quick aside here – yes, I know, the character’s name was actually “Miles”, but I will never associate that person with anything but Booger, so let’s go with that, OK?)  uttered a few lines that will go down in history as one of the most astute theorems of good living ever concocted.

Yes, they were that good.  Do you remember what they were?

Here’s a little context first – Booger was the friend of Joel Goodson (played by Tom Cruise).  Let’s just say Joel was having fear issues.  When you are a bit timid like Joel (oh boy could I relate to him when I was in high school), it’s always good to have a friend that can give you a little kick in the you-know-what.

Especially in a way that is so elegant, and so well constructed,  that it can actually qualify as a theorem – something that can be demonstrated to be true.

And it was demonstrated right in the movie – no, not by Joel’s dance in his underwear to “Old Time Rock and Roll“,  but by his winning of his “Future Enterprisers” contest, and his subsequent acceptance into Princeton.  How he gets to that point was quite interesting (after all, it is a movie), but the theorem test was met.

And those words?  Since this is a PG blog, I have taken the liberty of presenting an edited version:

“Sometimes you gotta say “What the #*@&”, make your move. Every now and then, saying “What the #*@&”, brings freedom. Freedom brings opportunity, opportunity makes your future.”

That’s  the Booger Theorem.

I know, it’s been condensed and reworded (you know who you are, Nike) many, many times since then, but the theorem has stood the test of time.

And it has worked it’s way into my consciousness in a way that other theorems could only hope to (you know who you are, Pythagorean Theorem).

For the Booger Theorem is where fear is conquered and the risk is taken.  You are free.   Opportunity is there for the taking.

Doors swing open, your path and purpose unfolds, and the good life awaits.

(A cautionary note:  Just be sure that whenever you do decide to fully apply the theorem, it’s in accordance with established law, and doesn’t hurt anybody.  Because if that happens, it isn’t Booger egging you on anymore.  It’s his evil twin.)

Just think about it for a second – go back to your successes in life.  How many of them were preceded by the utterance of some reasonable facsimile of the key exclamation of the Booger Theorem?

See what I mean?  There’s always that moment when we let go of the fear.   We win.  The powers that paralyze us lose.

Find the Booger in your life – someone who can help you get over that hump. And if you’re lucky, that person won’t be named… Booger.

Note: 6/17, 2:15PM EST – Thanks to Dude (see comments below) for correcting my spelling on “Theorem”.    I’ve made the proper corrections to the original post.

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I remember the first time I felt it.   It was in 8th grade, when a friend of mine put a certain 45 on his turntable.

I felt a jolt of energy and exhilaration unlike anything I had experienced before.

It was a rock and roll anthem – in this case, it was Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting“.

By the time Elton was shouting “Saturday, Saturday, Saturday“,  I was hooked, and I knew it would be for the rest of my life.

Why was I so sure about that?  Because my brain had been exposed to something very powerful, and life affirming.

It was pure, unadulterated joyous energy.   It didn’t even matter what the song was about (although I’m glad I wasn’t paying much attention to the lyrics of  “Saturday Night” – I really didn’t want to become a juvenile delinquent looking for fights every weekend).

Fast forward the clock about 3 more years, and another anthem raised the bar even higher.  It was “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.   My friends and I predated a very similar scene in the movie “Wayne’s World” when we cruised down the streets of Milwaukee singing “Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango” at the top of our lungs.

The joy of the anthem struck again.

Since then,  I’ve brought other anthems into my life again and again, and they are always available when I need them (on my trusty iPod).

And sometimes they come when I least expect them, like when I went into raving rock mode at Karaoke night at SOBCon2010 to Bon Jovi’s   “Livin’ on a Prayer” (with Scott Stratten and Chris Brogan):

When I saw this video for the first time, I immediately recognized I was experiencing the “Anthem effect” – and I’m sure you saw that too (and I gotta think Chris and Scott were in that place as well).

All this joy during a rock song poses a very interesting question – Can we duplicate this feeling in “real life” when the music stops?

My answer to that is an emphatic, WHY NOT!!!

Think about YOUR favorite anthems, and visualize that feeling.    Feel that joy.   Why are you feeling it?  Sit back and really try to understand how your brain is working at that moment.   Here’s a little help, courtesy of Daniel Levitin, author of the great book “This is Your Brain On Music“:

“The rewarding and reinforcing aspects of listening to music seem, then, to be mediated by increasing dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, and by the cerebellum’s contribution to regulating emotion through its connections to the frontal lobe and the limbic system”

Say what?   That’s the science. (I’d like to say it was a  “no-brainer” to understand, but that’s truly a pun too far.)

It’s interpreted this way:  Anthems tap into brain structures tied to motivation, reward, and emotion.   Those songs are giving you all those things,  and usually at a high volume to boot.

Motivation, reward, and emotion.  Now listen to your favorite Anthem again.   Feel how it pulls those three levers as you anticipate, and then experience, the crescendo (like  my “Saturday, Saturday, Saturday” or  “Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango“).

See?

Make your life one big anthem. Find those things that truly motivate you.  Do them with verve, fine style, and passion.  Then reap the rewards.

You won’t be livin’ on a prayer very long.  You’ll be a rock star, producing your own Bohemian Rhapsody. And lovin’ every minute of it.

“Any way the wind blows…….”

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About 4 years ago,  I backed my car into our garage door.   I had “forgotten” to open it before I started the car and put it in reverse.   I had been sucked in by the “Under Toad”.  Here’s how I had described this beast back then:

In one of my favorite novels, “The World According to Garp” by John Irving, Garp warns his son about the undertow at the beach, and the son then imagines a monster who lurks beneath the sea waiting to suck him under, known as the “Under Toad”. While the metaphor it represented in the book was much darker, I have recently connected the Under Toad to my own life.

In my world the Under Toad is the accumulated weight of thoughts of the past and future that literally pull you under the present, to where what’s going on at that very moment is of the least importance. This particular Under Toad is dangerous too, not only dangerous to truly living the “Half-Full” life, but potentially physically dangerous.

After this experience, and the valuable lesson it generated, you would have thought I could have arrived at June 3, 2010 with a clearer head and the virtual disappearance of the Under Toad.  Truth is, I haven’t.  Further complications have ensued.

This little monster still lurks in the shadows of my daily life, but it has now taken on a physical form that has proven to be even more dangerous.

It has morphed into my Blackberry.

And boy, oh boy, what a struggle it has become.

Case in point:  Driving a car.

There is absolutely no question that when I am driving a motor vehicle, my attention should be fully focused on that task.   And yet, when the Under Toad is sitting in my cup holder, it yanks at me incessantly, buzzing and blinking.

“Look at me! There’s gotta be an e-mail, or a Tweet, or a Foursquare check-in in here that’s worthy of a potentially fatal car accident!”

No, there is not.  But, have I, in a moment of weakness, glanced over and tempted fate?

Busted.

And that’s where I HAVE to draw a line.   That’s where we ALL have to draw a line.   Let’s just say this:

“If there is something or somebody in front of us that needs our attention at that moment, and any reasonable person would determine they are worthy of such attention, by virtue of the relationship,  or risk to one’s life or well being by not paying attention, then we should ignore the Under Toad, and JUST PAY ATTENTION”

Just think of all the accidents we can avoid, or friendships, business partnerships, marriages and other special relationships we could preserve, if we all could follow this “new rule”.

I know I’m not the only one – all I have to do is look around me on the freeway at the folks texting (texting!!) while they drive, or go to meetings or other get-togethers where the Under Toad is in full roar, pulling eyes (and brains) into the cesspool of distraction.

This post is a great wake-up call for me to once again pay attention to paying attention.  I hope, by reading this, it does the same for you.

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17 years ago, I was sitting at my desk, wondering what became of my career. I was miserable, in a job I hated.

It was one of those “oh woe is me” moments that could have easily turned into a full blown malaise.

And it surely would have, if on that day I hadn’t picked up a newspaper column by Tom Peters (one of my prime leadership influences).  He wrote about changing your life,  and how it  could happen just by taking a single little step.

I wanted to change. I needed to change. I HAD to change.  But how?

I remembered some advice an old teacher of mine had given me long before, but I had yet to act upon.

It was about “putting your dreams on paper“, and how by doing so it could truly change your life.

It seemed a bit silly to me when I first got this suggestion, but in this moment of despair I figured writing something down might just be that little step that Tom Peters was urging me to take in his column.

So I picked up my pen, and started to write. I outlined my dream -to be a leader, making a real difference for a business.  I also noted the kind of leader I wanted to be.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, within a year I had a new job, and not too long after that, that dream I had put on paper came true.  Every bit of it.

Was that just a coincidence? Would fate have blessed me this way even if I hadn’t wrote something down?

I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why. Since then, I’ve seen so many other people make great things happen that same way – there’s something about the act of committing the dream to paper.

A great example to me is what I see every year at SOBCon, the conference I co-host with Liz Strauss.  We encourage our attendees in much the same way that Tom Peters did with me 17 years ago – to take just a little step to change.

And to our great delight, so many of them have done just that by documenting their dreams, and then making them happen.

The little secret underlying all this is nothing more than setting an intent to change. Intent is everything. And for whatever reason, it can be more easily crystallized by getting it out of the brain and onto a page.

Hey, it worked wonders for me- you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it for yourself. Do it, and watch what happens!

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