Crystal Clear

I'm studying daily to bring my dream into reality. I have an amount of time set aside for this purpose every day. Though I am flexible as to when I use it, I am committed to using that time every single day. In the course of this study I have realized that one of the key ingredients to creating a positive outcome is a well-defined dream.

I used to think that a person with a personal vision was someone who was endowed with it from early on. I no longer think that. I've come to believe that defining and holding a dream is a choice one makes and can make at any time in their life.

In a world fraught with conflict, oppression, monetary slavery, and worldly wants it seems increasingly more difficult to hold and carry a dream. I handle this under the self-created credo: Carry The Dream, Work The Day.

The credo works to keep me on track. I know I'm not laying down the dream when I go into my work day. The dream remains alive, steeping on the stove top of work like a good soup, there to refresh me when I take a break or find the need to remember where I'm headed.

Like a good soup, my dream has a recipe, too. I work to perfect it. I've come to believe from studying others that the best dreams are crystal clear in definition.

Weeks ago, before launching this blog, I set out to define my dream. I wanted a picture of the best I could attain. I began journal ling to discover those "things I'd like to see develop in my lifetime." With my journal, I captured the thoughts, hopes and wants so that I could look at them intelligently and making decisions that would favor such things.

I think many people don't realize a dream or don't have one because they think a dream is defined entirely in one sitting. Not so, in my opinion. I let mine stew. I added this and that as the weeks went on and refined it. I threw out many ideas that by seeing them on paper became lesser priorities, things I recognized as diversions, side-tracking or excuses.

Now I have an exceptional stew on the stove of progress. And I've gained a kind of patient confidence in defining my dream as I make it crystal clear. Though my dream may be very large, it can be reached and will, I believe, become reality before I'm gone.

And in considering the end of the race (for one day it will end), the best dream I can define for myself includes a plan for succession and legacy. God willing, I will leave a positive influence to assist in the personal growth of other people.

Take Ownership

I had the great pleasure this afternoon of attending the meeting of a family-owned company in which two brothers who've been at it for thirty years sold their multi-million dollar firm back to the employees who helped them build an empire.

The younger of the two (now in his fifties) spoke specifically about the value of "taking ownership." All who stride into the ether hoping to create a business on the web can find value in his wisdom.

He made five solid points about ownership, what it means and why we need to take it seriously. Here is my interpretation of his thoughts:

1) It's my (the owner's) responsibility to grow my company. "If a company is not growing," he said, "it is going backward." It's true. There's no such thing as a plateau. It's more like flying an air plane. If you're not gaining air, you're falling out of the sky. Growth is essential and growth is always the responsibility of the owner. It can't be pawned off on hirelings. If you are the owner, then that's what you do! You own what you do and you do it therefore. You oversee growth and you oversee those who help you attain it.

2) Your company must be profitable. Without profit you are not growing. No gain means you are falling away from your customer support. Profit isn't there for pleasure. It allows you to acquire the necessary technology and equipment to stay abreast of fast changing times. Having a website is not enough. It's your responsibility in ownership to ensure profit to your venture.

3) Success is founded on customer service. Without it, you lose your customers. If you're an information byway on the information highway, you're not giving enough knowledge in your field. You've got to make it "click easy."

4) You have to provide a quality product. Let's face it. Surfers have far too many options where to go. Want them back? Give them what they came for in the first place and give them plenty of it. It's got to be quality: quick, easy and satisfying. Or they won't return.

5) Build a team. Let the players in. Give them a forum. Let them show their stuff too. Remember, you're the owner. Own what you do, but let your customers show who they are. Give them space and they'll return.

Passing the baton of ownership, this highly successful executive, his brother and his team took their company from ground zero to competitive national trade in the food industry with revenues surpassing $100 million annually. They did that from hands-on no money days in the beginning to wealth in the end because they took ownership.

An owner does what he is, male or female. The owner owns up to the task.

What do you think?

Five Strong Horses

On the human side, here's something for you to check out. The Gallup International Research and Development Center published a book recently titled, Now Discover Your Strengths. The authors, Donald Clifton and Marcus Buckingham, have created true influence with this book. It's ISBN is 0-7432-0114-0. It's worth ordering if you are into changing where you are to where you want to go or be.

Gallup's premise and the subject of their book is that people who discover their strengths and who then learn to stay within them, have the greatest chances of success in the world. The chosen direction doesn't matter as much as relying on the early-in-life imprint made on you, an impression that sets up who you are and how you react or proactively take part in your society, family and work environment. The premise of the book is based on millions of surveys taken on successful people over several years. The results are indeed very interesting. Clifton and Buckingham have narrowed the usable results of those studies (which continue now at an exponential rate) into thirty-some categories of human personality strengths. Much of the corporate world, especially in America, but abroad as well, has been influenced by this analysis.

My personal strengths are Maximizer, Strategy, Empathy, Ideation and Woo, in that order: my five strong horses.

I read it, took the assessment and have learned that the results predicted for me are absolutely right on! The more I observe these characteristics at work in me, at play or not at play in my relationship to the world, the more I've come to understand their importance. To better manage my life, I now find ways to manage these traits to my advantage. Doing so has made me far more effective and productive, even in the arts.

The drawing in this picture illustrates my five strong horses (my strengths) pulling the chariot of my life into battle. If I don't have the reins of discipline on them, they go every which way and I end up losing. If I try to use somebody else's horses to perform or interact, I lose as well. But because I understand that these traits are mine, and because I continue to look for greater understanding of how to utilize them best, I succeed in areas I never thought possible.

As an example for you, my use of a drawing such this to illustrate my need to manage my strengths is the application of ideation and strategy--two of my five strong horses. I stay away, as best I can, from using other people's horses (traits).

We are all uniquely who we are, after all.

Certainly there are many aspects to defining a person's success, but this one for me, added to other things I know about myself, has become a management tool of great value.

Buy the book and you can take the assessment free. They want you to read their analysis first, and that's a good idea.

On the Edge of Awakening

I stood on the edge of a great abyss. I wanted to get to the otherside; in fact, I knew that crossing this chasm involved my whole purpose and reason for being. But crossing seemed impossible.

"How could one?" I asked. No one was around to answer. I was alone in this problem. At least it seemed that way: I, on the one side; my desire, on the other. "Has any man ever crossed such a wide birth?"

It was morning, a cloudless day. The early sun shown golden across the high desert air of the plateau across which I had spent the night. I felt warmed by the light, as if possibility was actually there on the otherside of hope.

All reason, all logic, all evidence however, pointed to impossibility. "There is no way," I muttered. and turned back from the precipice to look at the distance I had come. Behind me were miles of territory through which I had experienced every kind of human emotion from unbearable disappointment to unspeakable joy. I could have concluded standing there that all of life had been lived, that really, I had no more to find. I might have concluded the chasm was death, the end of the walk; but I could see much ground on the otherside and it bid me with it's green lushness, the verdure of life.

"No, this is not the end," I said. "I will find a way. A way exists; I know it."

I remembered the beginning so long ago. I, like others, had stood in the pre-dawn light and shivered with cold and fright, waiting for dawn to come. We were oppressed. We lived in darkness. We lived in fear and doubt. Many then believed there would be no dawn. They concluded that the light was false, an illusion from the heavens, an aurora perhaps dancing just over the horizon.

But I felt differently and I was not alone. Several weighed in to join me on the trek. "We'll go and meet the dawn," we proclaimed. We banded together struck out into the dark world crossing many treacherous places in search of the Awakening. Slowly, as fate would have it, our numbers dwindeld to few. Oh, we had days and daylight on that long path. We had not walked the whole way in darkness. We could see there as we see here. We could touch and feel and taste and smell. Though we trekked through spirit realms, our journey was as real as the physical to those of us who took it.

Some died, I think, in the journey. Some fell to vice. Some were overtaken. But in the last hours of the night preceding my arrival on the edge of this precipice, I had seen at least three who had come as far as I. Even as I looked back on the distance, I could feel them. I looked north and saw two walking away at some distance. I turned southward and saw one closer, standing on the edge. As I was about to hail, he sat down on a rock and put his hands to his eyes. He wept.

I took up stride to join him. I knew his emotion well. Perhaps, I could encourage him. He heard my steps and looked up as I approached. A smile passed over his countenance though his face reflected tears.

"Is this the dawn?" he asked, gesturing toward the chasm.

"No. It's morning. But this is not the end of our journey. This is not the Dawn of our Awakening. We must persevere."

"Do you suppose a way to cross exists?"

"That we cannot yet see? Yes. I suppose it does. How--I don't know. But we must not quit."

"We've come so far."

"Too far. We can't quit." In all the years of my walk, through all the searching and want and desire, I had carried hope in my heart that one day I would stand before the Glorious Light of God, that I would awaken to the Truth Within. "We cannot quit. This is only here to test us."

In Desperate Prayer

I fell to my knees beside my bed and prayed for rescue. I begged God for help, confessing my weakness and the sin in all I had done. I poured out my fears on weeping tongue and laid my troubles before Him. "Oh God of Mercy, help me," I cried. "In your great Love, hear me!" My plea was all my heart. Exhausted, I gave in to anguished sleep.

In a dream, I saw a silent angel standing nearby, sentinal to my cause. He was a warring angel, not burdened by emotions such as mine.

Present to defend me, I knew he was capable. He was not there for me to worship, but for me to understand that I was not alone against my enemy.

The fight was greater than my own. I saw that it had little to do with circumstance. The war was in the heavens. That which came against me was manifest proof. I was to trust God, the Creator of my being. I knew this by insight in the place of dreams. without language spoken.

When I woke, the anguish was gone; the fear, dissipated. And the dream stayed with me, not to be forgotten.

Never Despair

We all walk a path through the maze of life. Sometimes we feel desperately alone. The woods about are dark and haunting. We often feel we don't know where we're going.

This has been very true for me. It's at times like that that I stumble, even fall and hurt myself in one way or another. Despair seems easy. Like a child who whimpers over a bruised knee we comfort ourselves in despair by justifying all the wrong that has left us alone and in the dark.

How many times I have felt this way! Countless days and numberless years, I have felt like a lost child in a dark forest, unable to see the sunshine, unable to get a bearing, alone with no understanding of which way to go.

Then one day, because I'm a writer, I set out to study story-telling. I decided maybe that was the way to go, that if I learned to tell better stories, I'd one day be found and my books would have greater influence, greater meaning. I was right!

I was surprised as well, because what I plotted in my understanding of story became a map for my own life. An angel appeared on the trail beside me and above to give me insight and encouragement. God let me know that I was on the right track, that the direction I was heading was correct. All I needed to do, He said through this angel of light, was "continue on and do not despair!"

When I looked into what He meant, for I meditated on it long, I realized a most valuable thing. I realized that despair itself was a dark power ruling over me and that when I cast it off by disclaiming it and chose joy instead by praising God, not only did the darkness leave, but the trail opened up. I found my direction. I saw the way.

This, then, is the first step in our journey. Lay down all your indulgence in negative justification. Trust God. Press forward. He created you! Can there be a mistake in that?

No. No mistake. So shed the darkness, child of God. Disclaim it. Proclaim your birthright. Praise God and think on all things good. Throw away all that which is not. That's the first step on your way out of the woods.

Our Direction

In the long tunnels of time, we stumble, trip and faulter. We strive down wrong paths and open dark doors. We mis-use and abuse relationships along the way, failing to see that damage to another is damage to ourselves.

Welcome to The Hope Stone. This is a blog about creativity; but not in the more commonly thought sense of creating art. Though I am an artist, as is my wife--you'll see samples posted periodically--this blog is not directed toward the creation of artwork, but rather the creation of one's life.

Sometimes, it feels like we're living in a movie or a book. I talk to many people who comment on this in one way or another. "Oh, let me tell you my story," or "I could write a book," they say, but they never do. They are living lives both fantastic (not always positive, but sometimes) and usually without direction, letting it happen to them rather than directing its course. If a movie director or publisher were to look over these life scripts, in many cases, he would toss much of the plot into the river because the script for most says nothing and goes nowhere.

I'm creating this blog to discuss, and hopefully hear comment about, how a person can establish a direction in life, set an image far off on their horizon that will benefit them (and others--because that's required) and reach it.

Hence: The Hope Stone. Sound interesting?