A
dear and, prematurely, departed friend of mine, Rosita Perez, frequently told
this little story when she made presentations for major corporations and large,
multi-national organizations. It went like this. Her husband, Ray, also a
friend of mine, and a super guy, would come to her complaining about a number
of issues that all seemed to need resolving right now. She’d remind him
of one of the philosophies of Dr. Richard Carlson, who titled his best selling
book by this philosophy, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: And It’s All Small
Stuff.” Rosita would tell Ray, “Don’t sweat the small, stuff, Ray.” Ray would
often reply, “But, this isn’t small stuff, Rosita, this is important.” To which
Rosita would respond, “Ray, Being born, BIG STUFF! Dying, BIG STUFF! Everything
else . . . small stuff.”
So,
what does this story have to do with Step#1 – Dreams and Realization? It’s
simple! We let the small stuff of life enslave us. There’s another saying that
has passed around the Internet and is part of the chorus of a George Strait
(country artist) top 10 song from 2010 that goes, “Life’s not the breaths you
take, but the moments that take your breath away.” In other words, each of us
have so many breaths we’ll take during our lifetime, but just breathing doesn’t
have anything to do with experiencing life to its fullest.
Life
Is For LIVING!
I
like to think that life is for LIVING and I don’t just mean waking up every
morning and doing the same routine things everyday. Let’s see, you shower,
groom, catch a fast cup of coffee and half a bagel, drop the kids off at day
care or school, commute to work, do whatever it is that you do at your job,
watch the clock waiting for the end of the day, commute home, prepare and eat
dinner, clean up, help the kids with their homework or take them to their
soccer games or whatever, watch a little CSI,
Law and Order or American Idol, catch a bit of Jay Leno or David
Letterman, climb into bed, pick up the book you’ve been trying to get through
for two months, fall asleep and start the whole routine over again when the
alarm goes off at 6 AM. Okay, so maybe your routine varies a little, but I
doubt that it varies very much.
So,
what were those dreams you grew up with. Remember when you wanted to be a
fireman or a cowboy or a soldier or a racecar driver or an astronaut or a
doctor? Fill in your own dreams and ideas for future occupations. Ladies, fill
in your dreams here, too. They may differ from a man’s dreams. The dreams
probably changed many times as you grew through childhood, adolescence, those
tough teen years and, again, when you finally reached adulthood.
What
other dreams did you have? Did you want to run and win marathons? Did you want
to play baseball, football, basketball, golf or tennis competitively or
professionally? Did you want to be an artist and paint or sculpt or take
award-winning photographs? Maybe you wanted to be a best selling author with
lots of fiction or non-fiction books to your credit. Or, perhaps, you were
musically inclined and played in a rock band with your high school buddies or
sang in a classical choral group. You might have even composed your own music.
The list could go on endlessly.
But,
why aren’t you doing those things? Why didn’t you pursue your dreams? Probably,
because during your childhood you were being conditioned into the model created
by the Industrial Revolution. This model, in my estimation, is now obsolete,
but it’s still the prevailing model that most people live their lives by.
Four
or five generations ago, men, primarily, since women were only a small part of
the out-of-the-home workforce back then, would take a job in a factory or a
coal mine or in whatever field they found work and they would stay in that job
for their entire working lifetime, typically, 40 to 45 years. Then, they would
retire, live for a couple more years and die.
Women, typically, stayed at home for all those years and
handled the domestic necessities of life. Some women were schoolteachers,
nurses, telephone operators, waitresses and airline stewardesses –so-called,
women’s work. Everyone is still conditioned for this same model today, though
women have probably made the most progress over the past several decades.
The
school system is based on that model. It prepares you for when you’ll enter the
workforce and get a job. Creativity is stifled. Thinking outside the box is
frowned on. Doing what your dreams would lead you to do becomes unrealistic by
those in authority and influence around you. You can’t make a good living as a
musician or an artist or a photographer or an adventurer or a professional
athlete. You need to be “serious” and get a job where you have security and can
make some real money.
Life
Happens!
So,
you put those dreams on the shelf, push them to the back of the closet in your
mind and just say, “someday.” When does someday arrive? Usually, it never does.
And, why does it never come? Because LIFE HAPPENS! Now, life is going to happen
whether you’re working in a field that pays good money or not such good money.
It comes whether you love what you’re doing or despise what you’re doing. Life
is going to happen because it just happens, period!
What exactly does “life happens” mean? It basically means
the chances are reasonably good that, whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re
going to seek a mate, create a secure home and have a family. Typically, once
you identify the mate and go through the ritual courting process, you’ll bond
in a marriage agreement. Then you’ll start to create little people just like
yourself and the cycle begins again. Only now you are the parents and will
begin conditioning the new little people into the same “system.” And all of
this requires a stable, secure, responsible environment, right?
Wow!
Do I sound cynical, or what? Well, actually, this is all very natural and the
way the human life cycle has been since “Adam and Eve” (or however you define
the beginning of our species). Here’s the rub. Everyone is born with a natural
freedom. Once you understand a bit about life, you understand that you want to
be happy. A fulfilling life means that you have done something that fulfills
your dreams while contributing, to some degree, to the society you associate
with.
There
are certain basic needs that Abraham Maslow outlines in his Hierarchy of Needs.
You can look this up yourself. Essentially, you all start at the base of the
pyramid with very basic needs for survival and as you meet these needs you
progress up the pyramid. However, nowhere in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, nor
anywhere else, does it say that you need to conform to the standards or system
of survival, personal growth and achievement of anyone else. Yet, by the time
most of you reached the end of high school and, certainly, college, for those
privileged to attend such an institution, you were conditioned to “get a job.”
“I Did It My Way”
For
some reason, call it providence or, maybe, just luck, while I went through the
“indoctrination and conditioning process,” I didn’t buy into it totally. I
started my entrepreneurial career at age 12 as the proverbial “newspaper boy”
delivering 108 to 110 evening newspapers to my customers six days a week and
collecting for the papers on Saturday mornings. I learned that the better the
service I rendered, the larger the tip I’d receive. I, of course, had to pay
the newspaper their share each week. So, I really was an independent
businessman.
My
father, a self-made and educated man, always held a job. He would have liked to
have been in business for himself, but he grew up during the depression and
hung onto the “so-called” security of his employment with someone else. Today,
many of us know that the term “job security” is really a paradox. Even finding
a “good” job is extremely challenging. Finding a great job or one that fulfills
your dreams is next to impossible. And having any kind of job security is
virtually non-existent for most people. My father fostered my entrepreneurial
spirit during those formative years. To some degree, he guided me toward a
certain degree of non-conformity. I never got to thank him because he died
before I graduated from college, but I am ever so thankful.
After
completing my four years of college earning a degree in Education, I was
totally disenchanted with what the “job market” offered me. As I told one
recruiter, I was perfectly capable of starving all by myself. I certainly
didn’t need to sign a contract and indenture myself to starve. I went
immediately to graduate school for a master’s degree in Television and Radio.
The job offers were a little better, but not very much.
I
had been operating my own independent recording business through college and
graduate school and I had a contract with a small regional radio network based
in Syracuse, NY. One day while I was having lunch with the vice president of
the small, family owned group (he was the son of the founder), Al said to me,
and I paraphrase, “You have to make a decision. You can find a full-time job
and keep doing your recording part-time. The chances are very good that you’ll
still be doing it part-time 40 years from now. Or, you can take a chance on
yourself, go full-time into your own business and pull in your belt and eat a
lot of franks and beans. But, this is the only way you’ll know if you have what
it takes to make it in your own business.” I chose the second option and I’ve
never looked back.
I
always tell people I became an entrepreneur because I was just plain lazy and
couldn’t deal with the idea of commuting to and from a job and putting in eight
hours a day, five days a week for someone else. Instead, I chose to work about
14 hours a day, seven days a week working for myself. As the song, with lyrics
penned by Paul Anka and popularized by Frank Sinatra, goes, “I did it my way.”
Reality, In Your Face!
So,
here is the Realization. Like it or not, you’ve all been sold a bill of
baloney. No one needs to conform to the system, though the vast majority will.
You could have opted out when you were a kid and chosen to pursue those dreams.
Sure, you could have failed. Hey, you might have ended up as a “lounge lizard”
playing the piano or the iconic Hammond B3 organ for a bunch of sad, drunken
lushes. You could have written songs that may or may not have ever been
recorded by any of the artists you wrote them for. You could have gone treasure
hunting and never discovered a single gold doubloon. You could have obtained
your commercial pilot’s license and never found a position with a commercial
airline. You could have trekked around the world and taken photos that never
won any awards or had your photos displayed in shows in New York City
galleries. You could have done any of your dreams and failed miserably and
never made an amount of money that would have made your parents proud of you
and your friends envious. But, you’ll never know, will you? THAT is the realization!
Maybe
you would have made a fantastic, exciting and fulfilling life for yourself
doing exactly what you dreamed of doing. So, you might not have made all the
money and couldn’t have afforded the MacMansion. But, you might have the pride
in knowing that something you did directly impacted one or more lives
positively. Instead, you conformed to what your parents, siblings, religious
leaders, friends, teachers, professors and so on told you should do to have a
nice, secure future and life. How did that work out for you? None of these
people had any malice in the way they influenced you. They, actually, believed
that this was the best course for you. And it was safe . . . or was it? And, by
the way, there is ALWAYS a hefty price for security. It’s called freedom.
Perhaps,
right now you’re saying, “But, It’s too late, now.” Or, you’re saying, “Ed is
just a dreamer blowing a bunch of blue smoke in the air.” Well, you have the
right to your own opinion. I once had dreams of building a huge multi-media
empire and being a multi-millionaire media mogul. But, over the years, every
time I went down that road, I became a prisoner in a prison of my own making. I
ended up creating businesses where I wasn’t free and doing what I was
passionate about. I ended up creating businesses with employees to manage. It
turned out that building an empire wasn’t really my dream – it was a series of
choices. The results of my choices and life happening, in my case, ended up
with me building personal prisons. But, at least I tried.
“Your Assignment, Should You Choose to Accept It”
So,
here is your assignment for Step #1. I know many won’t do it, but for those who
do, you’re at the beginning of realizing your real dreams, life, freedom,
happiness and fulfillment.
1. Make a list of your
REAL dreams. These are the things you wanted to do when you were a kid and
teenager facing an exciting future full of unwritten pages waiting for you
to fill them in. It doesn’t matter how off the wall or unrealistic the
dreams may seem now. Just list them.
2. Then circle or
highlight any of those dreams that still stir excitement in your heart,
mind and soul. Get your daydreaming mojo going and release adrenalin as
you imagine, “What if?”
3. Now, make a brief
outline of where Life has taken you. You know, the Life Happens, stuff.
How free do you feel about where you are, now? How happy are you based on
where you are, now? How fulfilled are you based on where you are, now?
You’re
going to have conflicts and anxieties as you think about this seriously and
deeply. Your spouse’s and kids’ (if you have any) faces will flash in your mind
during this process. You’ll think about all the stuff you’ve accumulated and
how could you possibly live without it. If you’re still employed, you’ll have
questions and doubts about surviving without the income from your current job
or business. If you’re retired, questions will arise about whether it’s too
late or about working all your life for the “security” you feel you currently
have and could you lose.
Reality,
when you face it toe-to-toe and square in the eyes can be both ugly and scary.
But, if you want to live free and be happy, it is a necessary part of this
all-important first step.
Keep
asking yourself these three questions:
1. Are you as free as you
feel you want to be, should be and could be?
2. Are you as happy as you
feel you have every right to be?
3. Are you fulfilled in
the knowledge that you lived your dream and your life on your own
terms,
didn’t sell yourself out and, with what you have contributed to society,
can be proud of
your legacy when that second “Big Stuff,” that Rosita
Perez alluded to arrives?
You
can’t do this exercise in ten minutes or an hour or a week. I’ve been working
at it all my life and it continues even now on the other side of my mid 60’s.
Even though I’ve been a non-conformist and serial entrepreneur all my life, I’m
finally facing my own realities and realizing that I sold myself out most of my
life. But, and this is a large BUT, I’m not dead, yet. So, I keep getting more
chances.
Let
me leave you with one other pearl of wisdom, a quote attributed to Wayne Dyer
and often used by my dear, departed friend, Rosita Perez, “Don’t die with your
music still in you.”
Good
luck! You’re on Step #1 of your journey to living free. Hang on for the ride of
your life if you choose to pursue your dreams, freedom and happiness.
2 comments:
I have meant to write to you many times. I often get a kick out of your emails to VanDwellers and I like your blog.
Did you ever "bump into" my father, Wendell Martin? He taught at SU school of communications, was chief engineer of several radio and TV stations in Syracuse, was a VP of Muzak, etc., etc.... He was ham K2QKU.
Hi Wendy,
Glad you wrote and thanks for you nice comments about the VanDweller posts and my blog. It's my objective to offer information that may help others and yet, keep it light and even provide a bit of humor when appropriate.
Unfortunately, I can't say I ever met your father. I was only in Syracuse from the fall of '67 until August of '69. What did he teach at Newhouse School of Comm? That's where I earned my MS. I knew John Sorgel our engineer for WAER (campus FM station) and for our antiquated TV studio. I also knew an engineer by the name of Hugh Wallace who got me a position teaching TV-Radio at Onondaga Comm. College.
If your dad was VP of Muzak, then we were in close proximity since I did some contract audio work for the Wertheimer family who owned a string of "good music" stations in NY State and the Muzak franchise. I met with Al Wertheimer regularly. He was a son and a VP, too. Your dad must have acquired his ham license only a few years before I acquired mine in 1959 judging by his call sign. Mine is WA2FMT.
I did meet a few engineers from WSYR and I used to chat with the engineer, I think he had an Italian last name, at WONO-FM the classical station founded by Henry Fogel.
It's amazing how closely our paths often cross in this world. It would have been a real hoot if I had crossed paths with your father.
Enthusiastically,
Ed
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