The biggest mistake is letting her make eye contact with us during the 3am wakeup, because that brings on an ear-to-ear grin of excitement and happiness! “I don’t want to sleep, I want to play!” She’s suddenly hungry for the world. Hungry to have fun. Hungry to explore.

When do we lose that hunger? At what point do we decide, “this is my life, and this is how my days will play out. There’s nothing I can do about it”?

The animals in the zoo certainly have no choice. Tough luck. What a sad reality. When the monkey is depressed and want’s to start down a new path, she’s got no choice. Sit behind the glass as the children poke and prod. All day long. Factory work for monkeys.

Yet we have the choice. We’re the one creature that can decide today is going to be different than yesterday.

It’s the power of childish eyes. The power to have the thirst and hunger of discovery like little Avalon is now realizing she has. And yet so many of us are afraid to wield this power. Maybe you forgot you had it?

If the animals in the zoo see an open door, they usually use it.

We’re given this power for a reason. The door is open. Don’t waste the opportunity.

Congrats.

Are you wondering what you won? What are you talking about Noah?

You won when you woke up this morning, when you got out of bed, and you got another shot at this thing called life.

Cory knows he won. He was running before most of us finished the morning paper.

Don’ t waste the best prize. Lots of people aren’t as lucky.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. Yeah, maybe it’s cheesy, but some of us need a daily reminder. I’m happy to be the messenger.

The above picture is the property of my friends at Work Is Not a Job – Check them out!

Good.

Ask yourself this. Are you living your dream life, or following someone else’s?

The goal, as far as I’m concerned, is to chase your own dreams. If you’re living a life based on what someone else thinks you should be doing, then consider this your early morning wake up call.

Quit tossing and turning and get out of bed.

The chameleon has the unique ability to change colors.

Not only that, it can change its color based on the threat from specific predators.

It can camouflage itself extremely well in certain situations by changing to match the bark of a tree as seen in the photo below.

Photo by Newscientist.com

It can also use this unique skill while hunting. Insects never see the chameleon coming.

In my opinion, the chameleon’s greatest skill is its ability to adapt quickly.

The cool thing is we’re all like chameleons.

We, as humans, have the unique ability to learn and adapt very quickly. Yet we often forget we posses this skill, and spend time fretting and worrying about the “what ifs.”

When we start to realize and utilize our power, we become confident and ready to face the unknown.

Here’s the problem.

A lot of people are using their chameleon color changing skills to blend in. It’s easier to blend into the crowd, and your surroundings, than it is to be seen by others.

It’s easier to blend into to the “bark” of society, than it is to release your music to the world, or start a blog, or write that book you’ve been thinking about, or open that business.

Have the courage of the chameleon.

Jump in to what’s scaring you, and realize you’ve got the skills to adapt as fast as the chameleon. Realize you can learn quickly and have the confidence to jump even at times when you haven’t checked off all the “what ifs”

After you do it a few times, you’ll find nothing is as scary as you thought it would be.

We’re willing to invest insane amounts of money into products and training programs that promise immediate and instant results.

This is the reason the entire late-night infomercial world exists. It’s the reason you can supposedly make a couple of payments and transform yourself into a real estate investing expert instantly.

The realty is, and we already know it, that nothing happens instantly. We know that most of these programs are designed to make the creators rich, and make us feel better about ourselves, but only slightly and for a short time.

If a program promised you the skills of a piano virtuoso without any work, you’d know it was a scam. We understand that most things in life require constant practice and experience.

Any type of self-development is the same. Upping your game requires constant practice and experience. Malcolm Gladwell said in his book “Outliers”, that expertise and proficiency in any subject was found only after about 10,000 hours of practice.

You learn to swim by getting in the water, taking lessons, and practicing. With more and more experience, you’ll become a good swimmer.

If someone said they could turn us into Michael Phelps overnight, thousands would buy into it, and thousands would drown.

Get in the water and learn to swim. I’m on the diving board and about to take a swim. Care to join me?

Have a great weekend!

Noah

Hope you enjoy them.

Somewhere along the route of history, we sold ourselves out.

We gave into all kinds of fear. We created things like the all-inclusive travel industry – a farce of a way to “find yourself” and rid yourself of your problems, even if it was for only a week or two at a time. We’ve created entire industries that act as coping mechanisms for our addictions.

We’re addicted to a drug called security.

But we’ll often chalk it up as “just the way things are.”

This is what Seuss called the Waiting Place. It’s the place where most of us go as a crutch. It may be dark and dreary, but it’s the safest place to be, after all – you just wait.

We’re so dependant on the drug that even when an opportunity falls right into our lap, we often miss it. We’re blind to it. We’re paralyzed by it. We’re so weak and powerless that at that moment, we have nothing to rely on. We’re locked in a mental prison and we built the walls.

But realistically, we’re just so damn scared of going off the drug, or peaking beyond the curtain of the Waiting Place, we give in, give up, and wait.

The key is to start looking beyond the curtain even if it’s just a peek here or a peek there. It has to be an ongoing process. You’ve got to start now.

Then one day, when nobody’s looking, you quietly slip behind the curtain and you’re off. Never to return to that damn place again.

Start peeking now.

Marketer ~ Entrepreneur ~ Dreamer

The first two are easy. It’s the third one that poses a problem for some. It’s the third one that makes people take a second glance. It’s that one that irks a few people.

You see, businesses and organizations have told us they don’t want dreamers.

We bought into it. And, because they told us they didn’t want dreamers, we listened. We stopped dreaming and stopped allowing ourselves to dream.

You’d never get past the interview stage, if you told them you were a dreamer. That’s the biggest mistake businesses and HR people make.

The people they actually want to hire are the dreamers. It’s your job to show them why.

The business started with a dream. Their profit projections were part of a dream. Their new products and service offerings were the result of the dream. Everything that has breathed life into any business or organization is the result of a dream. Dreamers are the reason you’re at the interview in the first place.

And even though they say they don’t want dreamers, profits are declining, businesses are closing, jobs are being shipped elsewhere, and creativity is stagnant. Deep-down the world is begging for dreamers. The next time you have a job interview, let them see who you really are, not the person that the 101 Job Interview Tips book told you to be.

You have a choice. You can choose to be just another cog in the machine, or, you can choose to be dreamer. If the job you’re interviewing for doesn’t believe in dreamers, then move on.

You’re dreaming. They’re in a coma.

Here are eight free secrets I was thinking about this morning. There are more, but these are eight that have been pretty darn good to me over the past few years.

1. Figure out what it is you actually want.
2. Avoid negativity. Negative friends, negative family, negative influences (books, movies, TV, co-workers)
3. Don’t think about the next big idea. Everyone has great ideas in the shower. It’s those who take action that will succeed. Think about taking the next small action towards the next big idea. Small actions can compound and snowball quickly. Even small insignificant ideas, which are acted upon, make millionaires.
4. Outsource when you need to. Don’t waste your time on something you could easily pay to have done cheaper, faster, better.
5. Keep your eye on the ball. Do you remember growing up and learning to play baseball? They taught me to play baseball with T-Ball. The idea was to teach us to keep our eye on the ball. The best way to teach this was to put the ball in a single position so it wouldn’t move.  Once we could hit the ball, it was time to graduate to the real world. In the real world, the ball is always moving.
   
6. If you miss the ball, just keep swinging. You can have more than three strikes in the real world. Some would argue that the more you strike out, the better you’ll get. Keep swinging.
7. Realize that none of it really matters in the end. Paralysis by fear of failure, fear of success, fear of what others might think, are all real fears. I’m not going to deny that. The big realization comes when you see those fears really mean nothing. What’s the worst that could happen?
8. Have fun. If it isn’t fun, what’s the point? The moment something becomes not fun, that is the time to look at changing the situation. So many problems are created because we remain in situations that aren’t fun. Change it.

Have a great Monday.

This has led to me spewing off my own optimistic ideas of the life you could live.

I believe you can do work that matters.

I believe you can create your own map.

I believe you can follow your own rules.

I believe you can reach your goals.

I believe you can do whatever you want for a living.

I believe ALL of this boils down to the choices you make.

But I need to bring myself back to reality for a minute.

This type of advice isn’t for everyone. After all, to accomplish any part of what I’ve said over the past few months, you’re going to have to get down and dirty with the lizard. You’re going to have to face your biggest fears, one after another.

And every step of the way, your very own brain will be telling you to turn around and get back to reality. Every step of the way, people will be telling you you’re acting nuts and being foolish. The people closest to you will urge you to stop with the wishy-washy dreaming. They’ll say, “shut up, put your head down, and get back to work.” What’s the big deal with giving away 30 years of your life in the bigger scheme of things?

Sheesh.

But seriously:

It’s easy for me to write about all the goodness that can come from being an optimistic person and viewing your glass has half-full.

It’s easy for me to tell you to “follow your passion” or “get rich of worms.”

It’s even easier for me to tell you that if you don’t set out to do what you were destined to do, you might end up in a lot of pain.

But here’s the thing I’ve realized. If you’ve been reading ANY of what I’ve been saying, and somewhere deep-down inside you there’s even a smidgen of something saying, “Yeah I could totally do that,” perhaps there’s a smidgen of a voice inside you telling you that you DO have enough ambition to actually light the fire.

Then maybe I’m not too far out-to-lunch.

Every single one of us has that smidgen somewhere. It may be hiding right now. It may not show itself very often, but you can be damn sure it’s there.

One of my favorite authors, Steven Pressfield, has written an amazing post on “Ambition” that inspired me to write this post and look back at my own posts over the past few months.

And he hits the nail right on the head.

An oak litters the earth with ten thousand acorns, and inside every one is the drive to grow to be as mighty as its daddy. Every lion cub, every fledging eagle carries in its DNA the will to be king of beasts and lord of the air. That’s nature’s law. Why should we humans expect to be different? ~ Steven Pressfield

That’s reality.

What if the thing you love is something like The Smurfs?

Gary Vaynerchuk was the first to talk about building a business around the  Smurfs. He makes a great point. Here’s my take on it.

If you LOVE the Smurfs, you know every episode like the back of your hand, have a collection of Smurf dolls, secretly have a crush on a Smurfette, and paint yourself blue every Halloween,  you could easily monetize this passion

But here’s what most people miss about what Gary’s is saying.

After Gary made his comment, hundreds will rush out in a mad frenzy to create Smurf websites. They will register domain names, build blogs, and create forums. They’re looking for a quick cash fix.

Dump a little gasoline on the wood and hope your matches aren’t wet.

Unfortunately, this will almost always fail.

The one who will win is the one I mentioned above. It’s the one who comes across Gary’s vision and finally realizes what needs to be done with his freakish Smurf obsession.

The Smurf tribe is already out there looking for that knowledgeable and passionate person to lead them. They won’t be fooled by false leaders, posers, and fakers. They will see through it. They can smell it from a mile away.

And when you really think about it, it’s actually quite simple.

Pick the thing you love most in life, and just do it. Your tribe might just  be sitting around, anxiously waiting for you to show up.