Category Archives: Leadership

Apr 08 2015
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Awareness, Books, Business, Change The World, Creativity, Discipline, Focus, Imagination, Leadership, Let The Music Play, success

LMTP Podcast 3: Crayons

This week’s podcast can be listened to below or listened and subscribed to in iTunes by clicking here.

Book/Business Segment

Seth Godin

Book: Linchpin: Are you indispensable?

Music Segment

Sleeping At Last

Sleeping At Last on Spotify.

Download the album here.

Watch the lyrics and listen to this song on youtube here.

Lyrics to the song: North

We will call this place our home,

The dirt in which our roots may grow.
Though the storms will push and pull,
We will call this place our home.
 
We’ll tell our stories on these walls.
Every year, measure how tall.
And just like a work of art,
We’ll tell our stories on these walls.
 
Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.
 
A little broken, a little new.
We are the impact and the glue.
Capable of more than we know,
We call this fixer upper home.
 
With each year, our color fades.
Slowly, our paint chips away.
But we will find the strength
And the nerve it takes
To repaint and repaint and repaint every day.
 
Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.
Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.
 
Smaller than dust on this map
Lies the greatest thing we have:
The dirt in which our roots may grow
And the right to call it home.

Crayons

Ashton’s writings on crayons are below.

http://ltmpblog.com/2015/03/27/when-is-the-last-time-you-were-asked-if-you-wanted-to-color-something/

http://ltmpblog.com/2011/11/22/do-you-want-to-color/

http://ltmpblog.com/2013/02/12/crayon-thieves/

Benediction:

May you become childlike again. May you take back your crayons and fill your pockets with them…and in every moment of life give them their opportunity to do their thing. May you dip the paintbrush of your business and stroke the canvas with service. May you color your relationships with the crayons love, laughter, hope. May you find the courage and the bravery to to pull the back the veil and bring us the light, the hum, the soul, and the crayons you came here with to be fully used so that we may be changed by your art. When you light up. We light up.

Pause by the orchid. Listen to the bluebird sing. Be love.

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Apr 06 2015
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Awareness, Business, Change The World, Discipline, Focus, Imagination, Leadership, Let The Music Play, success

Warren Buffett’s 2014 Letter to Shareholders

This weekend I read Warren Buffett’s 2014 overview letter to his shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Turning the final page I knew that I would never see my life, passions, relationships, and businesses the same.

You can find a copy of it here.

Buffett is known for these letters and I’ve read them before, but there was something about this one that struck a chord deep inside of me. Was it his 84 year old flame of passion that felt as bright and warm as ever? Or was it his simplistic approach to life, relationships, and business that spoke to me? Maybe the student was finally ready and the teacher appeared…

In the last 50 years, Buffett’s simple, non-compromising approach to business, investments, and people has taken the per-share book value of Berkshire Hathaway from $19 to $146,186, a rate of 19.4% compounded annually…an overall gain of 1,826,163%.

I underlined the following lines from his letter…

  • “Our ambitions have no finish lines.” 
  • “Our participation in any joint activities, whether as financing or equity partner, will be limited to friendly transactions.” 
  • “Berkshire now owns 9 1/2 companies that would be listed on the Fortune 500 were they independent (Heinz is the 1/2). That leaves 490 1/2 fish in the sea. Our lines are out.”
  • We much prefer owning a non-controlling but substantial portion of a wonderful company to owning 100% of a so-so business. It’s better to have a partial interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.
  • When CEOs tout EBITDA as a valuation guide, wire them up for a polygraph test.

Don’t these make you smile?

And yet you never hear a greedy tone in the symphony discussed that the fourth wealthiest man in the world has directed for 50 years. He ends his letter praising the 24 men and women that he works with everyday and says, “I truly do feel like tap dancing to work everyday.” Yes, even Buffett gets the idea of gathering musicians and their instruments and letting their collective music play.

He plans on giving away 99% of his earthly wealth when he and his essence take this show over the rainbow. Buffett once said, “Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks (Berkshire Hathaway stock certificates) on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others.” Here’s his letter making that commitment and here’s his friends that have also confessed that meaning > money.

Crazy-beautiful things happen when you give simplicity, goodness, patience, kindness, self-control, and conviction the pen to author your days.

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Apr 02 2015
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Awareness, Books, Change The World, Creativity, Discipline, Focus, Imagination, Leadership, Let The Music Play, success

LTMP Podcast #2: Presence

Howdy.

In this week’s podcast we venture into a discussion on presence, being in and a part of your moments, participating in and along with spring’s bloom, and much much more.

Also, the podcast is now officially in iTunes and you can subscribe by clicking here.

Godspeed in your music making and may we all continue to grow our capacities so that we can hold more of the next experience.

Show notes:

Quote: As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Marianne Williamson

Quote (didn’t make it into the podcast): When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting on the elevator – instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence. Elkhart Tolle

Ekhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.

Follow Brynn Gustafson @ https://instagram.com/brynngustafson/

Musical Artist this week that we looked at was David Ramirez. Please give his record a spin by clicking here.

Benediction:
May you be here.
May you be in and with the questions of your children.
May you be in and with the needs of those you serve.
May you be in and with the moments of those that God has given you to experience this place with.
May your eye catch and hold the explosions of the bloom in spring.
And May your soul find the courage to listen and answer the flower’s question, ‘are you in bloom?’

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Mar 31 2015
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Awareness, Change The World, Discipline, Imagination, Leadership

Behind you…

is a theme.

…a sound.

…a message.

…a metaphor.

Ahead of you is all possibility.

Under your feet and at your fingertips is all opportunity.

Catch this…What’s behind us and what’s ahead of us at some point is going to be a here and a now.

Don’t miss it. 

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Mar 30 2015
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Awareness, Change The World, Creativity, Discipline, Focus, Imagination, Leadership, Let The Music Play, success

The Choice

There are many, but THE CHOICE that will predict the experience that is heard, felt, and seen and the story that unfolds with you and your music will you be whether you choose to be an artist or whether you choose karaoke.

Here, this is free. Did you know that karaoke is two Japanese words put together: empty (kara) and oke (orchestra)?

You can be an empty orchestra or a full symphony.

Your choice.

And this choice makes ALL the DIFFERENCE in your world and the world of others.

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