Your destiny is intertwined with what you believe about yourself, your circumstances, and your purpose.
We don’t believe everything that the world may tell us, but we do believe everything we tell ourselves.
When it comes to your beliefs, you are a far better teacher for yourself than I or anyone else ever could be.
Listen up. Listen in. Live it out.
I found an excerpt over the weekend from a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to his eleven year old son in 1915. At that time Einstein was thirty-six. He wrote…
…I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. I am sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget about the noon meal. . . .
There’s a lot of beauty unfolding here in these words. For one, Einstein is promoting the creative. Could it be that we learn more while our imagination is decoding the world around us then we do reading what has already been decoded? Secondly, he asks his son to shelf the sheet music and get lost in and with the keys of the piano. What romance there is in the three-step waltz of work, art, and possibility. And lastly, Einstein reveres time. He’s aware of just how holy it is and how today is all that is confirmed in our stories.
Of course we can’t always accomplish such a feat, but what a worthy goal of our days to enter into moments where we fully pursue our art, our parenting, our leading, and our serving with such holiness that we lose track of time, but walk away with a vault of codes as to how things are.
LTMP.
It begins with a decision.
We must decide to begin, venture out, leave the cave, and start.
A start never starts in a cave of Indecision, and rarely is there something not pulling at us to start towards. The cave is a great place to listen, but some point a decision must be made to leave.
We’ve got some decisions to make don’t we?
We’re after music, after all, and very rarely – maybe never – are things not moving, bending, or stretching to make this music we’re all after.
Listen, decide, let it play.
Listen, decide, let it play.
Listen, decide, let it play.
When you fundamentally give someone a new way to look at their world, their purchasing, their behavior, or their thinking, you’ve then just led them somewhere….and that’s what we all deep down want with every new connection.
We all hope to meet Christopher Columbus. And we want to go somewhere new on La Pinta.
There’s a benefit in the doubts others have about your ideas, products, and services. But you’ve got to look at it backwards to find the benefit.
When you can get your ________ to benefit them – there’s no doubt it’s going to come full circle and find a way to benefit you as well.
I’m almost certain Columbus’ words when he hit the shore of the Americas was not ‘wow’…rather, I envision him turning to his comrades and asking – “now do you believe me?”
We need to find more doubters of our music and turn them into dancers.
Bravery be with us.
We often ask how the world will be different 10 years from today, but rarely discuss what will still be the same.
None of us know what will be hot 10 years from today. Some of us think we do, but hot things aren’t necessarily predictable. So the questions is what will still be warm? What will be constant?
The most probable answers are things like: respect, relationship, service, response, speed, communication, and experience. 10 years from today they will be warm. 100 years from today they will still be warm.
It’s much riskier to put all your chips on the hottest platform, media outlet, or trend than it is the things that are warm and constant.
That is not to say we should ignore what’s hot. We just can’t forget that entrepreneurship and good business is embracing what’s hot in the pursuit of what never gets cold.
Ashton.Gustafson 