Positive People Living Dreams

There is no tree in the tiny acorn, but there is the ever-persistent idea of a tree. The acorn cannot move on its own, or ask for help, or even think for itself, but it can hold on to that idea, and it does.

When the tiny acorn becomes overwhelmed and buried by its surroundings, it then begins to express the idea. It does not complain or wish for more, but makes use of what it has to promote and manifest the idea, the idea of a tree that it holds in its every fiber.

When the thunderous storms come, it does not fear them or hide from them, but uses them to continue expressing the idea it holds of a mighty tree. When the scorching sun beats down, the acorn takes that energy and puts it to productive use, transforming its idea into reality.

And little by little, cell by cell, the idea of a tree begins to become a tree. The hardships and challenges come, yet that idea persists and the tree that is its object grows bigger and ever stronger.

The idea in the acorn becomes a magnificent oak tree. It does so using only the resources which happen to come to it. You have a big advantage over the acorn, for you can think, you can learn, you can move yourself and other things around. Just imagine, then, how even more magnificently you can express your own dreams and ideas, making positive use of whatever may come your way.

I discovered the breakfast taco phenomenon years ago, when driving one of our daughters to school. I would take her to school each morning, and on the way back home would pass a place offering drive-thru breakfast tacos. It was a temptation to which I yielded at least several times each week.

Now a flour tortilla stuffed with refried beans, cheese and salsa is not exactly something you should consume while driving. And, priding myself on being a safe driver whose top priority when behind the wheel is to pay attention, I didn’t attempt to eat those tacos while the car was in motion. Traveling the four-lane major thoroughfare back to my neighborhood required that I pass through about eight traffic lights. I could count on being stopped by at least three or four of those lights, so my plan was always to eat the taco while waiting at the lights.

What I quickly discovered, though, was this. Whenever I had a taco, unwrapped and waiting to eat, I would never encounter a red light. They would be green all the way home. At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but soon I realized it was a pattern. Without a taco, the lights would be mostly red. With a taco, almost always green. Years later, I have found that the same dynamic is at work when I’m wanting to be stopped by a red light so I can look up a web page on my iPhone—I’ll get green lights all the way.

I’m not in a position to know what unseen forces in the universe (or my perception thereof) cause the “breakfast taco phenomenon” to happen, but I am in a position to learn something from it about life in general. And that is, when you desperately need something, you’re not going to get it, but when you let go of the need, you’ll find it in great abundance. When you need the lights to be green so you can quickly get where you’re going, they’ll be red. When you need the lights to be red so you can eat a taco or check your email, they’ll be green.

The breakfast taco phenomenon reminds me of how valuable it can be to let go of my needs, and that’s something that can make a powerful difference in every area of life.

“God put you in this world to help us today.” That was what the lady told me. And the moment I heard her say it I knew without the slightest doubt she was right.

I had stopped to get gas at a place where I almost never go. I had hesitated about cleaning my windshield. But then when the gas was almost finished pumping, I decided for some reason to go ahead and clean it. That’s what I was doing when she approached me and asked for directions. Had I not initially hesitated about the windshield, and then gone ahead with it, I would have been long gone.

There were two women, one middle aged, the other twenty-something, with a young child in the back seat. On a day when the temperature was headed well past 100, they were traveling in an old car with no air conditioning, driving from a town about an hour away.

“Can you tell us how to get to Mopac, sir?” She had a folded-up printout of directions from Google maps.

“Sure. Where on Mopac are you headed?” I asked.

She unfolded the printout and showed me the address. I knew it well, and started to get the feeling that this moment was meant to be.

“I know exactly where that is,” I told her. “I used to have an office in that building.”

My credibility thus established, I proceeded to direct her. Google had routed her along a couple of toll roads. But not wanting to pay the tolls, they had tried to follow along on the toll-free access roads and had become hopelessly lost.

I ended up giving directions to the older lady, and then again to her companion, who was the driver, while the older lady wrote them down. It took a while, because I repeated each instruction to make sure they understood.

In a sincere moment of gratitude, the older lady thanked me and observed that God had put me there to help them. The way she said it was so utterly matter-of-fact that neither of us had the slightest opportunity to doubt it was true.

What she could not have known (but in her faith-informed wisdom probably realized on some level) was that the whole incident helped me much more than it helped her. I had been having a very difficult day. In fact, the only reason I had gone to that particular gas station was because I wanted to take a little drive and clear my head.

As I replaced the gas cap, having sent them on their way, I suddenly realized that I felt better. A lot better. My head was clear. My cynicism was gone. The world made sense again.

I had not just given some quick directions and then hurried along on my way. It was not just a transaction with a slight element of kindness to it. I had been patient, and interested, and had taken as much time as was necessary to make sure they got it right. And in doing so, I had made a connection.

On that day, in that spot, in my life, a connection like that, an opportunity to make a difference, was exactly what I needed. And though I cannot claim to understand the forces and reasons that brought us together in that moment, I do know it was no accident. And I am sincerely and humbly thankful for the real, palpable goodness it brought into my life.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, the world has lost a man of great vision. And yet while, sadly, the man is gone, the vision lives on. Though the brilliant and innovative Steve Jobs is no longer with us, the fruits of his brilliance and innovation are more widely available than ever before. Today, as the world mourns his loss, you can still buy a brand new iPad, or MacBook, or iPhone. In fact, in a few weeks you’ll be able to get a new and improved version of the iPhone. And no doubt in the coming months and years there will be many more “insanely great” upgrades to existing Apple products and services, as well as amazingly useful and valuable new products coming along.

Long after Steve Jobs the dreamer has been laid to rest, his dreams will continue to live and to grow and to improve the lives of billions of people. What makes such a thing possible? What is it that indefinitely sustains the dream, and in fact builds it ever bigger?

In a word: profit.

Steve Jobs was able to do what he did, to the outstanding degree that he did it, because what he did was financially profitable. Was that the reason he did it, to make a lot of money? Of course not. Decades ago he had already earned more than enough money for himself and multiple generations of his heirs to live sumptuously without ever having to earn any more. No, profit was clearly not the reason Steve Jobs continued to create and to innovate. Rather, profit was what enabled it all, and is what will continue to sustain his amazing work far into the future.

What if, years ago, way back at the very beginning, Steve Jobs had rejected the idea of making a profit? What if he had considered it to be greedy and immoral to sell products for more than what they cost? He still would have been a creative genius. But only a handful of people would have ever benefitted from his creativity and innovation. Had he simply made computers and sold them at cost, he probably would have lived a very happy and fulfilled life. But he wouldn’t have been able to hire others to assist him. He wouldn’t have been able to invest in new facilities and technologies. There would be some pretty cool computers owned by a few hundred, or maybe a few thousand people. But there would be no Apple Stores, no iTunes, no iPads or iPhones.

As it turned out, Steve Jobs chose a strategy that enabled him to share his dream in an ever-expanding and self-sustaining way. He chose to make a profit because he knew that profit would enable him to magnify the positive impact of each and every innovation. He chose to make a profit because he understood that profit would deliver his innovations to the highest number of people.

There were many who called him greedy. Apple products have always carried a premium price, and the company maintains incredibly high profit margins. But then, Apple does not force anyone to buy its products. There are plenty of lower-priced alternatives to just about every product the company sells. And yet people regularly and willingly wait in line for hours to purchase newly-released Apple products at a premium price.

In these times of serious economic strife, many people are quick to equate profit with selfishness and immorality. But as the brilliant and massively generous work of Steve Jobs makes clear, that thinking is precisely backwards. Profit is value that is added. It is not something that is taken. It is something good and useful that is given. During his lifetime, Steve Jobs added billions of dollars to his own fortune. He did so by providing many, many times that amount of value to others.

That’s definitely not selfish. As I wrote in my recent book, The Power of Ten Billion Dreams:

When value is created by anybody, it can benefit everybody. It’s not selfish to make a lot of money. It’s not even selfish to live a lavish lifestyle if you’ve earned the wealth to support that lifestyle. Yes, it may be very narcissistic and foolish, but it’s not selfish. It’s not selfish to accumulate as much money or other wealth as you can possibly accumulate, as long as you’re not stealing it. It’s definitely not selfish to live the most extraordinary dream you can imagine.

So what is selfish? What’s truly selfish is to let all your unique value stay hidden within you. What’s selfish is to not create great value, to not become fantastically wealthy when you are fully capable of doing so.

Steve Jobs didn’t “need” all that money. But it is a very good thing for all the rest of us that he continued working to earn it. For every dollar that he made, the world received many more dollars worth of products, services and gainful employment. The truly selfish thing would have been for Steve Jobs to stop when he had made “enough,” maybe a few million dollars. Fortunately, he continued dreaming and creating and innovating long past that point. Even better, he built an enormously profitable company that will continue his beneficial work indefinitely.

Just a few hours before the world learned that Steve Jobs had died, I connected through iChat with our younger daughter who was a hundred miles away in her college dorm room. In the screen sharing mode, I helped her make a few final edits on a paper she was turning in. Then we switched to the video mode and my wife and I had a delightful high-definition video chat with her.

Moments like that are now commonplace, affordable and accessible to more and more people every day, thanks in no small part to the inspired work of Steve Jobs—and to the profit his work has earned, and will continue to earn. Truly, his profit is our gain. Because of it, his legacy grows more beneficial and his contribution to the world grows more generous with each passing day.

Worry is a negative manifestation of a positive and very valuable reality. Worry means you care. Worry means there’s something that matters a great deal to you. In that meaningfulness is profound energy that you can turn in a positive direction.

Dive deeply into the worry. Feel it completely and without any resistance. Let it be, and let it fill every corner of your awareness. Then ask yourself why. Why does it matter? Why does it have the power to worry you so?

The thing you are worried about threatens some particular aspect of life’s goodness. Feel the full power of your worry and realize it comes directly from that goodness.

Now, turn the entirety of your focus on the goodness. Visualize it in rich detail, in your life, in your world, bringing sweet, authentic fulfillment. In your mind, take the vision of that goodness and make it bigger, richer, more colorful and vibrant. Then make it bigger yet again, and again. Make it so big that it consumes all the energy from the worry. What you now have is a highly energized, positive vision that can push you relentlessly forward. And, no more worry.

Ultimately, it is the goodness that matters to you, not the worry. And just as surely as that goodness makes the worry possible, it can enable you to transcend the worry. You can quickly and lovingly transform all the energy of your worry into positive and highly effective purpose.

When you feel worry, don’t fight it. Allow it, experience it, and then transform it to move you powerfully forward.

1.  Make every experience a learning experience. Be endlessly curious. Just as importantly, be meaningfully curious, that is, curious about the things that matter most to you. Expect to find valuable, useful knowledge everywhere you go, from each person you meet, and you will.

2.  Dream big and fill in the details. Be completely honest with yourself, looking clearly and unashamedly at your authentic, driving purpose. From that purpose, create a dream so compelling it will keep you working until late into the night and then get you out of bed early in the morning.

3.  Keep going. Don’t be stopped by discouragement over the setbacks. They are a natural part of the process. Know that they’ll come, and be ready to keep going when they do. Just as importantly, don’t be stopped by the successes. When you’ve made some progress you’re in an ideal position to make much more, so do it.

4.  Be aggressively and continuously thankful. Gratitude will open your eyes, your mind and your spirit to the value that exists in every situation. When you’re genuinely thankful for what you have, no matter what it may be, you can make meaningful, effective and positive use of it.

5.  Take responsibility. Don’t waste your time or drain your energy by making excuses or assigning blame. The fulfillment in your life is up to you. Yes, absolutely seek the advice, assistance and cooperation of others, and offer your own in relationships of mutual benefit. Yet always keep in mind that no matter whose fault the mistakes may be, no matter whose job the task may be, the achievements you seek to create are one hundred percent your responsibility.

You are unique, with your own special beauty and value to give to life. What a terrible shame it would be if you were to let that beauty be hidden behind your fears. When you worry that you’re not good enough, you allow others to control you, and their domination will soon make you miserable. Or when you fool yourself into thinking you’re superior to everyone else, you deny yourself the exquisite joy of offering your own special gifts to life. It takes courage and faith, effort and initiative to be who you are. And it is so very much worth the effort. Though no one else can do it for you, you have what it takes to be magnificently successful at being you. From the deepest secrets of your soul to the face you put forward to the world, every bit of you is meant to be the authentic and original person you are. Listen to that quiet, persistent voice inside that you know is always right. This is your opportunity to fulfill and express the real and lasting joy of being you. Let the beautiful person inside of you come more fully to life as each moment passes. Let yourself, and the world around you, know the joy and fulfillment that is meant just for you to express. There is no person you can pretend to be who is as powerful and effective as the person you really are. No identity you might try to manufacture will ever work as well as the identity that has always been a part of you. When you summon the courage to be the person you are, you’ll find that life is full and rich.

Where does courage come from? What brings courage to life? Courage is the commitment to do what you know is right. Courage arises when your integrity will not allow any other choice. Courage comes from following a purpose that goes beyond your petty concerns. Because of that, courage gives far-reaching power and consequence to your actions. In the short term, courage can often appear foolish. In the long run, courage has the power to move the whole world in a positive direction. Courage asks much of you, yet it is not complicated and is always within your reach. Courage is truth put into action. In every moment, courage is there for you to choose. In every moment, courage is the choice that will fulfill the best of who you are.

Listen to your critics and learn what you can from them. But don’t let them dissuade you from what you know is best. A bright and shining vision has value only when you have the courage to follow it. When you know that it is the thing to do, then step up and do it. Pay attention to what others have to say, without becoming a slave to their opinions of you. Consider differing and diverse perspectives, while keeping the substance of your most deeply held values intact. Much of the effort of achievement is in keeping yourself focused. Choose to intentionally make that effort, to maintain that focus, and all the rest will more readily fall into place. Though the world may seem to be against you at times, keep in mind that you are working to make that world a better place. Start to show some progress, and others will soon be buying into your vision. Remember who you are, where you’ve come from, and the real value of what you have to offer. Then step forward, with renewed courage and commitment, and make it real.