Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday.
I’m sure you’re familiar with his famous, “I HAVE A DREAM” speech…(as I type the words I can hear his impassioned voice saying,
Dr. King was one of those rare people who had a vision so big that it didn’t just serve him or his family or a city or a state or a country…It was a vision so powerful that it served (and transformed) humanity.
Thomas Jefferson once said…
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale… they all stressed the importance of having a…POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE.
And God gives us a pretty clear list of the type “stuff” we’re supposed to think about when the Bible says…
“Whatsoever things are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, of good report; if there’s any virtue, and if there be any praise… THINK ON THESE THINGS.”
Can I ask you something?
Can I Ask You Something? And NO, it’s not what you’re thinking–I’m not going to ask if the glass is “half-full” or “half-empty” 😉
My question is…How heavy is this glass of water?
(insert the Jeapordy music)…lol
OK… do you have an answer?
Where do you want to eat tonight? It’s the question that I dread. Because it always starts and ends the same. “I don’t know”…”I don’t care”…”Wherever you want…””Anywhere is fine…””Just pick a place…”
Then someone speaks up…”How about Chipotle?”…which is quickly answered with…”Uggh… it’s too spicy”
“Olive Garden?”… to which I’ll hear…”I eat too many breadsticks so I leave with a stomachache!”
“Outback?”…which is answered with…”Ummm… there’s nothing there to eat anymore so I’ll just get a drink while you guys eat.”
We’ve all heard the hype about “making money in your underwear”, right? Well, here’s what happened to me…
I’ve done the whole office thing–big conference room with a huge table and lots of chairs around it, fancy furniture, offices full of staff–the whole 9 yards. Been there, done that for MANY years. Now I work from home. We still have an office and we also have team members working remotely from their homes.
But that’s not what this story is about. It was this last Saturday. I don’t work on weekends but something came up and I needed to make a quick tweak to one of our websites. No big deal. Like I said, I work from home.
Except my “office” isn’t in my house.I live on 10 acres and I’ve got a couple offices on the property (in separate buildings) PLUS a really cool treehouse (with AC, electric, etc). My office is down a little stone path about 30 steps from the back deck entrance off my bedroom. It’s a really big property– the house is found down a tree lined driveway, far from the road. My point is, it’s very private.
So, when I realized I needed to run out to my office to make a few quick tweaks I grabbed my keys and headed out the door…Yep, you guessed it…IN MY UNDERWEAR. Long boxers– not tighty whiteys 😉
Like I said– it’s very private here.
Anyway, I got the work done quickly and back to the weekend. No sweat.
Then came Monday morning. I was headed outside to start my day and opened my drawer to find…NO KEYS.
Albert Einsteins’ definition of INSANITY makes sense— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Do you have dreams and goals for your life that you have not achieved or are not actively working towards? Are you doing the same things over and over thinking the results will change? How is that working for you?
Have you ever watched a baby crawling? I used to watch Kenna when she visited our office. She would see something she wanted–she loved balls- -and begin crawling toward it. Crawling is definitely slower than walking or running…and it’s hard on the knees. Sometimes she would sit back and take a break and then start toward that ball again. We could offer her other toys, but she knew what she wanted and no amount of distraction could deter her. No matter how long it took, she would get to the ball!
We live in that kind of society, don’t we? We have all become accustomed to getting things 
(or expecting to) quickly. Remember when we used to cook rice for 25-30 minutes? Now we have instant rice! We can microwave a frozen meal and be ready to eat in less than 15 minutes. Potatoes used to take one hour to bake—now are microwaved in a flash! Mashed potatoes? The younger generation might not realize we actually used to peel the potatoes, boil and mash them.
I remember typing papers for the Old Timer (that’s my husband Larry—our grandson affectionately calls him Old Timer). He got his Bachelors Degree and then his Masters Degree and I had lots of practice typing all those long papers for him. Back in those days the footnotes had to be on the bottom of every page. Oh, the problems I had in typing the body of the page and knowing how much room to leave for the footnotes. And what about typing errors (no, I am far from perfect!)? We had white-out which looked terrible. Finally we had erasable bond paper and I thought I had ‘arrived’! The good news is Larry did very well and obtained both degrees. Me—I guess I learned to type more accurately and not scream when I had to re-type a whole page.
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Do you have GOALS and DREAMS? Have you achieved them? There is a song we sometimes sing in my church—‘Don’t Give Up On the Brink of a Miracle!’ And that is what I am saying to you also!! I have often wondered how many times we just give up….when success and fulfillment are just around the corner. Don’t Give Up….EVER!!