What's on Your Drawing Board?

“Oh, it will happen!”

- Danny Marz

What’s on Your Drawing Board?

I was standing in a large room, filled with people.  I didn’t know most of them.  There were only a handful of these successful people I knew.  But, that’s why I was there!  I wanted to rub shoulders with as many of them as I could.  I wanted to listen to the way they thought; learn about their experiences and absorb knowledge about the way they do things.  So, I didn’t stand longer than it took me to get my bearings and begin to move toward a corner of the room where three of my friends were waiting for me.

As I walked toward their table my eyes were scanning the room for one particular person.  He was this year’s non-profit company entrepreneur of the year.  Ernst and Young had given him the award in the early months of this year and I had promised to introduce another friend of mine to him.  I saw him and made a mental note of where he was standing so I could return.  And, it wasn’t long before I reached my three other friends and greeted them.

I was excited to grab Danny’s hand and shake it when I got to his table.  It was then I said, “Walk with me so I can introduce you.”

He knew exactly who I was speaking of and his excitement grew as we approached the location of my mentally marked friend.  Our timing was perfect.  He was alone and I made the introduction.

Danny said, “May I call you?  I have a dream I want to reach and I’d like to pick your brain to see if you could help me avoid some pit-falls.”

He replied with, “Sure, I’d love to help you.  Lynn can give you my phone number.  I really hope you can make what you described happen.”

“Oh, it will happen!  It’s on my drawing board and once things are there they happen for sure!”

I stood in wonder at his words.  It was as if I heard them over and over again in my mind and I thought, “Danny has discovered an important principle!  It isn’t enough just to dream of a great future, one must conceive it, plan it out in great detail and then go out and take the steps necessary to complete the dream!”  I felt honored to be there and participate in completing one more step in the creation of his dream.

The human mind lives to make its dreams a reality.  Yours is no different!  You have everything you need to make your dreams a reality so put them on your drawing board and live your dreams.  In the end I hope you can say in amazement, “What do you do when you real life exceeds your wildest dreams!”

 

 

Rockin' Good

9/11 Charity Golf Tournament and Concert

Rockin’ Good

Once in a while I run into to someone who redefines what “possible” means.  When I do meet such a person I’m forced me reevaluate my own beliefs.  My mind is stretched and my personal reality is shifted in a profound way.  Such people create a sort of emotional or spiritual sense of certainty as to what is possible.   And, when they change my perspective they not only alter my experience, they can also change the world in an exponential way.  I saw this process culminate first hand this week as my friend Danny Marz executed the first annual 9/11Charity Golf Tournament and Concert.

I watched Danny plan and work to put this event together over the past few months.  He said, “I want to do something to benefit our soldiers who have been wounded while protecting our freedom.”

He developed a relationship with Operating Rebound so he would have a vehicle to provide the help he wanted to give and then he began to reach out to others to help.  He personally went door to door contacting businesses seeking sponsors.  He called music and sports celebrities asking them to come so they would be an additional draw to attendance.  He hired and scheduled the venue.  He selected a headline band to come and play.  Then he backed up the venue with three different warm up bands.  He recruited volunteers to help manage the event on September 11^th.   Finally, he partnered with a major radio station to market this important charitable event.

When I arrived to volunteer I was amazed to see the number of volunteers I knew.  It was wonderful to see the celebrities who were there to give.  It was heartwarming to see the crowds of people who were there to give money and their time to such a worthy cause.

Danny made sure that his cause was leveraged by more than 1000 as a result of his vision.  Participants were emotionally and spiritually engaged and the world was changed immeasurably.  I know my life was and everyone I talked with is excited to work together again next year.

I saw Danny again today.  We’re going to participate in an additional charitable event hosted by another friend of ours this week.  Until I began to associate with such good and giving people I had no idea that so much good could be accomplished.   I thought I understood the description of a mathematical entity that involves the transcendental number raised to an exponent, the concept of becoming greater in size, until I saw what adding numbers of good people simultaneously could accomplish.

I have learned that good people combining their desire and action to do good things will cause greater good to be accomplished.  The people around us will combine with us to benefit charitable causes if we simply ask.  Ask them to help you fulfill your dreams of giving and you’ll have a new sense of certainty that great things are coming.  My friend Ed said, “Doing good as a group has changed the whole feeling and dynamic of my son’s neighborhood.  Without having the opportunity to serve neighbors, the truly great things about living in a neighborhood would have remained undiscovered.”

Discover the truly great things about living in your neighborhood and community; be rockin’ good.

Deepening Gratitude

“Isn’t it amazing that I can sit in comfort with my sons! All I have to do is walk over to the wall and push a button to set the temperature exactly how I want it! After I do that, whoosh! It happens.”
- Danny Marz

Deepening Gratitude

I know lots of people who only want to use a conversation to convince the other party that their point of view is “right.” But, the older I get the more I am appreciating other points of view as a wonderful avenue to inspiration. Now I love to have conversations as a gateway to a new view of the world. That’s exactly what happened as I sat with my friend Danny Marz early last week.
Danny and I were talking with a group of other people about gratitude when he said, “I rarely have a bad day because I spend most of the time being grateful for almost everything. I bet I have only about one or two days per month when I’m not happy and then that unhappiness can’t plague me too long because I see all of the good things all around me.”

As you can imagine, my interest was stimulated by this statement and I was delighted to have him continue on.

“I look at all the amazing things that help me every day; like I take my garbage out to the street every Thursday and someone comes along with a truck and takes it away for me!”

Danny went on to say that he was grateful for the way the garbage was taken away because he only had to take a few minutes to roll the container out to the street and not take all the time and effort to load it up in his car and take it far away to the county facility to recycle or dispose of it! That gives him time to do more things he likes to do such as spend time with his sons watching movies.

As Danny was telling me this, I watched his eyes flash as he taught me more about what I have come to call “deep gratitude.” He went on to say, “Isn’t it amazing that I can sit in comfort with my sons! All I have to do is walk over to the wall and push a button to set the temperature exactly how I want it! After I do that, whoosh! It happens.”

“Then when it’s time get my boys ready to bed, we go to the bathroom and turn a faucet handle so that water will come out at the precise temperature for taking a bath. Now that’s a wonderful thing!”

Danny looked me right in the eye and said, “How can you have a bad day when all of these wonderful things are all around us?”

How indeed!

I’ve spent the last seven days reflecting on what Danny has taught me. I have to admit I thought I had already turned myself into a grateful person. And, I have. But, for the first time I can see how far I have to grow when it comes to being truly, deeply grateful. So, I’ve created a simple formula to help myself. I offer it to you:

1. Be disciplined. This has taken a new kind of discipline for me. I am already pretty good about disciplining myself to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and spending an hour in exercise and meditation. (Don’t think I have the perfect body or anything!) This one hour in the morning, my friend Garrett Gunderson calls it the “Power Hour,” sets the stage for the rest of my day and it really makes a difference for me. Now I’m going to a deeper, smaller, level during this time period. Now I meditate on the smallest thing possible to be grateful for and then I concentrate on seeing it during the whole day. I’ve found my mind wandering away regularly but I am getting better at pulling my focus back to the small. I think you’ll have the same experience in disciplining your mind, but don’t worry; you’ll get better at it the more you practice.

2. Don’t let big things get in your way. The trick here is to know that what you have been focusing on in the past is HUGE in comparison to the smallest thing you can think of to be grateful for. It will seem counterintuitive that the small will dwarf the large in importance! But, as you get better and better with your focus, but the small will conquer the large if you’ll stay the course.

3. Practice hard. I wasn’t used to thinking of small things deeply! As I look back over my life I can see that for the most part, I’ve been socialized to think in large terms over long periods of time. You know, “life goals?” Stepping back and seeing the small right now takes a lot of practice and I’m sure it will take me a long time and lots of practice to make it a way of life.

4. Learn to pick yourself up when the large crushes on your mind. I know that Danny is to the point where he only has a “bad” day once or twice in a month. As you can see from the conversation we had, he has learned to be grateful for the small almost constantly. When larger things come into his view he is able to make a shift in his mind to instantly make the small loom large in his life! You can do the same thing. I know you can, because if I can do it you can too.

5. Take care of yourself. I’ve found that the most constant challenge in focusing on gratitude for the smallest is related to how my body is feeling. If I allow myself to become fatigued by not getting enough sleep then it gets harder and harder for me to stay small. If you need 8 hours of sleep, part of your transformation will be to take care of yourself so you can have the internal fortitude to keep your mental condition conducive to the mental and emotional effort required. It takes big effort to focus on the small!

If you’ll follow these steps for a week you’ll notice an incredible change in your life. These are the changes I’ve noticed: First, I was able to turn inside myself and remain amazingly calm during one of the most challenging transactions of my life. Rather than feel my stomach churning with anxiety, my focus on gratitude for the small really allowed me to stay calm in the midst of emotional chaos being hurled from other people. Second, what had become “normal anxiety” related to everyday living has now vanished. Third, I’ve felt a renewed excitement and confidence about the bright future coming my way.

As you implement these five steps, you’ll have the same results or better! I would be excited to hear about your results so let me know how being grateful for the smallest is changing your life!