Keep Your dream....no matter what..

I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch in San Ysidro. He has let me use his house to put on fund-raising events to raise money for youth at risk programs.

The last time I was there he introduced me by saying, "I want to tell you why I let Jack use my house. It all goes back to a story about a young man who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy's high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.

"That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch.

"He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read, `See me after class.'

"The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, `Why did I receive an F?'

"The teacher said, `This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you'll have to pay large stud fees. There's no way you could ever do it.' Then the teacher added, `If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.'

"The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, `Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.' "Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all.

He stated, “You can keep the F and I'll keep my dream."

                   

Monty then turned to the assembled group and said, "I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of my 200-acre horse ranch. I still have that school paper framed over the fireplace." He added, "The best part of the story is that two summers ago that same schoolteacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week." When the teacher was leaving, he said, “Look, Monty, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids' dreams. Fortunately you had enough gumption not to give up on yours."

"Don't let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what."

Meditate...the subtle, slow way to strengthen your will & sharpen your skill..!

This morning, like every morning, I sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, rested my hands on my knees, closed my eyes, and did nothing but breathe for 20 minutes.

People say the hardest part about meditating is finding the time to meditate. This makes sense: who these days has time to do nothing? It's hard to justify.

Meditation brings many benefits:
It refreshes us.....helps us settle into what's happening now....makes us wiser and gentler,
helps us cope in a world that overloads us with information and communication, and more.
But if you're still looking for a business case to justify spending time meditating, try this one:
Meditation makes you more productive.
How? By increasing your capacity to resist "distracting urges".

Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance. If you can resist your urges, you can make better, more thoughtful decisions. You can be more intentional about what you do and how you do it.
Our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a new behavior or changing an old habit. It's probably the single most important skill for our growth and development.
As it turns out, that's one of the things meditation teaches us. It's also one of the hardest to learn.
When I sat down to meditate this morning, relaxing a little more with each out-breath, I was successful in letting all my concerns drift away. My mind was truly empty of everything that had concerned it before I sat. Everything except the flow of my breath. My body felt blissful and I was at peace.
For about four seconds only...!!

Within a breath or two of emptying my mind, thoughts came flooding in — nature abhors a vacuum. I felt an itch on my face and wanted to scratch it. A great title for my next book popped into my head and I wanted to write it down before I forgot it. I thought of at least four phone calls I wanted to make and one difficult conversation I was going to have later that day. I became anxious, knowing I only had a few hours of writing time. What was I doing just sitting here? I wanted to open my eyes and look at how much time was left on my countdown timer. I heard my kids fighting in the other room and wanted to intervene.
Here's the key though: I wanted to do all those things, but I didn't do them. Instead, every time I had one of those thoughts, I brought my attention back to my breath.
Sometimes, not following through on something you want to do is a problem, like not writing that proposal you've been procrastinating on or not having that difficult conversation you've been avoiding.
But other times, the problem is that you do follow through on something you don't want to do. Like speaking instead of listening or playing politics instead of rising above them.
Meditation teaches us to resist the urge of that counterproductive follow through.
And while I've often noted that it's easier and more reliable to create an environment that supports your goals than it is to depend on willpower, sometimes, we do need to rely on plain, old-fashioned, self-control.
For example, when you want to blurt something out in a meeting but know you'd be better off listening. Or when you want to buy or sell a stock based on your emotions when the fundamentals and your analysis suggest a different action. Or when you want to check email every three minutes instead of focusing on the task at hand.
Meditating daily will strengthen your willpower muscle. Your urges won't disappear, but you will be better equipped to manage them. And you will have experience that proves to you that the urge is only a suggestion. You are in control.

Does that mean you never follow an urge? Of course not. Urges hold useful information. If you're hungry, it may be a good indication that you need to eat. But it also may be an indication that you're bored or struggling with a difficult piece of work. Meditation gives you practice having power over your urges so you can make intentional choices about which to follow and which to let pass.
So how do you do it? If you're just starting, keep it very simple.

Sit with your back straight enough that your breathing is comfortable — on a chair or a cushion on the floor — and set a timer for however many minutes you want to meditate. Once you start the timer, close your eyes, relax, and don't move except to breathe, until the timer goes off. Focus on your breath going in and out. Every time you have a thought or an urge, notice it and bring yourself back to your breath.
That's it. Simple but challenging. Try it — today — for five minutes. And then try it again tomorrow.

This morning, after my meditation, I went to my home office to start writing. A few minutes later, Sophia, my seven-year-old, came in and told me the kitchen was flooded. Apparently Daniel, my five-year-old, filled a glass of water and neglected to turn off the tap. Oops.

In that moment, I wanted to scream at both Daniel and Sophia. But my practice countered that urge. I took a breath. Then, together, we went into action mode. We got every towel in the house — and a couple of blankets — and mopped it all up, laughing the whole time. When we were done soaking up the water, we talked about what happened. Finally, we all walked together to our downstairs neighbors and took responsibility for the flood, apologized, and asked if we could help them clean up the mess.
After that, I had lost an hour of writing. If I was going to meet my deadline, I needed to be super-productive. So I ate a quick snack and then ignored every distracting urge I had for two hours — no email, no phone calls, no cute Youtube videos — until I finished my piece, which I did with 30 minutes to spare.
Who says meditation is a waste of time?
-By Peter Bregman.

A Person who won’t stand for something will fall for anything..

In Zig Ziglar’s world, the morning alarm rang on the “opportunity clock.”
And “if you aren’t on fire” when you get to work, “then your wood is wet.”
And you have to remember that “money’s not the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen.”

And there will be setbacks, but “failure is an event, not a person.”
Few messengers of prosperity have been able to sustain a relentlessly upbeat and lucrative career for as long as Mr. Ziglar. Zig Ziglar! A human exclamation point! The world’s most popular motivational speaker, as he was often described, was always excited because “you never judge a day by the weather!”
He was a presence at corporate retreats and conferences for firms such as IBM and J.C. Penney. For the general public, some people paid $49 to hear him live or $1,595 to buy his complete written and audio package. He won over crowds with his faith-filled proverbs and earnest metaphors about setting goals and facing down adversity.
“If you’re going to have to swallow a frog,” he said in his Southern drawl, “you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!” Or
“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want!” Or “Have you ever noticed that people who are the problem never realize it? They’re in denial. They think denial is a river in Egypt!” Or
“The more you gripe about your problems, the more problems you have to gripe about!”
What his words lacked in depth, they made up for in conviction.
“I’ve asked myself many times how Zig can say the same things people have been hearing all their lives, and instead of getting yawns he gets a tremendous response,” his friend Fred Smith, the former FedEx chief executive, told Texas Monthly in 1999.
“I think he’s a little like Billy Graham, who has never really departed from the same sermon he was giving back in his 20s yet who’s never lost any effectiveness,” Smith said. “After all these years, Zig still devotes every day to living this life he talks about, to applying some eternal truths about character, commitment, hard work and self-determination.”

For his most fervent admirers, Mr. Ziglar was an inspiring leader who every morning leapt out of bed to the opportunity clock, bussed his wife (“Hey, Sugar Baby”), and willed himself into a positive mindset by seldom lingering on crime stories and celebrity gossip while scanning his morning newspaper. Texas Monthly described Mr. Ziglar’s love of comic strips, stories about sports teams and human-interest tales. He clipped them out and stored them in a file cabinet brimming with anecdotes about people who overcame disabilities and poverty and made it to state championships and the executive suite.
“Isn’t it amazing,” he told Texas Monthly, “how we are designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness?” Advancement in all its forms appealed to Hilary Hinton Ziglar, who was the 10th of 12 children born in rural Coffee County, Ala., on Nov. 6, 1926. He was raised by his widowed mother in Yazoo City, Miss.
He described his mother as the foremost influence on his life; she was a strict and devout woman whose mental storehouse of adages (such as “The person who won’t stand for something will fall for anything”) remained a cornerstone of Mr. Ziglar’s speeches and writings.
After Navy service at the end in World War II, he was married in 1946 to Jean Abernathy. He attended the University of South Carolina, but he was a middling student and left school to work as a door-to-door cookware salesman. As he was promoted through the ranks of the company, Mr. Ziglar became drawn to the power of self-help speakers and their ability to influence others. He began giving talks at church and Rotary Club meetings, often reprising his mother’s advice and relating his own experiences of smiling through setbacks and grief.
He settled in the Dallas area by the late 1960s, initially for a job training workers at a direct-sales company. The business soon folded, but the demand for Mr. Ziglar’s speaking had intensified. He launched a business called the Zigmanship Institute, now simply known as Ziglar Inc.
His first book, “Biscuits, Fleas, and Pump Handles,” published in 1974 and later retitled “See You at the Top,” urged readers to re-evaluate their lives with a “checkup from the neck up” and to quit their “stinkin’ thinkin.’

“ Mr. Ziglar, who sometimes earned tens of thousands of dollars per speech and other times waived his fee, kept up a rigorous touring schedule until retiring in 2010. He adapted his maxims to every aspect of his life, not least the golf course.
Every day, he sought to break 70 but never did.
“Yesterday ended last night,” he liked to tell himself. “Today is a brand-new day. And it’s yours.”
- Courtesy The Washington Post.

Be Still and Know the secret of secrets....

There is a Zen story; Zen Masters have loved it tremendously. When you come across it for the first time you will feel puzzled about the story — it is about a master thief.
A man was known as a master thief in Japan; he was well-known, famous, all over the country. And, of course, he was a master thief so nobody had ever been able to catch hold of him. 

He was never caught red-handed — although everybody knew that he was the one who had stolen — even from the treasury of the king he had been stealing. And he was always leaving marks of his so everybody would know who had been there.
In fact, it had become the fashion to brag about it, if the master thief had thought you worthy to steal something from. It became an aristocratic bragging! People would brag, saying, “Last night the master thief has been to our house.”
But the man was getting older, and one day his young son said to him, “Now you are getting older, teach me your art!”
The father said, “Then come with me tonight — because this is not something that can be taught. You can only imbibe the spirit of me; if you are intelligent enough you can catch it. I cannot teach it to you, but you can catch it. I cannot give it to you, but you can get it. We will see. You come tonight with me.”
Naturally the son was afraid — the first time! The wall was broken, they went into the palace. Even in his old age, the father’s hands were like a surgeon’s, unwavering, unshaking, although he was becoming very old — with no fear, as if he was working in his own home, breaking the wall. He did not even look here and there he was so certain of his art.
And the young man was trembling — it was a cold winter night and he was perspiring! But the father was doing everything silently. Then the father entered into the house. The son followed, his knees trembling, and he was feeling he might fall any moment. He was losing all consciousness because the fear was such…if they were caught, then?
The father was moving in the dark house as if it was his house and he knew everything about the house, and even in the dark he could move without stumbling against the furniture, against the doors. Making no noise at all, noiselessly, he reached into the innermost chamber of the palace. He opened a cupboard and told the son to go in and find whatsoever was valuable. The son entered it. The father locked the door, shouted, “A thief! A thief! Wake up!” and escaped through the hole that they had dug in the wall.

Now this was too much! The son could not under-stand it. Now he is locked in the cupboard, trembling, perspiring, and the whole house is awake, people are searching for the thief. “What kind of father is this? He has murdered me!” he thought. “And what kind of teaching is this?” This is the last thing he would have ever imagined: he has created a living nightmare for him! Now he is certain to be caught! And he has locked the door from the outside; he cannot even open the door and escape.

After one hour, the son reached home and the father was fast asleep and snoring! He threw aside his blanket and said, “What kind of nonsense is this?!” The father said, “So you are back! No need to tell the whole story — you also go to sleep. Now you know the art, we need not discuss it.” But the son said, “I have to tell you the whole story, what happened.”
The father said, “If you want to tell it you can, otherwise I don’t require it. Just that you have come is enough proof! Now from tomorrow night you start on your own. You have got the intelligence, the awareness that a thief needs. I am immensely happy with you!” But the son was so overflowing, he wanted to relate the whole thing — he had done such a great job.
He said, “Just listen, otherwise I will not be able to sleep at all. I am so excited! You almost killed me!”
The father said, “It is hard, but that’s how a master has to act many times. Tell me the whole story. What happened?”
He said, “Out of nowhere — not from my intellect, certainly not from my mind — this has happened.”
The father said, “This is the key to all mastery in all the fields of life, whether you are a thief or a meditator, whether you are a lover or a scientist or a painter or a poet, it doesn’t matter. Whatsoever the field, this is the master key — that nothing happens from the head, everything happens from somewhere below. Call it intuition, call it no-mind, call it meditation — these are names, different names for the same thing. It has started functioning, I can see it on your face; I can see the aura around you. You are going to become a master thief! And remember through being a master thief I have attained to meditation. So remember: this is the way for you to attain meditation.”
The son said, “When I was standing inside that damned cupboard and people were searching for the thief, a woman servant came with a candle in her hand; I could see from the keyhole. Something from nowhere…I started making noises as if I was a cat — and I have never done it before! The woman servant, thinking that there was a cat in the cupboard, unlocked it. As she unlocked it — I don’t know how I did it and who did it — it happened! I blew the candle out, pushed the woman away, and ran!

People followed me — the whole house was awake, the neighborhood was awake. And they were coming closer and closer and I was on the verge of being caught. Then suddenly I came across a well. I saw a rock just by the side of the well — I don’t believe that I have that much strength to pick that rock up now, but it happened.” When you are in such situations your whole energy becomes available to you. You don’t live only on the superficial level. When life is at stake, your whole energy becomes available.

“I moved the rock, picked up the rock — I cannot believe that I could even shake it now! — and threw it in the well, then ran away. The noise, the sound of the rock falling in the well…and all the people who were following me stopped following me. They surrounded the well; they thought I had jumped into the well. That’s how I am back home.”
The father said, “Now you can go to sleep. I am finished! Never ask me anything again. Now you start on your own.

Osho – “Be Still and Know”