Rest assured, there isn’t a greater ‘end’ to consider than YOUR END- (your death/departure from this planet).

So, if it’s helpful to ‘begin with the end in mind’ for goals and projects you can bet it’s pretty darn valuable for your life.

For those who haven’t heard the story there is a terrific anecdote about Dr. Alfred Nobel. What you may not know is that while today everyone hears his name “Nobel” and thinks “Peace Prize” originally, this was far from the case.

In fact, turns out that in 1888 a French paper erroneously proclaimed “The merchant of death is now dead.” The story went on to explain that the man who invented and patented dynamite (his original claim to fame) and a faster, cheaper, quicker way to kill people died in a fatal explosion. As you might expect, a very alive and able Dr. Nobel read this account of his death and its merciless headline and was mortified by the prospect that his lifetime work and his legacy would be relegated and labeled synonymous with death and destruction. This was not the legacy the good doctor had in mind.

Turns out, after reading his own obituary he instantly knew he had to redefine just what his life was to mean; what he was to represent and how he wanted to be remembered.

Drum roll please…
So, here’s a couple KEY questions for YOU to answer…

What do you want your life to represent?

How would you like to be remembered?

Recommend you spend at least an hour and begin writing your own obituary (now). Yes, begin with the end in mind. The more time you spend, the greater the value will be and you will more clearly define what it is you’d like your life to represent. The paradox is that by focusing on what you want your absence/memory to represent the stronger your presence will gain those attributes. You can also be assured that your sense of destiny and direction will immediately improve and clarity, purpose and meaning will all be elevated by via this exercise. Write your own obituary. Several times if necessary. It may take weeks or months but the longer you can meditate on those two questions above the more power and better you will feel about yourself in the now.

Remember Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous gem, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” And, what lies within us is (or course) our imagination, our creativity. The beauty is, this becomes your CREATIVE CHOICE. This is the first “C” in your succcess and it’s tied to your ability to envision your ideal future (alive & not).

What do you want your life to represent? How would you like to be remembered?

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Brilliant. astounding, outstanding and remarkable

There aren’t enough superlatives for MAN ON WIRE!

Things have been a little busy lately – and wanting to get to this “review’ / post since I saw this movie well over a month ago! Man on Wire is incredibly entertaining movie and not just for the never-to-be-repeated, remarkable feat itself (tight-rope, in this case wire-walking from one World Trade Center tower to the other) but, also, for its direction, production, and original footage.

I happened to see this movie (wifee’s recommendation) just before the Academy Awards (no surprise it won for best documentary).  The story features Phillipe Petit and his mission to realize his life’s dream of walking a tight rope between the two world trade towers. The brilliance from a production standpoint is the reenactment is interspersed with some fantastic original footage.  But, what makes the movie truly so powerful and riveting is the UNDERLYING THEME.

We are all walking a tight rope.

The difference is easy to see though isn’t it? Some people embrace the ‘experience’ and go out of their way to, as Phillipe says, “live on the edge” and then, there is the majority – the vast majority, that cower from the edge. They seek the center, they seek “security”.

If you’ve seen my prior post on SECURITY and CERTAINTY you know my thoughts on the topic. So having said that, I wanted to call out the 9 significant take-aways, essentially, reaffirming the techniques and lessons of Philipe’s brilliant story. Reverse engineering, once again, to the rescue.

1: Desire, Dream & Visualize: Phillipe actually realized his goal the day he was in his doctor’s office waiting for his appointment. While there, he was flipping through a magazine and noticed a feature story on the world trade center – it was still the early 70’s, the towers where not even completely built! However, he knew upon seeing the vision of the towers this was his destiny. He was sucked into the event at that moment several years earlier by the VISION – the dream and his desire quickly compelled him to tear a page right out of the magazine featuring the towers.

2: Practice: Phillipe was the consummate pro – addicted to practicing his craft.There is original footage showing how often he practiced and under what circumstances – blindfolded, with people shaking the cable, etc. His daily ritual involved practice. His tight rope walking skills were masterful because of fundamental practice.

3: Plan and Strategize: To pull of something of this magnitude required considerable planning which involved a schedule; scoping the job, gaining access to the towers. A plan to get the cable from one tower to the next and of course a strategy for  “game day”.
3.a – Flexibility: With every plan you must remain FLEXIBLE. Literally, the man was a cat. One flexible dude. but this refers to his flexibility in planning, of bending but not braking. More things went wrong than right — before the plan came together.

4:  TEAMWORK: Phillipe had to enlist nearly a dozen accomplices to this “CRIME”. A few friends pulled out at the last minute – fearful they may be held accountable for the death of a friend! Without the other brave and willing friends his dream isn’t realized. TEAMWORK.

5: BELIEVE: In the man’s own words… “Impossible! Great, let’s get to work!”

6: Passion: Passion powers people through obstacles. It’s stated in The 3 C’s of Succcess a few times. Nothing worth pursuing is going to be easy. What differentiates those who succeed more often than not is passion! Passion gets you to COMPLETION (the 3rd C). Lack of passion gets you somewhere else.

7: “Death is very Close”: Often times far closer than any of us want to imagine. So, this can either terrify you or MOTIVATE you. Phillipe was motivated by death on the front (of the event) and back end (during the event).  And, his point is you are never more  ALIVE then “when death is very close” . There are many who will attest to that.

8: FOCUS: To execute such an act took laser-like focus. Guess how many times he looked down? What are you focusing on? Right now, quick question, are you focusing on the opportunities before you or the obstacles? Can you craft the obstacles to become opportunities?

9: Fun & Flare: Perhaps this is why the cops waited around to drag his ass to the looney bin. He didn’t just tight rope walk between the towers – he turned it into a PERFORMANCE. Phillipe bowed, saluted, SMILED and then decided to take a CAT nap (gives new meaning to the term) on the wire! He danced on the wire for over 40 minutes. Seriously, he executed the impossible with remarkable poise. He enjoyed the process and put on a show nearly 2000 feet above crowds and a lot of cement! Yes, I said he LAID DOWN on the wire!!?

Now that is beautiful. Scoreboard.

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1. Steve Jobs, Synchronicity, Connecting the Dots & Trust

Here’s a quote I’m rather fond of… It rephrases the age old proverb, “necessity is the mother of invention” to “necessity isn’t the mother of invention – invention is.”

Napoleon Hill wrote the all-time classic personal development book, Think and Grow Rich. The book is based on his 20-year study of the greatest minds of his time, including Henry Ford and Thomas Edison. He discovered from this exercise that there human creativity took basically two different forms – synthetic imagination and creative vision.

Synthetic imagination joins your pre-existing ideas, your concepts and your products and transforms them into something completely different, into a completely new form or a new, unanticipated solution to a problem. Very little of what is created today is absolutely original – from scratch, if you will. In fact, many of our greatest inventions are based upon the concept of synthetic imagination. Perhaps that is what Isaac Newton said when he attributed his greatest discoveries to the ability to “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Really when you consider it further necessity, in reality, is the GRANDMOTHER of invention.

For example, the garbage can. Yes, the lowly, smelly garbage can. The original intent of the garbage can was to have a receptacle to place the garbage collected during the course of a week in your household. A simple enough need.

Soon, the garbage bag was invented. One invention – the garbage can – spawned yet another invention, the garbage BAG. This, in a nutshell, is synthetic imagination. In other words, this is simply a creative way to combine two pre-existing ideas or inventions.

The second type of creativity is creative vision.

A good way to look at this is to think of creative vision as dialing directly into your creative source. This is what Napoleon Hill called your “infinite intelligence.” You might refer to this as God.

In essence, it’s your intuition. It’s the way the infinite intelligence or God gives us our hunches and our “inspirations.”
Hill had a great story involving Thomas Edison in which the famous inventor, known for his relentless pursuit of the light bulb, uses both creative vision and synthetic imagination. Edison was well known for the many cat naps which he took throughout the day. What is not so well known, is how he used these to his creative advantage.

When Edison was tired and frustrated by the day’s “failures” at not having discovered the best method of creating this invention, he would nap. But before falling asleep, he formed in his mind a clear view of the problem he was currently facing. As he wakes from his nap, in that limbo-like peaceful state before he’s fully awake, he realizes the solution to the problem. The light bulb, in order to function, must be placed in a vacuum.

The vacuum was indeed the only environment that would prevent the immediate burn out of the wire as well as prevent any electrocution. His thoughts immediately jumped to charcoal. He recalled images of charcoal covered with dirt and of course subconsciously realized they burned much more slowly than the rest. In fact, it was that realization – coming out of his nap which his subconscious was trying to share with him. Limit the oxygen and the filiment that illuminates the lightbulb will not burn out so quickly!

You don’t always need to use your creative vision and bring something as momentous to the world as the light bulb. More often than not, synthetic imagination becomes the vehicle to success.

All you really need to do is combine two ideas that are already pretty darn good on their own. Just look at the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. If you’re old enough, you probably even remember the initial commercial which introduced the product to us. One person walked along the street, totally absorbed in his chocolate candy bar. Walking in the opposite direction came another individual, equally absorbed in his peanut butter.

BAM! They walked right into each other. The candy bar crashed right into the jar of peanut butter. A new taste treat was born!

Just look at the evolution of the cell phone. Once the original phone was invented, synthetic imagination took over to create an evolution of the gadget none of us can now seem to live without. Other technologies fueled by synthetic imagination include Google, Myspace, Facebook to name just a few. New goods and services are created every day using existing technology in a new and innovative way.

Don’t think for a moment that synthetic imagination or even creative imagination is the realm of a chosen few.

Be sure to share cool examples of either creative vision or synthetic imagination and ways they’ve created value for others and / or affected your life. These examples will help everyone (readership) recognize the true path to success begins with creativity and hopefully inspire them to create!

Thanks again… until next time

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