Dream Big - Have your dreams ever not worked out just the way that you planned? Yeah, mine too. About two years, I quit my job at the pinnacle of my career to go to work for a small nonprofit ministry to pursue a dream. Our dreams for the ministry were big, but financial circumstances have prevented us thus far from achieving our dream in exactly the way that we envisioned it. The ministry can no longer really afford my salary so I will be doing something else for a paycheck next month. Honestly, it has been a little discouraging.

Last week a friend of mine showed me a copy of a newspaper ad for Apple (see above) that had inspired him years ago. Last week it inspried me. (Thanks Bret!) This is what it says.

If there were ever a time to dare, to make a difference, to embark on something worth doing, it is now. Not for any grand cause, necessarily - but for something that tugs at your heart, something that's your aspiration, something that's your dream.

You owe it to yourself to make your days here count. Have fun. Dig deep. Stretch.

Dream Big

Know, though that things worth doing seldom come easy. There will be good days. And there will be bad days. There will be times when you want to turn around, pack it up, and call it quits. Those times tell you that you are pushing yourself, that you are not afraid to learn by trying.

Persist.

Because with an idea, determination, and the right tools, you can do great things. Let your instincts, your intellect, and your heart guide you.

Trust.

Believe in the incredible power of the human mind. Of doing something that makes a difference. Of working hard. Of laughing and hoping. Of lazy afternoons. Of lasting friends. Of all the things that cross your path this year.

The start of something new brings the hope of something great. Anything is possible. There is only one you. And you will only pass this way once. Do it right.

Sometimes, I think God tests us to see if we believe in something enough that we would continue to work toward it - in the evenings. On the weekends. With no compensation. And so, next week I start a new and great job. And I will continue to help the ministry pursue it's mission when I can with no compensation. And I will continue to dream big.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?

Vote - We have a big election coming up in Tulsa next week. Voters are being asked to approve a sales tax increase for improvements to the Arkansas River which runs through Tulsa. The rhetoric between the two sides has been vigorous and for us onlookers it has been an interesting discussion.

Proponents claim that the $282 million plan will create 10,000 jobs and inject $3.5 billion into the local economy by 2014. These advocates claim that by raising the county sales tax, there will be increased retail development along the river as well as increased recreational opportunities including white water rafting, kayaking, sail boating, and rowing.

Last week the City of Tulsa closed on a deal to purchase arguably the most technologically advanced building in the city, One Technology Center, for $52 million for their new city hall. The city will occupy only a portion of the 750,000 sq ft glass tower and will need to rent out the rest of the building for it to be viable.

Recently Tulsa County voted a sales tax increase for Vision 2025 which among other things financed the construction of a 55,000 sq. ft, 18,000 seat arena in downtown Tulsa. The arena is scheduled to be completed in 2008. One of the goals of Vision 2025 was to lure a Boeing assembly plant to Tulsa which has never materialized.

Now I have to tell you that as someone who regularly takes advantage of Tulsa’s River Parks and a rabid basketball fan, I probably stand to benefit as much as most people from the river development and construction of the new arena. But I have a concern. A recent assessment of Tulsa’s city streets graded them at a “D” and headed for “F” without a change in the way Tulsa maintains them. At the time the mayor said, “She has no specific plan for the streets.” The city has since identified a $600 million backlog of street repairs. Our County Assessor says that Tulsa County already has the highest total tax burden of any county in Oklahoma and a higher tax burden than even New York City. Tulsa’s crime rate is almost double the national average.

Am I the only one that has a problem with spending money on showy, new buildings and parks when the streets look like a literal war zone and our crime fighting efforts are under-funded? The mayor has responded to such concerns by saying there is no reason that Tulsa can’t have both improved streets and the other development. This argument reminds of a conversation I might have with my teenage son. “Son, you haven’t done your chores and your homework over the past month like we agreed so I am not letting you go out tonight.” If my son replied, “Dad there is no reason, I can’t do a month’s worth of homework, finish my chores from the last month, and go out tonight,” I believe that I would probably tell him “that is too little, too late.”

Sometimes when we as individuals are pursuing our goals and passions, we are like the City of Tulsa or my teenage son. We want to spend money and time on the glitzy, showy things, but we don’t want to spend time and money on the foundational things that are essential to our success. We may buy flashy business cards, expensive suits, and the European sedan or fleet of new trucks, but we aren’t willing to do the grunt work. Kevin Carroll calls it “being willing to do the lonely work - those unglamorous tasks that no one asks you to do and that others may never notice.”

I want an amazing river development in Tulsa that includes new recreational and retail development. I want a shiny new arena that might attract NCAA basketball tournament games. But mostly I want the city to take care of the foundational things first like streets so that I won’t ruin the struts on my car. Make sure that as you pursue your passions that you are building a solid foundation by prioritizing the tasks that you SHOULD do before you attempt the more glamorous things that you only WANT to do.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?

What are you doing about it? Since I started posting on this site in 2005, there have been two sentences that have appeared in every single post. What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it? I believe those two questions sum up the reasons that so many people do not pursue their dream and even fewer reach the specific goals associated with their dream.

What are you passionate about? A surprising number of people do not really know which things in life they care about most. It is a simple question but one that a lot of people have difficulty answering. If you knew you were going to die, would you spend today differently? Would your to-do list more closely reflect your long-term priorities? Not to be morbid, but here is a news flash. You are going to die. Everyone reading this article is one day closer to death than you were yesterday. An exercise occasionally employed to encourage us to think about our dreams, goals, and long-term priorities is to visualize what you want said about you at your funeral. Do you want people to say that “you spent more time in front of the television watching sports than anyone they ever knew?” How about, “She shopped like a mad woman and was inducted into the MasterCard Hall of Fame for keeping her charge card maxed out for 30 years?” Maybe your mourners will admire your score playing Halo 3.

It is important to consciously sit down and list your priorities. It is said that the two things that provide the best evidence of our priorities are our Day-Timer/calendar and our check book. That is, how we spend our time and our money reflects our priorities more accurately than anything we can say. To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, “What you are doing speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.”

It is important to list out your dreams and priorities. If you don’t begin without the end in mind, there is little chance you will get there. Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going any road will take you there.” It is important to know where the finish line is. You may have heard the story of Florence Chadwick. Florence was the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. In 1952 Chadwick stepped into the Pacific Ocean from Catalina Island surrounded by thick fog. She was determined to swim the 22 miles from Catalina Island to the California coast. She swam for 15 hours before begging to be pulled from the foggy Pacific Ocean. When she was pulled onto the boat she realized that the California coast was less than one-half mile away. At a news conference the next day Chadwick lamented, “All I could see was the fog…. I think if I could have seen the shore I would have made it.” Too many of us are like Chadwick. We fail to reach our goals because we cannot see the finish line. Make sure that you are not hampered by not having a clear vision of your goals.

What are your doing about it? The second deterrent to reaching our goals, which probably occurs even more frequently than the first is not having a specific plan. By definition, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) is a daunting task. It is essential that we break up our dreams and goals into achievable, short-term, steps. How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time. Getting that degree may seem unachievable. But if you just schedule out which classes you need to take and the order you need to take them, knocking them out one or two classes at a time make the goal more achievable. Owning your own business may seem like something that is just too far out of reach. But you can learn more about the industry, gradually save your investment, learn from others who are in that business, and your dream of owning your own business may be closer than you think. A dream without a plan is only wishful thinking.

For too many people, their “plan” to reach their dreams is to win the lottery or have a big night at the casino. They think that their own personal fairy god mother is going to come around and turn them into a princess. People with this mindset tend to get involved with every get-rich-quick scheme that comes along. Christians with no plan, may pray fervently for God to deliver them to their own personal promised land. Yet they don’t take responsibility for their own actions. Don’t get me wrong. I am a praying man myself. But I believe we have a responsibility. In the film, Facing the Giants, a local prayer warrior told the beleaguered coach, “Two men desperately needed rain for their fields and prayed to God. But only one man prepared his field. Which man do you think was most faithful?”

Philip Yancey in his book Prayer wrote, “Although we may ask God to intervene directly, it should not surprise us if God responds in a more hidden way in cooperation with a person’s own choice. An alcoholic prays, ‘Lord, keep me away from drink today.’ The answer to that prayer will likely come from the inside, from a stiffening resolve or a cry of help to a loyal friend, rather than from some marvel like the magical disappearance of liquor bottles from the cabinet…. Sometimes like the boy who asks his parents to solve a math problem while he plays video games, we ask God for things we should be doing ourselves.” I heard a speaker say once that if one is going around a curve at 80 MPH and the posted speed limit is 25 MPH, then something bad is probably going to happen, even if we are listening to Christian radio, have a statue of Jesus on the dash, and a fish bumper sticker.

There is nothing wrong with praying for a miracle. A God worthy of our worship is certainly capable of miracles even today. But if you are praying for rain, make sure you have prepared your field – and don’t be surprised if God answers your prayers through people and circumstances that allow him to remain anonymous. Like Thomas Jefferson, “I am strong believer in luck and I find that the harder I work, the more I have.” Success lies at the intersection of opportunity and preparation. The opportunities will do us little good if we are not prepared when they come.

Make sure you have a plan. There are a multitude of personal planning resources on the Internet and at your local book store. Most any of them will be more effective than what many of us are doing now, which is almost no planning at all. Need I say it again?

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?

Max Lucado reads my mail – I am not sure how he does it. When I get home from work, the envelopes in my mailbox have apparently all been carefully resealed. I don’t know how Max gets back home to San Antonio from Tulsa each weekend in time to be in the pulpit on Sunday. But there is no doubt he is reading my mail. How else can I explain it? The guy writes his books TO me.

A few weeks ago you read my whining post in this blog about my daughter moving out of the house to go to college. Those of you who are empty-nesters had no sympathy for me. But it was a pretty emotional time for a guy who was losing his first child and only daughter to the cold, cruel world. My daughter struggled with the transition too. Her college soccer coach’s old-school, break-‘em down and then build-‘em-back-up approach was a big change for my daughter. After ten years of being told what a great soccer player she is, she was now hardly worthy of her scholarship according to her coach.

Being the loving dad that I am, I went to find my daughter some little gift to encourage her at school. I picked up a copy of Max’s Every Day Deserves A Chance. I thought that its positive theme and bright yellow dust cover might raise the spirits of the most important soccer player in our family. Back at home, I decided to skim the book. After all, I was feeling a little melancholy myself so maybe Max’s words of wisdom could give me a boost.

I made it all the way to page 3 when I read, “This is the day [that the Lord has made] includes every day. Divorce days, final-exam days, surgery days, tax days, Sending your first-born off to college days. [emphasis mine] That last one sucked the starch out of my shirt. Surprisingly so. We packed Jenna’s stuff, loaded up her car, and left life as we had known if for 18 years. A chapter was closing. One less plate on the table, voice in the house, and child beneath the roof. The day was necessary. The day was planned. But the day undid me.

I was a mess. I drove away from the gas station with the nozzle still in my tank, yanking the hose right off the pump. Got lost in a one-intersection town. We drove; I moped. We unpacked; I swallowed throat lumps. We filled the dorm room; I plotted to kidnap my daughter and take her home where she belongs. Did someone store dry ice in my chest? Then I saw the verse. Some angel had tacked it to a dormitory bulletin board. This is day that the Lord has made. We will be glad and rejoice in it.

I stopped, stared and let the words sink in. God made this day, ordained this hard hour, designed the details of this wrenching moment. He isn’t on holiday. He still holds the conductor’s baton, sits in the cockpit, and occupies the universe’s only throne. Each day emerges from God’s drawing room including this one.”

I don’t know if an angel actually put that verse on the bulletin board for Max or not. But I am sure that Max is reading my mail. I have no other explanation for why this story would be in the one book that I selected for my daughter. By the way, my daughter never got the book. I couldn’t give her that copy because I had highlighted all over it. Besides, I think a couple of salty drops had dripped from my cheek to the page.

Throughout Max’s book, he lists several “Daylifters;” i.e. things one can do to give every day a chance. One of those that resonated with me is to consider, “If today were the last day of our lives, would we do what we’re doing?” Or would we love more, give more, forgive more? Max concludes that we need to know that we are all one day closer to death than we were yesterday. Max’s advice is to forgive and give like it is our last opportunity. Love like there’s no tomorrow, and if tomorrow comes, love again.

Now that is an idea that I can get passionate about. Max, thanks for the reminder. And by the way, stay out of my mailbox.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?

Let me introduce you to ..... - In my first job out of college, I worked for a regional retail chain in Tulsa, OK called OTASCO as the credit manager. About a year after I started to work there I was assigned to report to a vice-president named Carl. Carl didn’t select me. I was assigned to Carl by the company CFO who for some reason had been impressed with some unknown thing I had done over the course of my first year at OTASCO.

Carl was a colorful guy. In stature, he was a small, wiry, sixty-ish looking guy with thinning gray hair. Legend has it that Carl was a very good athlete back in the day. I had heard that when Carl was in the service that his tour of duty consisted of playing on the Army basketball team. Carl liked golf and he loved the Chicago Cubs. In demeanor, he was like Walter Matthau’s Coach Buttermaker in the Bad News Bears. Carl smoked almost non-stop. The rusty ashtray on his desk was generally overflowing with butts.

Almost every sentence Carl spoke contained a cuss word. Carl couldn’t say that “the store managers don’t follow the credit policies” unless he said, “The F*-ing store managers don’t follow the d@mn credit policies.” Now I am a guy that does not appreciate the unnecessary use of cuss words. But there was something almost benign about the way Carl wielded profanity. After awhile, it got so we didn’t even notice when Carl remarked that the "F*-ing Cubs had lost another d@mn game." Yet Carl was intimidating. He was a bottom-line, cut-the-BS kind of guy. If someone started exaggerating or even embellishing the truth, Carl would call them on it in a heartbeat. If you stated something as fact to Carl, you had better be able to prove it.

After I had worked for Carl for a couple of months, he invited me to his daughter’s wedding. The invitation caught me by surprise. I had never met his daughter and I was pretty sure that Carl wasn’t too impressed with this wet-behind-the-ears credit manager that had been dumped on him by the CFO. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first child and we were involved in a legal dispute with the company who had built our first home. So I didn’t really have extra cash for a wedding present. But I went – probably out of a feeling of obligation and concern of what Carl would think if I turned down the invitation.

After the wedding, as I was going through the receiving line to congratulate the newlyweds who had no idea who I was, Carl walked up and put his arm around me. He proceeded to introduce me to his daughter and her husband, “Meet my dear friend, Toby Joplin.”

I was suddenly oblivious to the newly wedded couple. I was shocked that this gruff, crusty guy who intimidated the heck out of me would introduce me as anything other than his lowly subordinate. I remember standing there shaking hands with the bride while my head was turned 90 degrees to the left staring at Carl in shock. I don’t recall for certain, but there is a very good chance that my mouth was hanging open. I simply couldn’t believe that this grizzled veteran of the credit wars would actually consider me a friend.

A few months later, on November 4, 1988, I would find out just what a good friend Carl really was. OTASCO filed bankruptcy and laid off about 1,600 of the 1,800 employees. They filed bankruptcy on Sunday because Monday was a pay day and OTASCO would have had to give all the employees one last paycheck. The Friday before the bankruptcy filing, there was a secret, offsite meeting for the 30 or so employees from headquarters who would be kept on payroll during the bankruptcy. Carl was invited to the offsite meeting. I was not. OTASCO’s credit manager with the pregnant wife and the legal expenses on his house, was to be out of a job.

That Friday, I had not seen much of Carl. Then my office phone rang and Carl explained the above developments to me in a very hushed tone. He went on to explain that he had told the CEO that he was out of F*-ing mind if he thought Carl was going to try to administer the credit function through d@mn bankruptcy without my help. Carl told them if I wasn’t on the survivors list, that they could just fire him too. Talk about your brass cajones. The list of survivors was then expanded to 31. Toby had a job, albeit a temporary one. However, Carl had bought me enough time to develop an exit strategy.

I vowed then and there, that if I ever had a coworker or other acquaintance who was also a friend, I would never, ever introduce them as anything less than my “dear friend.” So if you drop by our offices, I will not introduce you to our receptionist Alisha, or our sales guy, Shane, or our Production Manager, Jason. I would however be proud to introduce you to my dear friends Alisha, Shane, and Jason.

As we pursue our passions, it is impossible to reach our goals by ourselves. We need the help of dear friends, like Carl, Alisha, Shane, and Jason. Don’t insult them by referring to them as anything else.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?

Parting is such sweet sorrow – Billy Shakespeare summed it up pretty well. I spent yesterday moving my daughter out of our house and into her apartment at college. It was a surprisingly bittersweet experience. Yesterday marked the culmination of what my wife and I have been preparing our daughter for, for the last 18 years. All those years of helping her study to make good grades, teaching her the tenets of our faith, and hauling her around the country to soccer tournaments have resulted in an athletic scholarship that will help offset the cost of preparing her for a career. My daughter now has a great apartment almost in the shadow of the university library. She shares her apartment with three new friends and teammates hailing from Houston, Conway, AR, and Oklahoma City. New friends, new horizons, new opportunities! This is a day of celebration…….. right?

My daughter’s dad was completely unprepared for the emotional impact of his baby girl moving out of the house. This is the same little girl that caused me to weep for joy 18 years ago when she was born. This is the same little girl that I taught to ride a bicycle and the proper way to shoot free throws. This is the same little girl who wore a cardboard tea kettle and sang, “I’m a little teapot” in her preschool program. Oh sure, she will be home on school breaks for a week or two at a time. But she will never, ever again really live with her mother and me for an extended time. As I drove away alone from the university yesterday, I had a lump the size of an orange in my throat. Excuse me while I dab my eyes. It must be my darn allergies. [Sniff, sniff.]

For the past 18 years, my goals and passions have been tightly entwined with those of my daughter. But now her road and mine diverge. As time goes on, her aspirations will have less and less to do with me. It is the changing of a season of life. It is normal and natural if somewhat melancholy.

As we pursue our life goals and passions, people will be brought into our lives for a time to aid in the pursuit of those goals; to share in the struggles and joys. Sharing the intimacy of a foxhole in these pursuits often creates a strong bond. So when others decide their goals then lie in a different direction, we are sometimes disappointed or hurt. But this is as natural as my daughter leaving for college. People will join our crusade for a season and then many, if not most, may leave. Their leaving doesn’t invalidate their contribution, nor the goal, nor their calling for that season.

Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived wrote:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, and time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

I have been thinking a lot this week about what Solomon and Shakespeare each wrote and the application that their words have for my daughter and me. As you pursue, your goals and passions, and as people join and leave that pursuit, maybe their words have some application for you as well.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?

Got a case of the Mondays? I was flipping through the TV channels the other day and ran across the movie Office Space. This was the PG version with the breast exam and the F* bombs edited out so I settled back to watch it even though I had seen it a couple of times over the years.

You probably know the story. Set in a Dallas suburb, Peter Gibbons is trapped in a software job that he hates. Peter, and his coworkers, Michael Bolton (not THE Michael Bolton), and Samir Nagheenanajar lament their plight of being caught in a job that oscillates between boring them to death and driving them crazy. The silver lining is that they have little job security as evidenced by the fact that their employer (Initech) brings in some efficiency experts to “streamline operations.” Peter points out to the efficiency experts that he has eight different bosses and each and everyone points out each time that he makes a mistake like forgetting the cover sheets on his TPS reports.

As Peter and his two buddies do some peer-to-peer counseling over a cup of coffee, an overly-caffeined waiter comments that it looks like Peter “has a case of the Mondays.” The implication is that Peter seems to be dragging through life like some workers struggle through the first day of each week. After seeing an occupational hypno-therapist at his girlfriend’s request, Peter develops a much more mellow, “Que Sera Sera” attitude. He explains to his new love interest, played by Jennifer Anniston, that he is simply not going to go to work any more. He isn’t going to quit his job. He just isn’t going to go to work anymore. When Anniston’s character asks Peter what he is going to do about paying bills, Peter responds, that “ he has never really liked paying bills and he doesn’t think he is going to pay bills any more either.

According to Harris Interactive, 41% of workers are dissatisfied with their jobs. 33% of workers feel like they are at a dead-end in the current jobs. Less than half (44%) of workers are glad that they work for their current employer. 87% of workers responded that they don’t believe they have found their optimal job. 80% of workers don’t feel like their talents are fully being utilized. Those are some pretty dismal statistics. Why do so many people continue to work at jobs that apparently make them miserable? In a recent About.com poll, when asked what gives the most job satisfaction and given choices like money, respect, etc., the number one response was “Doing what I love.”

I would suggest that there is another option other than drifting through life with a case of the Mondays and simply not going to work. The better option is to find a job that you actually love. Every person was created with specific talents and interests that point toward what they were made to do. Those activities where your interests and talents overlap with those things that others would pay you to do, represent your “sweet spot.” Everyone has one. Max Lucado in his book Cure for the Common Life, encourages people to find their sweet spot by looking backwards at their life to recall which types of activities they have loved and at which they have been successful.

If you feel like you have a case of the Monday’s, you might want to pick up a copy of Lucado’s Cure for the Common Life. Think back through your life about the things that you have loved to do. What things have you been successful at? Where those two groups overlap, which of those activities will others pay you to do? The choice is yours. In the meantime, make sure you put a cover sheet on those TPS reports.

What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?