Work What Your Mama Gave Ya

Interesting title for what you are about to read… We are taught very basic skills from birth:

1. Say please and thank you
2. Mind your manners, be polite
3. Always be on time
4. Respect your elders
5. Encourage your friends

These life skills and guiding principals, along with many others I am sure, are instilled in us as children.  However somewhere between childhood and “know-it-all adulthood” people forget the simple graces of social interaction and begin to think that these rules don’t apply and that they can do it better.

Help! I’m Not Creative Anymore!!

“Help!  I have lost my spark, my zen, my reason for being?  Creativity is gone and living in someone else’s soul.  I haven’t painted in weeks.  I don’t write songs anymore.  Why sing a song that no one listens to.  Photography, what’s that?!”

Sound familiar, not feeling productive lately?  Don’t worry, your passion isn’t permanently gone. 

Always The Hours

The co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc, Steve Jobs says this, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs previously served as CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and is now a member of the Walt Disney Company’s Board of Directors – he seems to successfully handle the hours.

The trappings of time can be a formidable opponent or a cherished friend.  The hours of life can be spent:

Time’s Not Afraid To Fly: Inspiration

Being that this is the final entry in a three part series of blogs, it is only fair to reveal the source of Time’s Not Afraid To Fly.  Last summer I had the honor of being accepted to attend Skip Ewing’s Horse and Writer event in Wyoming.  This week-long event connected me with some of best undiscovered musical talent of Nashville.  One of the other invited songwriters was Jeffrey East.  Jeffrey is one of those passionately, musical souls you meet along the way that you are definitely better for knowing.  As I was listening to Time on his youtube channel, I realized that was it the beginning of my first blog for 2010.

The song starts out like this…

Time’s Not Afraid To Fly: What are you afraid of?

Yesterday’s entry discussed time’s speedy nature and it’s ability to pass by virtually undetected.  A different way to take the phrase, Time’s not afraid to fly, would be to personify time and allow it to be fearless.  The bold determined nature of time could teach us all a lesson worth learning.  After conducting the personal exploration of 2009 – where do you stand?  Did you find any fear or doubts that held you back from overall success?

“Fear is a habit; so is self-pity, defeat, anxiety, despair, hopelessness and resignation. You can eliminate all of these negative habits with two simple resolves: I can!! and I will!”  This blunt statement is easier said than taken to heart and applied. 

Time’s Not Afraid To Fly

“Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror.  It’s passing, yet I’m the one who’s doing all the moving,” Martin Amis, Money. Martin’s featured character/narrator in his 1984 novel gets it right as he ponders the frightening pace of life rolling right on by.  Time rarely seems to stand still long enough for us to figure out which moves more rapidly – the hands of Father Time or the feet with which we walk in and out of the shadows of sunrises and sunsets.

Time’s not afraid to fly.  Life doesn’t wait for us to give it the green light…