dreams week two

I have learned a lot this week.  Watching videos and reading about other entrepreneurs lives really inspire you to get up and move and grow.  One of the biggest things I have gotten out of all of this is that you can be an entrepreneur whether you start your own business or you are working for someone else.  Being an entrepreneur means grown, learning, bettering yourself.  I have learned things like how to pick a partner and why it is ok to fail and what you should do about it.  I am excited to keep learning how to be an entrepreneur.  By nature it is what I am.  I can look back in my past 40 years and see that I have had small in home business over and over again.  Things that fit perfectly in my family's life at the time and fit a niche for the moment.  I wish I had this class before because it would have helped me to be even more successful.  I am excited what I am going to learn next, whatever that may be.

Quotes I love that have inspired me -------

from Randy Pausch's last lecture

Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he? I said, yeah. He said, that’s a good thing. He said, when you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.

about football is we send our kids out to play football or soccer or swimming or whatever it is, and it’s the first example of what I’m going to call a head fake, or indirect learning. We actually don’t want our kids to learn football. I mean, yeah, it’s really nice that I have a wonderful three-point stance and that I know how to do a chop block and all this kind of stuff. But we send our kids out to learn much more important things. Teamwork, sportsmanship, perseverance, etcetera, etcetera. And these kinds of head fake learning are absolutely important. And you should keep your eye out for them because they’re everywhere

the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

the best gift an educator can give is to get somebody to become self reflective

So. How do you get people to help you? You can’t get there alone. People have to help you and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth. Being earnest. I’ll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.

edison - I haven't failed I just found 10,000 ways that did not work. 

Haykin - A leader is someone who sets the creative direction for a concept and can then harness the human resources to turn that concept into a reality.

Identify the future before it happens. A good leader has more than vision -- a good leader sees an end point.

A paper I wrote I want to remember

Randy Pausch and achieving childhood dreams

I believe Randy Pausch was able to achieve so many of his childhood dreams because:

1.   He desired it enough to work hard to get it.  He knew what he wanted and he went after it. 

2.   He was willing to adapt.

3.   He had a good attitude.

4.   He learned from each experience that helped him in the future.

When he wanted to learn to play football his coach had rode him very hard. The assistant came over and said something that Randy never forgot. “When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up.” He also learned from his football experience teamwork, perseverance and sportsmanship. All attributes he used to achieve his dreams.

He also talked about brick walls and how they are not there to keep you out but instead they are there to give you a chance to show how badly you want something.  He achieved his dreams because he wanted them badly enough to get past the brick walls.

I do feel dreaming is very important because it allows me to escape from the stress of life for a little while, it gives me the energy to get up and move forward on what I want to do, it gives me purpose and direction in life.  Life is boring without dreams.  If you don’t dream about what you want to do in the future then you have no future.  I have experienced this personally. There have been a couple of times in my life when I felt like I can never have some of the dreams I always wanted.  When I let go of those dreams I became very depressed and unhappy in life.  Instead I have learned to keep the dreams I really love, even if I never attain them, because they help me to escape in a ‘happy world’ for a little while.  I have also learned to adapt, to change those dreams slightly and to make new dreams. I have some dreams I may never accomplish, but in my mind I have lived them so they are as good as if I had accomplished them. I also have lots of new dreams I have come up as an adult to keep me busy.

    One dream I had as a child is to own a home on property where I had goats, chickens, horses and a big garden.  With each home I have bought the thought was in my mind that they were stepping stones toward that dream.  But alas I am nearly 60 and the dream has not materialized and I am not sure it ever will.  For one thing, my husband is not on board with that dream.  At first he said it would be too expensive.  Now we can afford it but he says it will be too much work and what will we do with the gentleman’s farm when we go on a mission.  My son is living my dream right now so I go out to his place and enjoy the land, gardens, and animals.  I dream about it off and on and envision as if it was mine and what I would do.  Then I get up and incorporate some of that dream onto my city plot.  I have fruit trees, dogs, and a big garden.  It is not the full dream but for now it is part of it and it keeps me very busy.