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The True Dreamers

~ Where ideas and actions collide

The True Dreamers

Tag Archives: dreams

The Last Mile of the Dream Marathon

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by Larry in Dream Actions

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dream, dreams, finish, finish line

All the pillars are in place, the ducks are lined up, the room is set, and the band ready to roll. While I have not reached the finish line just yet, I can see the dream signpost up ahead and the finish line tape waiting for me to bust through.

I have reached my financial goal to take the leap of faith and pursue my dream. I have the cushion necessary to give myself at least one year to succeed at this dream I have patiently been waiting to plunge into. The closer I get, the more I hope to reveal through this blog. Stick around; you don’t want to miss me smiling big and dreaming bigger at the finish line.

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Top 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Dream of Winning the PowerBall Lottery

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by Larry in Dream Thoughts

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burden, dreams, financial, happiness, money, PowerBall

0000000 powerballDon’t get me wrong, it would sure be nice to win the PowerBall.  I would be stupid if I said I don’t want to win.  That’s not really what we are talking about here.  I am talking about if you should actually dream to win it.

It may be bold to say, but here are my top 3 reasons you shouldn’t dream of winning the PowerBall lottery.

 

1.  Money won’t buy you happiness – It sounds like a cliche I know.  And having millions would definitely alleviate most financial burdens.  In particular, your concerns about paying your bills every month would disappear like a magicians coin. Perhaps, more specifically, the thought of how you might escape that dreadful office cubicle also disappears.  But there are plenty of happy people who are poor and miserable people who are rich.  Much of the research I have read talks about a minimum threshold for happiness so your basic needs are taken care of.  I have heard it can be as low as $40,000 a year and as high as $70,000.  After that, it’s more of your own personal circumstances and attitude based on factors unrelated to money.

2. Dreams are aspirations – Dreams are things you want to do or achieve based on passions you have.  Often times the best dreams happen when your passion, skill, and concept of helping others collide.  Winning a lottery takes no effort.  And when is the last time you heard somebody proclaim, “I am passionate about winning the lottery?”  Well if they did say it, I am sure their tongue would be pressing a ditch in their cheek.

3. Small money small problems, big money big problems – I can hear in your head what you are thinking when you read this.  “Those are the problems I would love to be faced with.”  I am not going to try and convince you that you wouldn’t want to win the lottery.  I will say, there are a host of huge problems that come with having money that you can’t even imagine.  Do you I know from experience??  Absolutely not!  Do I know others who have had these experiences??  Absolutely!  With money comes freedom but freedom with strings attached like a marionette.

So there you have it.  My top 3 reasons why you shouldn’t dream of winning the PowerBall lottery.  I guess that gets us down to one last question which is probably swirling around in your head.  Did I put my money where my mouth was?  Well…. sort of.  I have not dreamed of winning the lottery but I did put $2 into an office pool.  Why would I do that you ask? Because having fun talking with my co-workers about what we would do with all that money is worth $2.  It’s also funny to think what my company would do if they lost a whole team of workers on a single day.  That’s right, $2 worth of wonderful and giddy entertainment.  Maybe next time I will just put $2 to flame and watch it burn away.  Cause after all, that sounds fun too.  Until next post… Smile Big and Dream Bigger!  Not about winning the lottery though.

 

Why I Have Been So Quiet Recently

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Larry in Dream Thoughts

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blog, difficulty, dream bigger, dreams, quiet, quiet phase, restraints, smile big, writter

00000 quiet phaseI know it has been awhile since I have had a blog post. To be honest, at times I have struggled to come up with a new idea about following your dreams. I have, however, not given up on blogging. I have a second blog with no particular topic in which I blog about anything. No topic restraints. This is actually part of gaining some of the skills required to ultimately achieve my dream. See one of the key requirements for a potential business idea I have is to be a good writer. I wish I had the content to post a blog a couple times a week about following your dreams. Unfortunately, I am finding much difficulty in being successful at this task. This does, however, teach me an important lesson about having to be persistent.

Please bear with me as I go through this period of pause. I know that practicing my writing on another blog without constraints will lead to better and more frequent posts on this blog. Dreams take practice, learning, and patience. I am learning about this the hard way but I won’t let this deter me from smiling big and dreaming bigger.

Your Dream Doesn’t Have an Expiration Date

28 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Larry in Dream Thoughts

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amazing feats, dream, dreams, expiration date, late in life, never too old, old people

old dreamsAs I celebrated my 42nd birthday this month I couldn’t help but be a little sad that I have not accomplished more in my lifetime. I quickly realized, however, that I still have time to make all my dreams come true. That’s because my dream and your dream too, do not have an expiration date. As long as your heart still beats and your brain still functions, you still have time. So with the passing of another birthday I am increasing my focus on achieving my dreams and you should too. Use your next birthday as a springboard into the pool of accomplishment.

Everywhere you turn there are examples of individuals fulfilling their dreams late in life. There is Lucille Singleton from Harlem who started running at 67 and finished her first marathon when she was 75. There is Diana Nyad who after decades of not swimming decided to tackle the extremely challenging swim from Cuba to Florida. After 4 failed attempts, at the age of 64, she successfully swam the route. And there is Genevie Kocourek who was interested in medicine early in life but didn’t have the financial means to pay for med school. She decided to switch career paths much later in her career progression and ultimately achieved her dream of becoming a doctor at the age of 53. These are just a few of the endless examples of ordinary people succeeding at their extraordinary dreams much later in their lifetime. Want a taste of even more examples? Then here is a list of the 25 Oldest People to Accomplish Amazing Feats.

So whether you are 5 or 95, it’s not too early and it’s definitely not too late. Dreams are the milk that does not spoil. The milk does, however, very slowly evaporate. Don’t let your age be a barrier to your dreams. There already are way too many barriers. At 95 or 105, you still have some time to smile big and dream bigger.

Why My Friends are Tired of Hearing about My Dreams

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Larry in Dream Actions, Dream Thoughts

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achieve, bug everyone, dream, dreams, friends, hearing about dreams, keep telling, tell, tell your dreams

plug your earsI think I know what my friends are thinking these days. “Would you please stop bugging me about your dreams and what you are going to do once you achieve them?” Then there are the new folks that are most likely fascinated to hear my dreams, but think… “Why are you telling me this?” It’s simple really! The more people you tell the more likely you are to achieve your dreams. This idea on the surface, I realize, seems absurd. But once you delve deeper it really is not. The more individuals you tell, the more committed you become to achieving your dreams. After all, you don’t want your friends and family to see you fail. It’s almost as if everyone you tell is holding you accountable to achieve your dreams. You literally become more attached to your dreams due to the public declaration of your plans. Your dreams become that homework assignment you cannot fail, if you hope to become successful in the classroom of life. So keep telling, keep bugging, and keep spreading your dream gospel; because this is the road that leads straight to your dream haven.

Smile Big and Dream Bigger (tell more people)

What Happens When a 13 Year Old Girl Changes an Entire Community

27 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Larry in Dream Actions

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Bat Mitzvah, dream, dreams, jewish woman, joy, rabbi, teacher, tears, torah

Sophia Reading TorahMy daughter has always faced challenges in her life. From the day she was born she struggled with both physical and emotional challenges. As she grew older, some things we realized she would never do and others we were pretty sure she would achieve. When we started planning her Bat Mitzvah over a year ago we discussed with our Rabbi the minimum amount of prayers and work she would need to do in order to technically qualify. After much discussion, the Rabbi basically boiled the whole event down to two simple prayers – The prayer before and the prayer after the reading of the Torah. The Rabbi explained that if she could just do that, she would fulfill her duty to become a Bat Mitzvah according to Jewish Law.

After that initial discussion and understanding, we started to review all the prayers and rituals that most children accomplish when doing their Bat Mitzvah. We then proceeded to list them in order of importance. We set up a plan to have her learn each one and then move onto the next one. We did this with the assumption she would only move onto the next if she could successfully do the previous. For each prayer this meant countless repetitions of the same lines of Hebrew, using the appropriate tune. My daughter had to wind through a maze of ritualistic traditions.

As the year progressed, she kept getting farther and farther along down the list. First she learned and was able to recite the blessings before and after the torah reading. Next she learned the torah reading itself, and so on and so forth. The Rabbi kept assuring us that she would do great and it would be a glorious day. You would think as a parent of a special needs child, I would have agreed. But as the brutal honesty pains me today, I had my doubts. Either way, I knew it would ultimately happen and knew it would be emotional. I just didn’t know how much of it she would actually do.

It is very hard to put into words what happened that day. She was able to “Wow!” our Jewish community’s world. That day there were really only about 200 people there including friends, relatives, and the usual 100 or so congregants. She magically turned each one of their eyeballs into a flowing faucet. I have seen on many occasions a large group of people cry in sorrow or sadness, but I can truly say, on that day, that I have never seen so many people cry for joy.

That day, my daughter was more than a Bat Mitzvah (essentially a Jewish Woman), she was the wise teacher of all of us and we were her students. The rabbi always says a few words to the Bat Mitzvah after she has accomplished all her tasks but I wasn’t prepared for what he was about to say. Through his own tears he explained how she did things in her own way and how it was completely acceptable. He explained how the community has grown to love and embrace my daughter Sophia. And the grand finally was when he described her as HIS Teacher, HIS Rabbi. And that’s when I knew my daughter had changed an entire community.

As a parent you always think your child is special. And truth be told, every child is. But somehow, my daughter has had an impact on a community that in my wildest dreams I could have never imagined. I struggle to explain in this blog, the magnitude of this occasion. I just wish you could have been there so she could have changed you too.

Re-engineered Dreams

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Larry in Dream Thoughts

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Acceptance, Bat Mitzvah, dream, dreams, Expectations, Grow, Learn, Wisdom

engineerAs I face my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah just a few short days away, I can’t help but reflect on the dreams I had for her while my wife was pregnant and just before she was born. Those dreams came to a screeching halt when the Neurologist told us, at just one month old, that my daughter was missing an important piece of her brain. Even our Doctor, at that point, didn’t know what her life could be like. The range of cases was too large to predict.

So here I write with a totally different set of dreams for my daughter. I dream that she will do great and won’t need much help on the bimah. I sit here dreaming that she will one day truly become the young woman that she will become in tradition this weekend. I dream that she will one day have a job and live on her own. I am searching for just a few gold flecks in a muddled pan of sand.

Basically, my dreams for her have been re-engineered by nature. Through that re-engineering I have accepted her limitations. Still, there is much to be thankful for and new dreams have been revealed through my experiences with my daughter. After getting her diagnosis, I had simple dreams for her including walking and talking. Simple for us but potentially difficult for her. She achieved these a few months later than most kids but she did achieve them. I dreamt that maybe, even one day, she would finish High School. While she is not there yet, she is a little less than a year away from becoming a freshman.

Outside of the dreams she has already achieved, the dreams she will most likely achieve, and the dreams that are just too much of a stretch to achieve, I have learned something about myself and my own dreams. They are fluid and can change on a dime. They are still important to have and important to shoot for. I can only rely on an old but trite saying to describe it… “Reach for the moon, because if you miss… you will land amongst the stars.” Or something like that.

But there is one, very important thing that happened to me during the last 13 years. And that is the embracing of differences and even different dreams. It is one thing to say it but another to be living it. Every once in a while life surprises us with a beautiful unexpected gift birthed from tragedy. That gift for me has been wisdom. It’s the kind of wisdom that most spend their entire life trying to grasp. And here I am, just under half way through my life, and I have arrived at a destination island that takes a strong sturdy boat to get to. My daughter has taught me more in 13 years of being her father than I have learned in 12 years of High School, 4 years of College, and almost 20 years in the working world combined. Re-engineered dreams are just a whiskey chaser to that beer of wisdom.

Smile Big and Dream Bigger

The Elephant Sized Brick

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by Larry in Dream Thoughts

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courage, do it now, dream, dream bigger, dreams, jump, living life to the fullest, smile big, write

brick elephantSince my grandmother died I have been thinking a lot about life and living it to the fullest. In fact, so much so that I haven’t had the courage to type out a blog entry. My fingers have been stuck like lead feet in quicksand. So here I go with not a topic to tackle and not a thought to share. Everything I read though states you should always write even when you don’t feel the urge to write. I apologize in advance if this entry twists and curves with no boundaries or clear destination.

More and more every day I feel the urge to jump from the safety of the job ship into the vast ocean of risk. My wife and kids, although I love them dearly, continue to be the only shackles that lock me down from the jump. The sands of regret are starting to bury me. It started with my feet and is creeping ever closer to my chest. I only hope the risk ocean can free me from the heavy sand before regret buries me alive. Because life is short and the days are even shorter.

It’s hard to tell people what to confront when you yourself are not ready for the battle. But go for it, do it now… especially if you are young and have weaker chains holding you down. If you have larger chains, maybe even an elephant sized brick, you can still do it. You need to crash through the wall of fear because there is a rainbow made of gold on the other side. There will always be excuses. The older you get the more the excuses will grow, like a tapeworm feeding on your dreams. I wish I could do it for you, but I definitely can’t. I am still preparing to take the ocean sized leap myself. I will, however, share with you a short video that has helped me crawl one baby inch closer to facing the risks head on.

The Time You Have Left (In Jelly Beans)

Hopefully that helped put things in perspective. Here’s hoping you will take that leap of faith today to minimize the regrets of tomorrow. Try, try your best to Smile Big and Dream Bigger.

At the Age of 99, What Can One Hope For?

24 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by Larry in Dream Thoughts

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aging, choose yourself, Chris Guillebeau, dreams, James Altucher, regrets, Steve Jobs

Hope CloudsI recently got the news that my 99 year old grandmother is struggling again to stay alive. While I am sad, I am also distressed by the family drama that always comes at times such as this. Moments like these seem to always be accompanied by guilt, anger, frustration, accusations, and of course sadness. All these emotions are like that sticky gum you just can’t remove from the bottom of your shoe.

I understand the need for many individuals to want to spend as much time as possible with the dying while they live those last few days. For me, however, I prefer to remember the person in a state that was much livelier than the state near death. In all fairness, I wasn’t the best of grandsons but much of that had to do with previous family issues that came about long before I was born. I just couldn’t manage to clean off the old family dirt from my mind. You sometimes can’t realize the impact of your family’s muddled past pre-birth, can have on your post birth behavior. I don’t believe, however, in playing the victim so I take full responsibility for my lack of closeness to my grandmother. When it comes to this, I continue to lie in the bed of regret. But being a caregiver myself, although in a different vein to my daughter, it is difficult to open up and do what’s right for many of life’s important moments. I am like a locked down prisoner living in the chains I have created.

So with any pending death in a family, people tend to look back on their own lives as if they are near a river bank questioning the vividness of their own reflection. Just like many people, I started thinking to myself what if I was 99? What if I was that old and still had enough mental capacity to reflect back on my own life? I think now, more than ever, I know what I would hope for. I would hope to have as few regrets as possible. Already now, I have plenty of regrets. Since starting this blog though, I look forward to fewer as I move ahead. I am staring down a fork in the road and starting to have the guts to blaze my own path. I wish I could say that means doing more of what’s right for others, but after many years of being an includer and a pleaser I hope to be able to do more for myself. Unfortunately, sometimes the obstacles of less regrets include hurting those who are close to you. I thank James Altucher, who unveiled for me, the importance of choosing yourself. Deep down, I already knew this to be true but one needs to periodically be yanked free from the depths of a deep gorge. I thank Chris Guillebeau as well, who reminded me that you can still fulfill your lifelong dreams while also helping others.

Many would think by 99, that an individual would have had time to accomplish many of the things they dreamed of achieving. But deep down, in ravines of the unspoken, I think we all know that this is usually not the case. We go day by day thinking we have enough time, ultimately letting death creep closer. Or death surprises in a tragic boom which squashes our own life’s contemplation, but leaves us dead while others remain weeping.

Sure I had many happy moments with my Grandmother and I do cherish the time we spent together. Unfortunately, a combination of family drama and a special needs daughter became a fortress of bricks that I was unable to climb over. As I said before I take full responsibility. The victim lives in chains whereas the accountable take control. It’s that control which leads me closer to my dreams of achievement.

It is much too late to speak with her directly and share my regrets. That sun has set and the moon of death is rising. But I am very appreciative of the lessons she has taught me about living long even if quietly. She was good at living long yet remained challenged at living loudly.

I pray that my grandmother can persevere like she has many times in the past. She is a life warrior that always seems to find another sword to battle the grim reaper. While she inches close to death I am reminding about the importance of chasing your dreams. It’s captured well by Steve Jobs in three of the many paragraphs he delivered in his commencement speech to Stanford graduates in 2005…

“…Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“…No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

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 others’ 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.”

When death is staring one of your relatives in the face, it’s your wake up call to go after your dreams. Steve says it best in his closing remarks… “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!” It’s just another version of my usual closing…
Smile Big, Dream Bigger!

The Importance of Watch Winding

19 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by Larry in Dream Actions

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

dreams, grandfather, memories, watch, winding

Watch InerdsIt feels like just yesterday I was hanging out and laughing with my grandfather. This was my mom’s father who moved out to Arizona not too long after we moved there. He wanted to be close to his daughter and spend his remaining life somewhere warm. Coincidentally, I moved back to Arizona after college and became really close with him. My brother and I called him Zayde which is Yiddish for grandfather.

My Zayde was the craziest man I knew but in a good way. He was one of those men who was stubborn but could make you laugh on a dime. Zayde enjoyed life to the fullest and was never short of advice. He also invented crazy ideas to entertain us as children. Before moving to Arizona he lived in Maryland very close to Washington DC. When he came to visit us in Minnesota, we eagerly waited for his arrival like sons awaiting the return of their dad from the war overseas.

To this day I remember partaking in what he called recess. Ok, we weren’t really partaking. It was compulsory, a term he loved to use. This was especially true when talking about the necessary consumption of healthy foods like salad. Considering how fun it was, we were happy to oblige. So recess seems like a very typical idea, at least to a kid, but his idea of recess was totally different. He would put us to bed and say goodnight as if it was the last time we would see him until the next day’s sun rose. Well not so in his case. Just when we were about to fall asleep, he would run through the house banging a wooden spoon against a kitchen pot like a crazed monkey in a zoo. He would be yelling with excitement… “Recess! Recess!… Recess!” And we would follow his parade, running, and laughing in what seemed like almost the middle of the night, and what felt like a very long time. We would be huffing and puffing with exhaustion by the conclusion of this ritual. At the time it seemed like silly, useless fun, but when I think about it now I am sure he had some crazy idea that this would help get all the extra energy out of us to help us fall asleep.

Of course, a crazy grandfather has to have crazy grandchildren. In fact, he thought our whole family was crazy. Crazy to the point of the phrase he invented. In his eyes we were not people as they were way too dull for us. He used to say… “We have more fun than people.” It’s a phrase I remember to this day and will never forget.

Well just like all grandparents, he lived until his time was done. Although he always seemed, as Robert Frost would say, to take the road less traveled by. In my life, he certainly made all the difference. About a month after he passed away, I remember sitting in his vacant Scottsdale condo, each of us deciding what we wanted of his final possessions. What did we cherish and want to keep and what should we give away. At the time, I would have loved to have his relatively new Omega watch. Watches and other jewelry seemed like good mementos to foster great memories. I ended up yielding the watch to my brother since he didn’t wear rings at the time and I did. So I took my grandfather’s wedding ring, which I wear to this day, and my brother took the Omega watch. As what I thought was a consolation prize at the time, I took his older Omega. It was a watch that felt ancient to me although it was probably built and bought sometime in the 1960s. It had a slightly faded glass face, silver stretchy linked band, and an old wind up dial.

For years I had my Zayde’s old Seamaster 600 Omega watch. It was tucked away in the bottom of a dresser drawer, a vampire that wouldn’t dare see the light of day. One day, only a few short years ago, I took out that watch. It was always too big for my skimpy wrist so I never thought to wear it despite my love of wrist watches. Going outside without a watch, to me, was like leaving the house naked.

So I finally decided to get this dirty but memorable time piece spiffed up and re-sized for my wrist. The band was so old that the watch doctor had to create a tool just to remove the six rivets that were holding each rung in place. I can’t tell you the excitement and awe I felt when I had that watch snug comfortably around my wrist. The watch was hugging me like a toddler hugs his blankie. While I only wear the watch periodically, it means the world to me. From this point forward, I always left it lying out proudly on the top of my dresser.

Like any winding watch, it must be revved up on a regular basis like a car needs gas. At first, I would just wind it periodically or before I wore it out on the town. After all, what’s the point of wearing a watch if you can’t tell the time?

Then I got to thinking, what does winding this watch really mean to me? What does it represent? To me it represents the fragility of life and all the sweet memories I have of my Zayde. My grandfather is long gone now yet the watch still remains. I only wear it periodically, to this day, but I wind it almost habitually. I wind it when I wake up in the morning and I wind it before I go to bed at night. It’s like my emotional coffee in the morning, and my mental meditation in the evening. Every time I do, I am reminded about the short time we have on this earth. I am reminded about the importance of living life to the fullest. While there are days I struggle to live up to this watch winding, for that short moment (that the winding occurs) it’s a strong reminder. I do my best these days to wind it every day and night. There will be periodic times where I forget to wind it and I feel sad when I realize it. The watch, for those suspended moments, missed a chance to keep track of the dwindling sands of time.

The old sweet Omega existed before I was born, and will remain after I die. It’s a masterful time piece that I one day hope to give to one of my grandchildren, assuming my daughters have some. So this is the importance of watch winding. While you may not have a winding watch, or a crazy grandfather, I am sure you have something to remind you about the importance of the old Carpe Diem. Whatever it is, do it! Just do it! And do it frequently. Because one day you may look back and realize that this habitual winding was the secret potion for the accomplishment of your dreams.

As always, Smile Big and Dream Bigger!

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