Overcoming obstacles and living our dreams

July 31, 2011 by JD · 2 Comments
Filed under: A Year From Now, Act On Your Dream, Music, Musings, Personal, Self-Improvement, Success and Failure, TED Talks 

What is your dream? What are you doing to live it?

It’s a lot easier to think about something we want to do and to imagine doing it than it is to take all the steps to plan how to achieve it and then acting on our dream to make it real.

You already know that, don’t you?

Even when we really want to do something and we have a plan for getting there and we’re taking the proper steps to reach the goal, sometimes we are faced with major obstacles to reaching our dream.

I love music.

I love listening to music and I love playing music. I’ve played guitar for over 40 years and banjo for over 35. I love playing music.

All my life, I’ve wanted to play piano, but I never made it a priority.

I’ve wanted to read music fluently, but I’ve never made it a priority.

If I study a piece of music, I can work out the notes, but it’s a very slow process. I can’t look at it and immediately play it and I can’t look at it and hear the music in my head. I would like to do that.

But, it’s never been a priority. I’ve never made the time for it and put in the work that is required to master it.

Last year, when I realized that the cancer wasn’t going to kill me, and I wasn’t able to work, I spent a lot of time and effort working to learn how to read music and studying music theory. I made some progress.

As I got stronger and my thinking started clearing up, I started moving back into working and music wasn’t as important.

Then, a few months ago, I woke up one morning and couldn’t move my right hand. Not a bit. I thought I’d slept on it wrong and it would be okay if I got up and did my normal activities. Slowly, over time, it’s gotten a lot better. I’ve exercised and stretched it every day, several times each day. Over time, I got to where I could use all my fingers, except for my index finger.

Today, I realized I was typing faster and more accurately than I have since I hurt my hand. So, on a whim, I got out my banjo, put on my fingerpicks, and tried to play a song.

I had to hold my hand a little differently from how I had over the last few decades, and I had to adjust the pick on my index finger, but I found I could hit the right strings.

So, I started playing a song, slowly, as slowly as I did when I was first learning all those years ago.

You know what? I could play my banjo, again.

It wasn’t beautiful music, but it was recognizable and better than I have played in awhile.

It felt wonderful and now I’m inspired to make music a priority, again. Maybe not my number one priority, but pretty close to the top of the list.

So, now, it’s time to get back to learning how to read music and play piano. I will learn music theory and become a proper musician, and I know that will help in playing guitar, banjo, and fiddle, too.

I found a great site to help me learn to read music and play piano: Learn Piano Online at the key-notes Virtual Piano Studio by Albert Frantz.

He is an accomplished classical pianist and I assumed he had learned to play piano as a child, but I learned that isn’t true. He didn’t start learning until he was 17, and that’s considered impossible for anyone who wants to become a classical musician. Most of them start when they’re two or three years old.

He faced other obstacles that slowed down learning to play piano. Among other things, he had his fingers caught in a car door, and later, he broke his left wrist. But, he didn’t let that stop him. He persevered and approached the task from different directions.

Here’s a TEDtalk where he goes into his background and the obstacles he had to overcome to live his dream. I find it fascinating. Maybe you will, too…

This inspires me even more to pursue my goals of learning to read music fluently and to play the piano well.

I’ll never be a concert pianist, because that isn’t something I want to do, but I look forward to playing a variety of songs for my own enjoyment and for sharing with my friends.

I know that you’re facing obstacles as you try to live your dreams, too. We all do.

I truly believe that with dedication and creativity, we can find a path that will lead us to achieving the goals we set for ourselves.

Not every goal is achievable. I’ll never be the fastest runner or compete in pole vaulting or ride the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby. There are many things that are impossible for us, and I don’t care if people disagree with that statement.

But, there are many, many dreams that are not only possible, but perhaps easier to achieve than we may think.

No matter how much you believe you can do something, it may be impossible to achieve, but you never know until you try. But, you have to be realistic, too. The universe will not grant you anything you want just because you want it. You have to work for it. And even if you work for it, some things are still impossible. An easy example? I’m a man. It’s impossible for me to give birth to a child. So, I don’t waste any time wanting to do it or trying to do it. That’s just totally unrealistic. If I were a woman, however, it might be a feasible goal.

On the other hand, I can state categorically with no doubt that you will never achieve your goals if you believe you can’t and don’t even try.

As Albert Frantz points out in this video, one man may dream about being the fastest man on the planet, while another dreams about being able to walk. For the right people, with the right skills and abilities, either dream may be a major achievement.

People face obstacles every day. Sometimes we see them approaching and sometimes they take us totally by surprise. But, we all face obstacles that we must overcome, burst through, go around, tunnel under, or climb over in order to continue on our chosen path to living our dream.

Do you have a dream? Don’t let it go. Work to make it real.

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

President Obama’s Speech to Students

September 7, 2009 by JD · 2 Comments
Filed under: Musings, Politics, Success and Failure 

As you may, or may not, know, I no longer watch TV. That means that I no longer watch all the news shows and the Sunday morning political shows.

I find that I don’t miss all the bickering and misrepresentation that goes on and my life feels just a little more peaceful as a result.

So, I was pretty much unaware of President Obama’s scheduled speech to students in American classrooms until I saw tweets showing up (on Twitter, of course) saying that parents were being given the choice not to have their children watch the speech in their classrooms.

Now, that’s all I know about the controversy surrounding this, but it feels like more political wrangling and bickering more than anything else.

So, I went looking to see if the White House had released the text of the speech, and they have. Here are the Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama, Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009.

Being a somewhat thoughtful person who would rather respond to facts than react to vitriol, innuendo, and mischaracterizations, I read the speech for myself. The first time, I read it to understand the gist of it. The second time I read it, was to look for anything that might be objectionable. The third time was to enjoy the meaning of it.

I only wish I could write that well and be that inspirational.

Success is not easy. It takes a long time and lots of hard work, and education is a vital component in achieving the success we want.

Those who learn how to depend upon themselves for learning, who set goals and work to achieve them, and buckle down and keep working when the going gets tough are the people who will succeed at what they want to do.

We need more of these people.

When I was a student, I was complaining about one of my teachers and Mom told me, “The best teacher cannot teach someone who does not want to learn; the worst teacher cannot stop a dedicated student from mastering that subject.”

Now, my memory is dim on this, but I think she said that Martha Berry said that to the students when Mom was attending Berry Academy way back in the mid-20th century.

Tomorrow, President Obama will tell students across America this…

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

What parent would not want their child to hear the President of the United States of America address personal responsibility in such a way?

Why is this objectionable?

(Hang on a moment. I’m going to go and read that speech one last time…)

I’m back.

This paragraph jumped right off the page when I read it…

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s the American dream expressed in four short sentences.

We make our own future.

He will continue…

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

No matter what we want to accomplish with our lives, in order to be successful, we need to set goals for ourselves and then work to achieve each of those goals, one step at a time.

Find ways over, around, under, or through the obstacles that will show up in our path. Keep on trying until we succeed at what we want to do.

If you’re looking for the secret to success, “keep on trying” may not be the only secret, but it is a vital component.

That doesn’t mean we have to keep knocking our heads against a wall when we run into one. We have to evaluate our approach and our goal and where we are at the moment. Then, we need to apply our intellect, imagination, and experiences to the problem and try a new approach.

Keep on trying.

Everyone encounters obstacles that must be overcome…

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Finally, President Obama will challenge the students to do their best…

…I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it….

This is a great speech. It tells the truth about accomplishing what we want for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our country – and I might extend that to include our world.

It reminds the students that everything won’t be smooth sailing, but we can accomplish the things we set our minds to achieving.

It challenges each student to do his or her best – to be an asset rather than a liability.

I feel sorry for any child who is not allowed to watch President Obama address the students of our nation tomorrow.

Do you think there may be something objectionable in it? Then take a few minutes and read it for yourself…

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama, Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009

Act on your dream!

JD

Tags: , , , , , ,