Jim's Gems:Follow Your Dreams

Have you ever really looked around and noticed all the incredible ideas that surround you? I did this the other day and found myself absolutely awestruck by the realization that everything in sight was once just a picture in somebody's imagination.  

The laptop computer, the colored printer, the overhead light, the ballpoint pen, and a host of other things were all once just visions in the heads of their creators. Visions that were likely laughed at by people who the visionary dared to share their inner thoughts with.  Or at the very least the dream was met with doubt before coming into fruition.

Recently I was reading articles a friend sent me which focused on some of the greatest minds of the 20^th century — from universally recognized icons like Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates to people like Philo Farnsworth and Leo Baekland, whose monumental inventions – television and plastic, respectively, long outlived their names.

As I read through the articles that detailed the lives of these great inventors and looked around at the world they impacted, I was reminded of the inevitable rewards of doing what you love, The necessity of drowning out the voices of the doubters and following your dreams as far as they will take you.

Imagine how different your life would be today if Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, or Jonas Salk had given in to the destructive power of doubt? By the same token, just think of all the fantastic things we would have if everyone including you and me stayed true to their own great ideas and saw them through to fruition.

In one article, Bill Gates, who has been hailed as one of the "greatest minds" of this century and likely the next, reflected on the phenomenal achievements of the Wright brothers.  Gates observed that the airplane was in effect "the World Wide Web of that era, in bringing people, languages, ideas and values together."

Gates wondered where tomorrow's Wright brothers might be now and asked his readers, "Who would have thought, as the 20th century opened, that one of its greatest contributions would come from two obscure, fresh faced young Americans?"

The answer was, of course, those two young men themselves. They knew that in spite of the challenges and all of the failed, misguided tries that they were really onto something. So they tuned out the doubt, stuck to their guns, kept on trying against all odds, and created something that changed the world forever!

The moral of that story is so can you. There's a world out there waiting to be changed and it needs your ideas, creativity, passion, and action!

The bottom line is to have confidence in yourself, your ideas, and pursue them relentlessly.  Ideas are but nuggets of opportunities made to come to life by committed action. Remain focused on your dreams and stay flexible as ideas germinate in the loose soil of positive thinking.

 Think about it.