Sunday, December 5, 2010

Pursuing your dreams, one applied idea at a time

Pursuing your dreams, one applied idea at a time.
I am sitting in the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica waiting to board my flight to Miami and then on to Los Angeles, finishing the trip in Hong Kong.
I have been invited to speak at the Asia Consciousness Conference, an event sponsored by a university in Hong Kong and also to speak at another conference titled “Reignite”, whose title called my attention from the beginning.
I have never been in Hong Kong so I am really looking forward to it. I don’t know how many people will attend; my fee will depend on attendance, since I get a percentage, plus book sales, but in reality, visiting a foreign city, meeting people and making connections is more valuable than what I can make out of the conference, in the long run. In fact, I had to turn down a speaking engagement in Mexico in order to attend this conference.
This means that in my personality profile, the security need is very low since I am willing to take some risks.
The conference here in Costa Rica took place at the Cariari Hilton and it was a meeting of Human Resources professionals from all over Central America.
I really love speaking to Human Resources people, they are so open, and they are so enthusiastic that it is a pleasure to be involved in their events.
I covered a few principles in my talk but one of the most important ones was the fact that we are all one applied idea away from making it big in whatever field we work in.
I believe knowledge is power but what is really true is that applied knowledge is power because if you know and you don’t do, you don’t know.
You might have a hundred ideas in your life time, or a thousand, but if you do not apply them, if the idea is not followed with action, your idea goes to waste.
I gave them several examples. I told them how flying from San Juan to New York, and reading the book Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman. There was one page, only one page out of three hundred or so pages dedicated to the marshmallow experiment.
Out of that page, I got the idea of writing the book Don’t Eat the Marshmallow Yet which is now a worldwide best seller with over 2 million copies sold.
How many people read the book, went by the marshmallow page and kept on reading?
One single idea, in this case, writing the book and my career went to a new level.
I spoke about Jeff Betzos, a kid raised in Miami, American mother, adopted by a Cuban American, Miguel Betzos who did such a good job raising him that Jeff changes his last name to Betzos.
This guy had a well paying job in Wall Street and he had one idea, one big idea. Start the largest bookstore in the world. He left everything in order to pursue that idea and look at what has happened.
By the way, the first name he chose for his business was Cadabra, Inc and it was not until one day when he got a call from his lawyer and he mis pronounced the name Cadabra for Cadaver that he had the bright thought of changing the company name.
He then named it Amazon, because it starts with A, so it is high up in directories and because the Amazon River is ten times bigger than any other river in the world and he wanted a bookstore ten times bigger than any other bookstore in the world.
His dream became reality after very hard work and perseverance.
How about Ralph Lauren? He had one idea, change his name. His name is now famous all over the world and we all have, well, almost all of us have had a Ralph Lauren product during our lifetime. How much could he have sold with his original name, Ralph Lifshitz? Good for him for realizing that his real last name wasn’t that hot.
How about the policeman in Providence, Rhode Island, a fellow named Tony Lapore, who working as a traffic cop, was so different, so original that he became a celebrity, by just directing traffic and now he is no longer a policeman and has a great career as an entertainer?
There are so many examples.
The point is that you must pursue your dream and you must not allow anyone to destroy it. We are surrounded by piranhas, by negative people who want to pull you down and prevent you from reaching your dream. Sometimes it is on purpose; other times they are well meaning people who simply are very negative.
You must not give permission to anyone to put you down or decide whether you have what it takes it or not.
Guess what? I have to board the plane. So, I am glad that I was able to write over 800 words, so my editors at the Puerto Rico Daily Sun won’t be mad.
Let’s see how Hong Kong goes and I will let you all know about it.

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