D.R. Bickham's Blog, page 2

Extraordinary Commitment

Life certainly has a way of testing your commitments.

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal for myself to write and publish my first book this year.  I started the task in early March and had completed a manuscript by the end of April.  After completely reading through the book and making corrections and revisions as needed, I gathered enough courage to send my work to an editor.

The editor’s response to my work was overwhelmingly positive.  He absolutely loved it!  He looked over the book and sent it back to me and we had a conversation about ways it could be improved upon.

I set about to make those improvements, thinking I would get them all done in a day or two.  All I was really going to do was revise a few things.  The only real rewriting I planned on doing was on the last two chapters, particularly the ending.  No problem, right?

Yeah right.  That “short process” ended up taking damn near a month for me to finish.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do the project.  It wasn’t that I lost excitement for the project.  It was life.

In the early part of May, I got a call from the hospital.  My dad was there.  He had been admitted because he had started a public disturbance and there was concern for his mental state.

A bit of backstory before I continue.  My dad and I have never been close.  I had it better than kids who didn’t know their dads, but not by much.  He and my mother divorced right before I was born and there was no solid visitation schedule.  He just basically came around when he felt like it, which during the majority of my childhood translated to roughly once every six months.

As I got older, I began to feel like I really didn’t mean that much to him.  There was always something or someone more important to him than I was.  There was always some woman or drug or nightlife or whatever that he wanted to spend time with more than he wanted to spend time with me.  Resentment set in somewhere around my teenage years.

I remember my dad telling me he loved me for the first time when I was fourteen years old.  I also remembering not believing him.

To compound matters, once I got older he remarried and adopted two children.  Those children became the apple of his eye and he has always treated them far better than he ever treated me or his grandchildren.  To put it in perspective, he carries a picture of one of them in his wallet.  He has never carried a picture of me or any of my children in his wallet.  Hell, he can’t even seem to remember my kids’ birthdays.

Okay, I’m going completely off the rails here.  Let’s get back on track.

Basically, my dad is unable to take care of himself.  To complicate matters, no one else is willing to do it.  His ex-wife used a restraining order to get him out of the house he has lived in for the past twenty years.  Those “precious kids” he adopted are either too busy or just unwilling to help.

So he’s now staying at my house.

The man doesn’t want to be here, and his mental state doesn’t help.  He alternates between being angry and miserable.  I’ve had to deal with the police showing up at my house because of him calling and claiming that I kidnapped him.  I’ve had to go after him when he decided to walk out of the house in a huff.  I have had to listen to him curse out both me and my wife when we have done nothing but try to help him.  He has even physically threatened me.

So, needless to say, my writing time has suffered since I have had to deal with him.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: even though my life has changed drastically, I’ve still held fast to my commitment.  Even though it’s taking much longer than I expected to get my book published, I’m still pushing along.  I finally got my first round of editing and revising done yesterday, weeks past my self-imposed deadline, but I’m proud to say that I did not quit.

And the book is still coming out this summer.

My apologies for the post being so long.  We’ll talk again.

From Dream to Reality

On March 3rd, I took to the task of making my dream of writing a book a reality.  Fifty days later, on April 23rd, the book was finished.

To say that finishing the book felt great would be an understatement.  It felt awesome and incredible, like I had reached a plateau that I had been striving to reach for years.  And all it really took from me was committing to doing it and making the time to work on it everyday.

You know there’s a reason I’m telling you this, right?

On that first day that I sat down to write that book, I had nothing.  Well, physically, I had nothing.  I sat down in front of a blank computer screen.  The words did not magically appear.  The writing spirit did not magically descend and settle upon my shoulders.

But what I did have was determination.  What I did have was an unquenchable desire to see my dream become a reality.  I wanted it badly, almost more than I wanted air!  And it was that drive, that grasping onto a dream refusing to let it go that kept me at it day after day, chiseling away at it page by page, word by word, until the book was a 40,000 word reality.

I’ve said all of that to say this: our dreams do not have to stay dreams.  I believe that if we take the time daily to move in the direction of our dreams, if we take purposeful steps towards making our dreams a reality, it will happen.  All it takes from us is the willingness to put in the time daily towards working on it.  Remember, even the largest boulder can be reduced to a pebble if it is consistently chiseled down.

If you have an unrealized dream, go after it!  Why not take a hour out of your day for the next fifty days to work on making it a reality?

After all, the only one who has the ability to make your dreams a reality is you.

We’ll talk again.

The Time of Your Life

There is a scripture I came across during my reading time today that has struck a chord in my heart: “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?” (Haggai 1:4)

This scripture refers to a time in which God’s people were rebuilding their destroyed cities, but neglected to rebuild God’s temple.  It paints a picture of His people living in the lap of luxury within their “paneled houses” while neglecting the very thing that should have been more, if not the most important part of their building: the house of God.

The reason this scripture stuck so much with me was because it made me think about my own life.  I have spent an extraordinary amount of time during the past year on myself.  I have started my blog, writing my book, and improving my mindset and quality of life.  And while I don’t feel like I have neglected my God, I had to think twice about whether His most important blessings to me were receiving the attention they deserved from me.

God has richly blessed me in more ways than I can count.  At over forty years of age, I am in great shape physically.  I am highly intelligent, and have been blessed with awesome writing talent.  On top of it all, I have been recently blessed with a mindset of greatness which insists on me striving towards fulfilling my purpose in life and living out my dreams.

Materially, I have been blessed as well.  My children lack nothing.  My wife and I own property and multiple cars, and have very little debt.  And we also happen to be in the great position of being able to invest in ourselves and the fulfilling of our dreams.

Despite all of that, I still need to be sure to not forget to cherish the most important of all of my blessings, the wonderful family He has given me.  It’s very easy for any of us to say that we give our families the time and attention they deserve, but do we really?  It can be too easy for us to become so entrapped, entwined, and entangled with the concerns of life and “making a life” that we forget to maintain the lives we already have.

How often have we put our work lives or our school lives or even our “play” lives before the lives of those we claim to love so much?  Too often we hide behind the justification that we are “doing it all for them”, but how much are we really helping the ones we love by choosing to spend all or most of our time with everything except them?

In this drive and push towards becoming extraordinary, we must also give a priority, perhaps the highest priority, to being extraordinary husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers.  We must make it a priority to let each and every one of our children know every single day that they are loved and cherished, and that no job or education or playtime is more important to us than they are.

In our efforts to become extraordinary we must never forget to put extraordinary effort into building, maintaining, and strengthening our most important relationships.

We’ll talk again.

The Five Extraordinary Helpers

A confession: I have found it extremely difficult to continue maintaining a blog as of late. But the reason for that difficulty is a great one for me: I have started writing a book.

To be fair, I had already started writing a book, and in fact produced a rough draft of said book quite a while ago. But it was just that, a rough draft that wasn’t suitable for anyone outside of extremely close family and friends to read.

Recently (March 4th to be exact) I have taken on the task of rewriting, revamping, and revitalizing my project. This entails starting from the very beginning and working my way all the way through to the end.

My initial completion date is set for April 4th. I am doing my best to hold fast to that date, but life happens. As of this writing, on the 25th of March, I am on the fifth chapter of a twelve chapter project, with 18,000 words completed. That puts me at a little less than halfway through the book, and although that is fair progress, I had hoped to be much closer to completion by this time.

It is for this reason that I have been unable to give my blog the attention it deserves as of late. But I believe I may have found a way around this dilemma.

Instead of coming up with new and different topics to write about in my blog, I am going to simply write about how things are going in the writing process, at least until I have finished my book.

In light of that new direction for the foreseeable future I have elected to focus the remainder of this entry on the five types of people who have helped me the most in getting this far into making my dream of becoming a published author a reality.

In no particular order, and without further ado:

Accountability partner – I have several accountability partners and they are all great. We talk every Sunday and discuss what our goals are for the week. I will admit, more often than not I actually fail to complete the goals I set for the week, mostly because I tend to be more idealistic than realistic, but the process of setting the goals and knowing that I am going to have to give an account of how I progressed towards the achievement of those goals is an excellent motivator for me and it works wonders.
Believer – I am so thankful for the people I have in my life who believe in me. Trust me, it’s much easier to accomplish just about anything when you have people in your life who back you with belief. All of my friends believe in me; if they didn’t we wouldn’t be friends!
Coach / Mentor – This person has been where you are and has already achieved the goal that you are setting out to accomplish. They serve the dual purpose of helping you map out the best way to reach your destination and reminding you that your dream is within reach. My personal mentor has written and published nine books so far, and everytime we speak I end up taking pages of notes. This person is absolutely necessary in helping you reach places higher than you’ve ever been before and will save you the time and headache of trying to figure out everything on your own.
Encourager – Kind of like the believer, the encourager is the person who picks you up and keeps you up, the person who constantly reminds you of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This is the person who helps you keep going when things get rough. Even a person who excels in self-motivation sometimes needs an extra push, and this person is available to do just that.
Truth-Teller – Ah, the truth teller. This is the person who tells you the truth about yourself, not in a mean or abrasive way, but rather in a constructive way, a way genuinely meant to help you become better. Although what you learn from this person may be somewhat difficult to swallow at times, if you are anything at all like me you will come to appreciate their honesty. I remember a long-time friend of mine asking me why I hadn’t shared any of my writing with the world. I told him it was because I wasn’t adept in the use of the technology involved. There was a moment of silence before he responded with three simple words that I will never forget: “That’s no excuse.” Those words made all the difference to me and made me get up and make a change.

The types of people I have listed here are the people that I have found to be the most helpful in keeping me on track with reaching my dreams. Most have found a place within my inner circle and are people I talk to regularly. Also, there are people in my life that serve dual purposes; often times my believer doubles as my truth-teller or encourager. The point is no one has to fit in only one of these categories. The most important thing is having these people somewhere in your life, and being willing to be one or more of these to someone else.

Remember, the road to becoming extraordinary is one that is rarely traveled alone.

Facing the Fear

In my experience, I have found that there is one thing, one factor that determines more than any other if a person is to make the move from ordinary to extraordinary, one factor that can turn the tide either in favor of or against a person who is trying to do something outside of the norm.  That single factor?  Fear.

Before I continue, I need to make a clarification.  There are many people who base their lives on the absolute avoidance of fear.  If it frightens them they shy away from it.  These are the people who are too afraid of losing money to invest, too afraid of change to explore a new field, and too afraid of failure to try anything outside of the norm.  They don’t grasp the concept that failure is in actuality a stepping stone to success, and should be used as a learning experience.

We all would benefit from developing the capacity to look at the failures in our lives the way scientists look at a developing serum.  They expect to come across problems and failures in the lab.  They don’t expect things to go perfectly the first time.  They understand that it might take years to perfect their work.  Nevertheless, they continue on, learning from every failed attempt until the time is reached when their experiment becomes a success.  They persevere through the tough times, adapting to changes and making the necessary corrections along the way.  Finally, one day it all comes together, and when it does all of the trials and tribulations they encountered along the way are rendered null and void.  All that matters in that day is the final product.  All that matters in the end is victory.

Essentially, that is the primary difference between those that make the jump to extraordinary and those who do not.  Understand, the extraordinary person is not the fearless person.  Extraordinary people face the same fears as everyone else.  The difference is not in experiencing the emotion of fear, but rather in how that emotion is handled.

I am willing to admit that I still feel fear at times.  When I decided to write a blog, the first thought that popped up in my mind was a fear that I wasn’t a good enough writer to do this effectively.  Then I was afraid that I wouldn’t have anything to write about week after week.  Then I was afraid that the blog would be a waste of my time and no one would even read it.  In truth, I still deal with those fears every single time I sit down to prepare a blog.  But the thing that I have learned that has helped me more than any other single factor is to act regardless of the fear.  Even though my daily affirmations have no declaration that I am fearless, they certainly declare that I am unstoppable.

In his book The 10X Rule, legendary salesman and businessman Grant Cardone talks about fear as a good thing.  He in effect says that if you aren’t fearful about a goal that you’ve set then your goal isn’t large enough.  I have taken this principle to heart in my goal setting.  Right now, I have a ridiculous goal of writing a book and publishing a book by summer.  Do I fear that I might not be able to meet this goal?  Of course I do.  Do I fear that people will not find my book interesting?  Yes, I feel that one too.  Am I going to let any of those things stop me from writing 1500 words a day as I chisel away at reaching that goal?  Absolutely not.

We would all do well to realize that fear is always going to be present when we attempt to do anything extraordinary.  We should also realize that we should take on an unstoppable attitude and not let our fears keep us from accomplishing our dreams.  In order to create extraordinary success for ourselves, we must elect to be diligent and unrelenting in the pursuing of our dreams.

Remember, even the largest boulder can be chiseled down to the size of a pebble if consistent effort is applied.  And essentially that’s all any of our fears are, boulders that need to be chiseled down to size.

Make a determination today to no longer allow fear to keep you from reaching your dreams.

 

 

Choosing Your Circle

Another component of being extraordinary is taking responsibility for the caliber of people you allow in your life.  I am not referring to the people you have to be around such as the people you work with or do business with.  I am talking instead about the people you choose to allow access to the deepest parts of your life, your inner circle.  I’m referring to the people you spend the most time with, the people who you talk to on the phone, the people you choose to allow access to your leisure time.

There is a saying that the people closest to you are a reflection of you.  In my experience I have found this to be absolutely true.  When I surrounded myself with people who always complained about work, I found that I was also complaining about work.  Conversely, when I surrounded myself with people who were thankful that they had a job, I too demonstrated a more thankful attitude.

Knowing this, we should all make an effort to “reach up” in our relationships.  Instead of spending our time around people who are going to bring out negative or unproductive qualities, we should instead opt to spend time with those who are going to bring out the best in us.  Whether we like it or not, everyone we choose to spend time with is teaching us something.  We would do well to elect to spend our precious moments with those who are going to teach us things like how to believe in ourselves and how to be positive and productive.

When you are striving towards being something more than the norm, you will always be met with naysayers and negative people along the way.  These people will attack your self-confidence and sow the seeds of doubt in your spirit if you allow them a foothold in your life.  If you are choosing the extraordinary life, you must be rid of these people immediately.

Oftentimes, the naysayers and negative influences will come in the form of family members or long-time friends.  I remember my mother always having a positive attitude towards me, always telling me that I was bound to become something special, and always believing that I could do anything I set my mind to doing.  My father, on the other hand, told me when I was teenager that I was nothing special.  I remember specifically telling him about my dream of becoming a psychologist; he snickered and responded with, “Oh, you’re going to psyche someone out?”  The day I told him God had spoken to me, he responded with, “Why would God speak to you when he has so many other people to choose from?”  When I started having speaking engagements he never showed up.

As I grew older, I cultivated and nourished my relationship with my mother.  My father and I never have been very close.  I realized that they both had things to teach me, and although I have never been mean or hostile to my dad, I made it clear that I had no interest in what he had to teach me about myself.  I chose early on to embrace and become closer to the parent who taught me to believe in myself and to pull away from the one who was teaching things that I perceived as negative.

We all have the same choice to make.  If we are to live an extraordinary life, we must accept responsibility for the people we allow to be closest to us.  We must elect to be rid of toxic relationships no matter how comfortable they are to us and learn to embrace relationships that encourage positivity and genuinely want to see you do your best.

Remember, negativity and doubt have no place in the life of the extraordinary.

An Extraordinary Change

I see more and more of a change occurring within myself each day that I implement the Miracle Morning routine.  I believe in myself more than I ever have before, and I don’t care much about what other people think of me.  The word “can’t” has pretty much disappeared from my vocabulary, and I refuse to spend any of my time complaining about anything.  My goals have increased substantially, and I have committed my life to achieving my purpose and getting done what I was put here to do.

I understand that my calling in life is to write.  My original writing goal was simply to write more.  It was a simple, primal goal, but it produced the desired effect.  I started writing more.

However, with the passage of time, I found that it was time to produce a more specific goal.  I started writing a book, which is now two-thirds complete.  Being so near to the completion of my first book, I have started coming up with ways of expanding it into other mediums.  Publishing is the first step, but I have already started gearing myself up to produce a screenplay, pilot, comic book, and animated series.  I take this calling very seriously.

I see myself as unstoppable, as a primal force of nature that gives no apologies or begs forgiveness for what I have become.  I have begun to realize that this life is a gift, that it is ours to mold and shape as we please and that we alone have the power to create our success.  I refuse to be a leaf blowing in the wind of fate and circumstance; I instead pledge to do and be all that I was put on this earth to be.

I understand that there will be naysayers.  I understand that there will be those who just don’t get it and are intimidated by my drive.  I understand that there are those who will claim to mean well as they attack my dreams and attempt to downplay my confidence with negativity and a “can’t do” attitude.

I also understand that I don’t have to give my precious time to such people.  I know that any relationship that is detrimental to my happiness is a relationship that must cease.  Our life relationships should complement our lives, not complicate it.

I see that success in this life is something that we must strive for, something that we must achieve for ourselves.  Success is not handed to us.  We must be willing to put in the time and the work to get what it is we want and to make our lives what we want it to be.  We must be uncompromising, unreasonable, and determined.

Becoming extraordinary starts with a commitment and a call to action.  Being extraordinary requires that we do more than what is expected of us and more than we have ever done before.  Being extraordinary is not so much what you do, but rather the frame of mind that pushes you to do the things that will bring about an extraordinary life.

Choose today to be the day that you become extraordinary.

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

A little less than a year ago, I was having something of a difficult life.  I had just recently lost my mother and had become the administrator of her estate, and my brother was not happy about it.  What was already a pretty stressful time became even more so when he vehemently opposed everything I did.  He objected to my appointment as administrator.  He refused to vacate the home, making it very difficult to sell the house, even though the only other option was foreclosure.  He told anyone who would listen what a terrible person I was and when I went to visit the property he refused to let me in and called the police, claiming that I was hostile towards him.  With the police present, he proceeded to publicly and loudly spew curses at me in the front yard, going so far as to call me the devil and saying that mom’s passing was my fault.

Around the same time, my ex-wife aka the mother of three of my children assaulted my fifteen year old son.  Being concerned for the safety of my children, I immediately stopped her bi-monthly visits and filed court paperwork.  In retaliation, she called the Department of Children and Family Services and made all manner of false accusations against me and my wife.  As a result, I was visited by a social worker the same day I returned home from hearing my brother’s verbal tirade.  Needless to say, it was a rough day.

The night yielded no peace.  I tossed and turned for much of the night, unable to rest.  The next morning, my wife saw how agitated I was and proceeded to tell me about Hal Elrod.  My friends and followers of this blog pretty much know the story from that point.  I read his book The Miracle Morning and adopted his five minute rule, namely not allowing any situation, no matter how negative have more than five minutes of my time.  I took things a step further and implemented the Miracle Morning into my day, and I can honestly say that things have never been the same for me.  I have never had another bad day and I am actively improving my life in leaps and bounds.

How did I do it?  How did I take one of the worst days of life and use it as a springboard to improve my life in leaps and bounds?

Well, much of it has to do with daily implementation of what the Miracle Morning calls the Life SAVERS.  These are six simple things that many successful people do every morning.  It may sound a little cheesy, but for me these things work and are essential to my life.

Each letter in SAVERS refers to one of six actions:

S – Silence.  Every morning I take time to meditate and pray.  I have a certain area of my house dedicated to just that.  I sit quietly and talk to God, not asking him for things like some kind of spiritual Santa Claus, but instead thanking him for already blessing me with everything I need to excel in the coming day.  Then I just sit, quiet my mind, and enjoy the peacefulness.  I’ll admit that when I first started doing this, it was pretty hard for me to quiet my mind.  I had to constantly make myself stop thinking about issues and problems and everything else.  But with time I got to a place where I could tell myself to just stop and enjoy the silence.  Again, it might sound hokey, but this actually works, so much so that I now also take the time to do it every night before I go to bed.

A – Affirmations.  This one was a little hard for me to get into as well.  I just felt silly standing in front of a mirror talking to myself.  What I have found works best for me is doing written affirmations.  In the morning, once I’m done with my meditation, I go to the computer and begin writing an affirmation for the day.  Everyday I write something different, because for me it keeps things fresh and keeps me from just blindly repeating the same thing over and over again.  Also, writing them down helps me see how much I’m progressing, and also brings things to light that I would have otherwise missed.

V – Visualization.  Being a person who connects more with writing than any other medium, I also elected to daily write down my visions.  Again, I can see them progress with each passing day.  The first vision I wrote was pretty simple; I just wanted to be a writer.  Now my visions are more along the lines of publishing multiple books and having a successful and well-read blog that I add to weekly.  Trust me, once you make your visions something tangible that you can see, you will begin to make those things happen both consciously and subconsciously.

E – Exercise.  This is actually my favorite part of the Miracle Morning.  I wouldn’t call it a full-fledged workout, but I do spend ten minutes or so doing light exercises.  Jogging in place, jumping jacks, push-ups, and sit-ups are a regular part of my regime, and they do a great job of getting my blood flowing without tiring me out too much before work.

R – Reading.  I spend at least ten minutes every morning reading a book that will help me focus my mindset and prepare me for taking on the day.  My favorites so far have been The Miracle Morning, T. Harv Ekers’ Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, and Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule.  Just by doing this, I average reading a book a month, nowhere near the sixty books a year the highly successful claim to read, but much better than the zero books a year I was previously reading.

S – Scribing.  I end my Miracle Morning with another ten minutes of writing, usually in the form of journaling, blog writing, or working on the book I am going to publish this year.  I would strongly suggest keeping a journal, if for no other reason than to keep track of all the things you learn during your reading time, and also to capture the moments of enlightenment that will no doubt come as a result of doing these things every morning.

And that’s it.  That’s how I went from being a mostly miserable person trudging through life to becoming an overwhelmingly positive person who realizes that I can make any dream or wish I have ever had come true.  Yes, it really is that simple.  If you can change your mindset, if you can change the way you see things, you can change your life.  Every day your eyes open is another day of hope, another opportunity to begin creating the life you dream about, the life you’ve always wanted.

Make today the day you start tapping into the potential that exists inside of you.  Make today the day you decide to go from ordinary to extraordinary.

Planning a Successful Year

With a new year quickly approaching, the time has come for us to choose how we are going to spend it.  Of course, we can choose to do the same things, live the same way, and have the same experiences that we’ve been having up until now.  Or we can choose the far more exciting road of electing to do something new and different this year, something that will not only be a joy to experience but also serve to bring some of our dreams to fruition.

For the sake of clarity, I am not talking about resolutions.  Resolutions are great for the five percent of the population that can actually hold to them past February.  No, I’m referring to making a short list of things you most certainly want to accomplish next year.  Make that a very specific list of things you want to accomplish next year.

My short list, for example, includes writing a final draft of and publishing my first book, writing and performing a stand-up routine, and starting a video blog.  Notice how my targets are very specific.  At any given time during the year, I’ll be able to ask myself if I’ve accomplished these things, and if I haven’t I’ll be able to access how close I am to getting them done.  This affords me the opportunity to keep track of my progress and push a little harder if I’m not getting the job done.

I would encourage all of us to make such a list.  Every one of us has things that we want to do, things that we have been wanting to do, but for some reason or another haven’t done.  Why not make the coming year the year that we stop putting it off and get that thing done?  Why not make this the year that you begin living that extraordinary life of your dreams?

Think about it: there are 365 days in a year.  365.  That’s a lot of days.  I believe any one of us can do just about anything we want in that much time.

So in a way, I’m posting a challenge to be better and do better in the coming year.  I’ve already presented some of the things I’m planning on doing, and I invite any and all of you to do the same.

If you want to talk about some of the things you’d like to get done in 2017 but don’t really want to post it under the comments, feel free to drop me a line about it via the contact form I’ve included at the end of this blog.

Let’s make it a great year!

We’ll talk again…

 

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