Archive for September, 2011|Monthly archive page
DON’T LET YOUR GOALS BE YOUR GOALS!!!
Comments (3)Yogi Berra earned 10 world series rings as a player and 3 as a coach.
Wilma Rudolph won 3 Olympic gold medals.
Jack Nicklaus won 115 professional golf tournaments.
Were these their goals? Perhaps.
Did they accomplish these feats BECAUSE they set them as goals? I believe that they did not. To achieve these goals, each of these athletes spent hours, months, years on the baseball diamond, running track, and golf course, respectively.
I think they did it because they ENJOYED doing it – the rings, medals, and trophies were by-products of the love of their sport and the hours they spent enjoying it.
If Yogi had said “I want to win the world series,” but dreaded playing baseball, he never would have made it to the majors, let alone win championships.
Don’t walk because you want to get thinner, walk because you love it. If you don’t love it, find a place to walk that you actually do love, or walk with someone you love to spend time with. If you still don’t love it, get a bike, or swim, or play tennis. When you find a physical activity you actually enjoy doing, the pounds will come off without you even thinking about it.
Same goes with dieting. If you hate a diet you’re trying, it won’t work. Find healthy foods, portions, and eating patterns that you actually look forward to, and you’ll get healthier automatically, without you even thinking about it.
Same goes with just about everything else in this world. Don’t work hard for a promotion. Enjoy what you do, and the promotions will come. Don’t work on your marriage, enjoy it, and every little problem will work itself out.
Have goals if you wish, but don’t let them drive you, just check up on them from time to time, in between enjoying your activities, your diet, your life.
p.s. I enjoyed writing this.
My Philosophy Changing Teenage Mistake
When I was thirteen years old, I was discovering music like a hungry dog wandering into a deli discovering lunchmeat. When my older brothers had gone off to college in far away exotic places like Detroit and Lexington, they left behind a significant collection of albums. I suppose they preferred the latest and greatest (sic!) medium, 8-tracks.
So I listened and listened and listened. At first on my parent’s giant casket-like console stereo in the living room, and eventually on my own Montgomery Ward Airline Stereo with huge plastic headphones that made the rest of the world magically go away.
I heard Steppenwolf announce “God Damn the pusher man!”
I heard Stephen Stills tell Judy Blue Eyes “You make it hard!”
And Jimi asked me “Are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?”
And Jim declared “I’m a backdoor man. The men don’t know, but the little girl understand.”
I couldn’t get enough of this music. I wore the records out. I wrote down all the words and memorized them.
Around this time a great Chicago Radio Station, WFYR 103.5, started playing rock and pop songs from around 1960 through the current year of 1974. I knew a lot of the songs from the albums, but I also heard some for the first time. There was some stuff that, for some reason, my brothers never bought.
There was “Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you?” by Mick and the boys.
And “I’ve been loving you, for too long, to stop now” by the late great Otis.
And one day, as I listened to WFYR “Chicago’s Fire” I heard a song that blew me away!!!! It started with an amazing lead guitar and powerful bass rhythm, then jumped into amazing three part harmony… “Hey Mr. Tambourine man play a song for me….” Only I didn’t catch who sang it. I tried dialing the station but I couldn’t get through, again and again it was busy.
So I got on my gold 5-speed bike with a banana seat and sissy bar, and rode about 45 minutes into Glenwood, one town north of Chicago Heights where I lived, to my favorite place in the world, “Playback Records”.
I ran in the store and jumped right into the big fat yellow catalog of everything ever recorded. Mr. Tambourine Man…. Mr. Tambourine Man… There it was!!! Several people had recorded it. Joan Baez. The Byrds. Ahh…. “written and performed by Bob Dylan.” He wrote it! It must be him and his band. I never heard of him. I went to the record shelves. Dylan. Dylan. In my head I was pronouncing it Die-Lan. Here! Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. There it is! Mr. Tambourine Man. Side Two, Song One.
I bought it. $4.99. “Great Album” the old hippie at the register told me. Man I was psyched. Despite the extra baggage, I made it home in about 30 minutes, ran through the kitchen without acknowledging my mom cooking, and ran up to my Montgomery Ward Airliner Stereo. I went right to side two, song one. I laid back on my bed and listened.
I couldn’t believe it. “What kind of shit is THIS???” It was the right song alright, but it was being sung by possibly the worst singer I’d ever heard, including my friend Blair’s mom!!! My first instinct was to find the bag and receipt, and return it to Playback. As I was looking, the album drifted into the second song, Subterranean Homesick Blues. Same awful voice. A bunch of mumbled words that didn’t mean a thing. But somewhere along the line, maybe right when I found my receipt, I heard Dylan sing “Look out, Kid. It’s something you did. God knows when but you’re doing it again.” Well, I sorta liked that. I put down the receipt and went back to the album. Maybe I’d give another song a chance. “The Times They are a-Changing” looked potentially interesting.
“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you can’t understand. Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.”
I threw away the receipt. Over the next week I listened to Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits over two dozen times.
38 years later, it’s still Dylan I listen to. But it’s no longer on a Montgomery Ward Airliner Stereo. It’s now on iPod, iTunes, and YouTube. For better or worse, I’m still trying to decide, the times, they most definitely are a changin.
Check it out!
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What I heard on WFYR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06rGW0AQGiY
What I bought and angrily heard, by fortunate mistake:
