Jolt! by Phil Cooke (whitelam books .TXT) 📕

I believe that you were born for a purpose. You were not a cosmic accident, and your life has not been a mistake. I believe that each of us has a purpose that only we can accomplish and a promise that each of us was born to fulfill.

Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let’s love turbulence and use it for change.

—RAMSEY CLARK, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL

As you read this book, take control of your own story and stop letting fear control your life. You are not the result of random chance. You are here for a purpose, and you’ll never experience real change until you discover it. Now it’s time to start exploring that purpose and move to a new level of confidence.

» JOLT #4

START AT THE FINISH LINE

Knowing Your Dream and Destination

A sailor without a destination cannot hope for a favorable wind.

—LEON TEC, MD

Shortly after college, I led a team deep into the headwaters of the Amazon River to film the work of a medical team in a remote village deep in the rain forests of Brazil. I discovered that getting there wasn’t easy or safe—in fact, the greatest challenge was finding out just where “there” was.

We flew commercially about halfway up the Amazon River and then chartered a small private plane. I’ll never forget sitting on a beat-up oil drum in the back of the plane, which about midflight I discovered was filled with the fuel for the return trip! Between the weight of that fuel drum, our camera equipment, and the crew of four people, the small plane could barely take off. As we finally lifted off the ground, our right wheel clipped a tall tree at the end of the airstrip, and we all gave a huge sigh of relief as the plane veered upward toward the clouds.

It was an exhilarating trip following the Amazon River from the air, and after a few hours, we landed at a remote dirt airstrip in the jungle. We then boarded an old river freighter for another long day traveling even deeper into the rain forest. When the freighter could no longer navigate the narrow waterways near the source of the river, we loaded the film equipment onto small canoes and paddled for a day.

We finally arrived at our destination. The four of us had arrived at a place for which there were few maps, and what maps existed had little detail, markers, or points of reference.

And yet we made it.

We made it because I understood our destination. I didn’t completely know how to get there, and our methods of transportation were unpredictable, plus once we started we had no outside communications. We didn’t have many resources or much money. But we knew where we were going, and we understood when we arrived.

» YOU CAN OVERCOME MANY OBSTACLES, AS LONG AS YOU KNOW YOUR DESTINATION.

Having that singular goal made all the difference. The relationship of change to a specific destination is critical to understand.

We all had goals in our lives when we were children. But life has a way of distracting us from our early dreams, and few of us could actually say we’ve become what we dreamed as children. In my case, that’s probably a good thing. Some research indicates that something significant happens to most people between the ages of five and seven. For some reason, creativity starts to drop at amazing speed. We start to believe that we aren’t really that creative, and I believe that, as a result, our dreams and goals begin to die as well. It’s interesting that right in the middle of that five-to-seven age range is one major life event—starting school. Is the switch from childhood “free-range” living and learning to one of disciplined, often rote learning responsible? I don’t know. There are certainly convincing arguments on both sides of the issue. But it does tell me that, as parents, we certainly need to reinforce, encourage, and celebrate our children’s creativity during those critical years.

But what’s worse than giving up childhood dreams is that most adults lose the ability to dream at all. Somehow we believe the adult thing to do is to be grounded in reality, forget our daydreams, and settle for the hard realities of life.

There’s no question that life can be hard. We all have mouths to feed, families to take care of, and house payments. But reality is a poor substitute for the ability to dream about the possibilities life has to offer and, even better, to actually experience the benefit of those dreams.

Goals in writing are dreams with deadlines.

—BRIAN TRACY, PERSONAL SUCCESS COACH

Whenever I feel my dreams losing steam, I always think of Booker T. Washington. Because he was born a slave, his childhood years were anything but pleasant. The family’s farm cabin had no glass windows, and any opening to let in light also let in the freezing wind in the winter. The floor of the cabin was dirt. The life of a slave was backbreaking work that started before the sun came up and continued long after it went down again. Washington’s childhood was also lived out during the Civil War, which created turmoil, fear, and uncertainty in the lives of Southern slaves and added additional pressure to an already hopeless state of affairs.

But in spite of that desperate situation, young Booker dreamed of an education. His goal was learning—real learning. Not just the ability to read a newspaper or dime-store novel, but a desire to learn science, mathematics, history, and more. Years later, working deep in a coal mine, he overheard some of the miners talking about a school five hundred miles away called the Hampton Institute. He immediately decided that one day he would attend the school, in spite of the distance.

His dream simply would not die. As a result, he not only attended the school but was later asked to lead a new program in Alabama, called the Tuskegee Institute. He