Pondering Strategy...Thinking About Life, Reflecting on Robin Williams "Dead Poets Society"

Sitting here late in the night...or is it early in the morning?  Have spent a great deal of my time today directly and indirectly evaluating my involvement with Isagenix, where that involvement can take me, and how best to move forward.  Though not by any stretch of the imagination familiar with network marking, after looking at some of the information found on the Isagenix site, the formula for success seems fairly simple...I get the two plus two and so forth and so on process.  Talking with my sponsor, private messaging a few other ISA consultants,  understand and have set for myself the goal of five on the right and five on the left with each of them having five on the right and five on the left...my 10 100 plan for myself.  The numbers simple, my success found in the giving of myself, in the sharing of my skills and knowledge, helping others to climb up that proverbial ladder to success.

 

Question then becomes...how to get there, how to accomplish my goal, my dream.  Play the part of Santa Claus making a list and checking it twice.   This part of the process is where my mind started wondering, pondering, the initial thoughts like a pebble tossed into a pond as the ripples move out toward the shore in 360 degrees.  Part of me remembering the Kiss Principle, while conceeding the fact that few things about myself, my life have ever been simple...visualize tossing a few more pebbles into the pond, ripples crossing ripples, new patterns and possiblities expanding out from not one but numerous center points.

 

Back decades ago my Mother (God bless her soul) gratuated high school with straight A's but college was not a reality for her...my Dad conversely had an opportunity to attend college, did so but never graduated.  On one hand lack of opportunity, on the other opportunity squandered.

 

Growing up I was not like the other kids...different is not necessarily a bad thing, and sometimes there are reasons behind that different that some of us are.  I found sitting under a railroad bridge, my feet dangling in the stream far prefarable to playing with the other kids...it was easier, there was no having to explain things like how I got all those bruises on my back and legs.  I loved reading a good book, or writing poems that no one would ever read...in short, I would have been one of those teenagers that would have fit in as a member of the "Dead Poets Society".

 

Opportunity...

 

When I graduated high school there was not enough money to pay for my graduation gown so I skipped my graduation ceremony, so as one can probably guess, college was not an opportunity on the horizon for me, though later on in life I was finally able to some degree to cross that goal off of my own life list of thingss I wanted to accomplish.  I spent a brief amount of time in the new "All Volunteer Navy" realizing I was not really military material...what can I say, was not very good at taking orders, or following directions...is there really a difference between those two words?

 

I've been called stubborn, driven, intense.   I am one of those people who stands out in a crowd, a person who people always seem to remember.  A lot of my friends would say I find a way to be successful (depending on one's definition of the word) in spite of myself.  I'm also a bit of a recluse, preferring the company of my camera, or a pencil and writing tablet some place out in the woods...a part of me would say, "It is safer that way."

 

Money...

 

I love some of the creature comforts that come with having a few dollars in my pocket.  A good bottle of Merlot, the occassional good cigar, or shopping for food for a dinner to be shared with close friends, but money is not something that drives me...if it is a byproduct of some of the things I do that is great, but never really worked at accumulating or keeping it.  Most times, especially now at almost 57, find that I much prefer using my talents in a way that make others smile, which might explain why it is that I don't have what one could call a real job...of course, having spent most of my adult life being an artist, a creative soul tilting at windmills, not sure I have ever really had (for any long period of time) what one could call a REAL JOB.

 

Opportunity...

 

Right now sees me residing in a small hamlet on the edge of the Catskills, my apartment nice, most of the people I know struggling, working hard just to put food on the table and keep a roof over the heads of themselves and their children...many of the things that many of us take for granted they see as distant dreams, something they wish they could do while secretly believing that goal out on the horizon is out of reach, something unattainable, an opportunity not really there for them.

 

If you are lost and confused at this point, don't feel bad...just as lost here as I try to wrestle with what I am envisioning for my own plan to get from A-J in Isagenix.

 

Tell me if I am stupid here...seriously, I have no problems being seen or even considered the "Fool on the Hill"...Beatles FLASHBACK...Scroll down if you do not want to read the lyrics.

 

Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin

is keeping perfectly still

But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.

Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud

But nobody ever hears him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice,

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.

And nobody seems to like him,
they can tell what he wants to do,
and he never shows his feelings,

But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.

Ooh, ooh,
Round and round and round.

And he never listens to them,
He knows that they're the fools
They don't like him,

The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning 'round.

 

Opportunity Given...

 

After much thought, am thinking I would love to find a way to build my first ten associates, five on the right and five on the left by giving them the opportunity they cannot afford, finding a way to have them put skin in the game in some way other than with the cash they really do not have to get started in Isagenix. 

 

Not a free handout, not charity, but a chance, an opportunity wished for, dreamed about, but because of the cards dealt to them, an opportunity that in the current here and now is out of reach for them.  

 

 Looking at my own buy in, my own skin in the game, can cover a similiar investment in the futures of ten deserving souls...the question becomes how to find them...how many of us have known someone and said to ourselves, or to someone else, "All they need is a break, a chance, and think they would run with it"?  How many of us have given someone a chance, a break, the opportunity to prove themselves?  How many of us have been a success in our lives because someone took a chance on us?

 

I like my stategy...the devil is in figuring out how to find those ten people who will  run with the opportunity, will one day walk across the stage at a Isagenix conference to share their story, their head held high, while I stand in the back of the auditorium beaming like a proud teacher watching a favorite student as they are handed their diploma, my thanks their smile as they step to the podium.

 

Again it is three in the morning, and I really should turn out my lights and get some sleep...if you read this post, would appreciate your thoughts and feedback on my idea.