“Thank you for only breaking my heart instead of ruining my life.”

     The best gift some people have ever given me is when they made the choice to end our relationship at the right time – a choice that either I didn’t have the strength to make or I didn’t have the vision at the moment to see the long-term damage that continuing the relationship was about to cause both of us.  In reflection, some of the best memories in my life were created by relationships that, even though may have ended, ended at the right time - associations that didn’t go too long so as to hold one another back or create long-term resentment, blame, or anger. 

     You know, when it comes to relationships, the fork in the road can be a scary place for all of us.  And I’ve observed that when most of us arrive at a folk in the road regarding a relationship, we become like children once again who are afraid to walk an unfamiliar path, not knowing what’s around the next bend.  But I usually notice people make one of three choices.  They take the relationship down a path it wasn’t designed to go, risking long-term resentment, unhappiness and damage to what was at one time considered a blessing.  They end the relationship but spend the next few months or years standing at the fork in the road, afraid to move on alone.  Or they allow the relationship to end and have the courage to say, “Because this relationship ended, I realize I can’t see happiness or feel it or hear it right now.  But that doesn’t mean happiness no longer exist.  It just doesn’t exist where I’m standing.  And that gives me the strength and faith needed to take a new path and find it again.”

     Sometimes, the greatest blessings in life are relationships that end at the right time.  And while the forks in the road regarding relationships can’t always be avoided, allowing this “part of life” experience to create long-term resentment, fear, and anger doesn’t have to become a part of your future. 

     As Dr. Seuss said, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened...” 

    

TAKE A HIKE!!

“A large stack of limbs, stretching almost three hundred feet down the side of the road…” 

     At least that’s the way a few thousand people driving to and from their jobs each day may have described it. 

     A few weeks ago I sat on the steps of my back deck, watching a familiar scene.  The same older couple I’ve observed for a few years now was once again pruning a grove of Walnut trees located about a quarter of a mile behind my house – trees planted in straight lines and tight spaces, intended only for harvesting.  The couple’s job every few seasons is to prune the lower branches, which were now about as large as your wrist, so as to give the valuable trees more room to spread and grow. 

     While watching them cut and stack limbs neatly beside the road, I thought, “Wow, those would make some great hiking sticks!”

     Being an entrepreneur for almost eight years now, I began to realize the potential.  Here are four of the almost twenty-five possibilities I envisioned: 

1)  Make unfinished hiking sticks for kids and adults to paint at festivals, camps, daycares, or office functions.  Just look at the number of painting and wine stores popping up across the nation; stores like Uptown Art (http://www.uptownart.com).  I believe someone could take this same concept to camp grounds, daycares or summer camps and use unfinished hiking sticks as the canvas.  It would be “functional art”.

2)  Approach local campgrounds or convenient stores near campgrounds about selling your hiking sticks on consignment.  You could also approach local groups/organization about selling your hiking sticks for one of their fundraisers instead of the usual doughnuts, t-shirts, candy or car washes.

3)  Instead of using student loans to get a degree in business, sell hiking sticks and get paid while learning marketing, profit margins, inventory, customer service, sales and other “real world” business principles.  Any support you need is just a mouse-click away.  (The internet offers unlimited resources regarding running a business and great social networks such as www.48days.net.) 

4)  Not passionate about selling hiking sticks?  That’s okay.  I’m not either.  I understand that your passion may be to open a bakery, develop a landscaping business, open a painting studio, become an author or have your own accounting firm.  But why not allow opportunities that you’re not passionate about improve the skills that will aid you in areas you are passionate about?  Besides, my first business venture was candle making! (The lesson:  Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to create the life you desire.  It’s called sacrifice.)  

     If I were not currently investing my time in other projects, I may have pursued it further.  But honestly, I see these opportunities pretty often.  They’re everywhere! 

     So what became of the hiking stick business?  Who stopped and took advantage?  Who could see this opportunity as an open door or an answered prayer?

     Nobody.

     Outside of me taking a few limbs, not one person stopped. For one week, thousands of people drove by, many of them drifting back and forth to their jobs in a large industrial park, not realizing or acting on the opportunity placed in their path. 

     How can we improve our vision to see future opportunities God places in our path?  I believe it is when we apply and practice these principles – proven principles that have helped me along the way. 

•   Many opportunities have an expiration date – a use it or lose it time frame. 

•  What you get is what you see.  And our ability to see an opportunity improves greatly with a positive network of peers, experience, knowledge, and a really great attitude.  

•  Opportunities are everywhere!  Don’t become the traveler who, after becoming stranded in the desert and dying of thirst, swam across three rivers in search of water just to die a few hundred feet before reaching the well!  God-given opportunities intended to quench our thirst for personal success and fulfillment are usually closer than we think. 

     It took city workers three trips to haul the limbs away. Conservatively, I believe 2,000 hiking sticks could have been produced.  Basic math affirms that 2,000 hiking sticks at $20.00 per stick equates to $40,000 in potential sales – a missed opportunity that was literally hauled away using taxpayer money.

     As Henry David Thoreau’s once said, "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

     Are there opportunities around you that you’re not seeing?