With just 27 days left to go before her finale in New York City, Ashley Kumlien has made it to Columbus, Ohio after months of running, travel, and much impatient waiting on our end. Tomorrow night we will entertain privileged guests to a screening of Without Limits, the Prefontaine film and a special Q & A with Ashley. The main goal of MS Run the US Inc. is to raise awareness about MS and inspire individuals across the nation to donate towards the cure of this disabling disease. Many of you may already know this since you've been following us over the past few months but for those who don't, please take a moment to catch up on Ashley's story and her inspiration for the run in our Profiles section. We also encourage you to visit her website MSRunTheUS.com and donate as well as visit our shop and purchase a Go The Distance t-shirt to wear your support for Ashley and her cause (this is temporarily sold out but will be available again with the MS Run The US logo on or before September 14th). 

She logged 13 miles this morning and will be completing another 12 this evening, a handful of us in tow eagerly trying to keep up! In between the run times Blake and I have had the opportunity to help her film the latest update for Fox News Wisconsin; check out her last interview at Miller Park here. 

Ashley will be headed out of Columbus on Thursday and shooting towards Pittsburgh, PA, (Sept 9) on her way up to NYC on September 27th. We encourage anyone in Pittsburgh or New York City to message us at info@golivethedream.com for details on running with Ashley on her final stretch or showing support in other ways. 

*If you are in the Columbus area we invite you to join us for this event which will be held at the Marcus Crossroads Theater, 200 Hutchinson Avenue Columbus, Ohio. Tickets are $10 at the door. 

What is "Wealth Mentality"?

Renowned Russian author Leo Tolstoy tells a story of a beggar man who sat out on the streets every day pleading for pennies from passersby. This beggar, was so caught up in the doom and gloom of his self inflicted notion of poverty that he failed to notice that the pot on which he was sitting each day was in fact a glimmering pot of gold.

What else could you call this rather than a lost opportunity? I don’t think it’s necessary to expand much on this parable other than to say that I am sure your mind is spinning with thoughts of opportunities that you may in fact be sitting on. Even in the pursuit of our wildest dreams I think it’s entirely possible to still be sitting on pots of gold, which we could be using to a greater benefit.

Keep your eyes out for the opportunities laying right beneath you, lest you become like Tolstoy’s beggar, asking the world for a penny when you have your own pot of gold. 

The first 6 photos are from our good friend. 

When was the last time you saw the sun rise? Maybe you see it every day on the early commute to work, and if that be the case, consider yourself blessed. I encourage you not to let it pass you by with the hustle and bustle of the surrounding traffic. For those of you who don’t often catch the indescribable beauty of the sunrise, it might not be a bad idea to forfeit a little sleep every now and then in order to witness a striking site that will never be repeated quite the same way.  It has been said that a sunrise can put you in the ultimate good mood.

Here are a few sunrises Blake and I have been able to catch recently and one in which our good friend, Larry, caught just this past week in Washington DC. Glorious even in photographs which can hardly do it justice. How can one see this vision and not be inspired to embark on an incredible day simply bursting of new adventures? 

So I encourage you, if you haven’t taken in the absolute wonder of an ever so lovely sunrise lately, please do. You might feel a little sleepy later on but it’s worth it for the view. And chances are you will feel more productive, more adventurous and creative and will take more initiative all because you arose a bit early to receive a blessed sight. 

The following photos were taken by Chelsea and myself.

LIVE THE DREAM!

Do you ever wonder why some people receive and command attention while others are hardly acknowledged at all? Maybe you sit on the latter side of the fence and are wondering what it takes to be seen as a leader, due their respect. Well, here’s the key: Others see in you what you see in yourself. Therefore we receive the kind of treatment that we think we deserve, says Dr. David J. Schwartz, author of The Magic of Thinking Big.

Thinking does make it so. If you think you are inferior, regardless of whether this is true or not, you will be viewed as inferior. Why so brash? Because it’s simple, thinking regulates actions, so if you feel inferior you will inadvertently act inferior whether you realize it or not. Oh, you can try to cover it up but your bluff won’t last for long.

On the flip side, if you really think you are up for the task, equal to it or better, you are! If you want to be important, be a leader, you must think that you are. It sounds so simple but it’s the truth. Think and believe that you deserve respect and you will act as though you do. Act as though  you do and others will react to you as though you do too. The more respect you have for yourself the more others will have for you. It really is that simple.

1. Think Success, NEVER think failure. Whether at work, in your home or where have you, always substitute success thinking for failure thinking.

2. Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never sell yourself short. Never think that you are not good enough to compete with someone of great caliber. Tell yourself that you are equal or better than their best.

3. Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Live your life in belief. What does this mean? It means that a person who reaches the top rungs in any endeavor gets there by conscientiously and continually following a plan for self improvement and growth. Self improvement and growth inspire the size of the belief. 

We’ve all heard this phrase since childhood but how often do you find yourself forgetting the little proverb?  We talk the talk, but do we walk the walk?

A good friend of ours, Paul Kopecky, recently put it this way: “What you DO speaks so loud that what you SAY...I can't hear.”

That got me thinking. What would happen if you spent a day without hearing and just watched those around you, including yourself? What if you walked around for an entire day with ear plugs in? What would your experience be like? How would you view the world around you?  Because think about it, if actions speak louder than words, then I should be seeing a whole lot more positive action than I should be hearing simply spoken of. Would I see smiles and people giving one another a hand? Would I see encouragement? Would I see people loving life and making a difference? Would I be motivated and inspired by the actions I saw others (again, including myself) taking? Try seeing actions today and take to heart what others see coming from you as well.

The act of saying you will DO something is not doing the thing at all. You must BACK UP WHAT YOU SAY. In backing up what you say with action you transform expectations into reality. Which means that your reality can in fact be transformed by your expectations, correct? And if that’s the case, then in transforming, altering for the better, and advancing your reality, you have the power to successfully develop and improve your character.

We talk about character a lot. Not in the way that your dad does though: “Bee stings build character!” (They totally don’t, and in my case they only teach you that you need to carry and EpiPen…that’s not character that’s the difference between playing on the swing set or getting a stupid safety pop at the ER). Anyway, I diverge….I love what Paul has to say about character, “Character is that thing inside you that keeps you going forward with good resolution, long after that that mood in which you made that resolution has left you.” BAM! Write that down.

When you push through your comfort zone you discover courage and develop character, and if you want to be successful in life you must learn to possess and pursue these things. Learn how to be motivated to take your words to the streets. Don’t just say, ACT; and when you do, not only will you find motivation but you’ll find inspiration and purpose. And an individual with purpose can move mountains. 

One night, two frogs left the safety of their swamp and ventured into a nearby farm to explore. They soon found themselves in a dairy. Hopping and jumping around, they jumped into a milk pail half full of cream.

At first, they were both thrilled. They had never tasted anything so delicious! They drank and drank. Soon they were both full bellied and getting just a bit sleepy. “Time to get out of here and head back to the swamp for some shut-eye,” said the first frog.

But there was a problem. They’d had no trouble hopping into the pail, but how do hop out? The inside of  the pail was too slippery to climb, and there was nothing on which they could place their feet for traction to get up a good hopping distance….or any hopping distance at all.

The awful reality dawned on them: they were trapped.

Frantic, they began to thrash about, their little frog feet scrabbling for a foothold on the elusive, slippery curve of the pail’s edge.

Finally, the second frog cried out, “It’s no use! We’re doomed! Why bother? Let us save what dignity we have left and die here like frogs, with our eyes facing our homeland!”

The first frog cried out to stop him. “NO! We should never give up! When we were tadpoles, which of us would ever have dreamed that some day we would emerge from the water and hop about on land? Swim on, and pray for a miracle!”

The second frog eyed his brother sadly and said, “There are no miracles in the life of a frog, brother. Farewell.” And so saying, he turned his face in the direction of the swamp, gave a sigh, and slowly sank out of sight.

But the first frog refused to give up.

He continued to swim. He swam and he swam in ridiculous, pointless, useless, futile circles, hoping against hope for a miracle. Fired by adrenaline, he paddled mightily…yet his brother’s dying words clutched at his thoughts, even more insidious than the growing fatigue that tugged at his weakening muscles. Was my brother right?, he thought desperately. Am I a fool? Are there no miracles in the life of a frog?

Finally, he could swim no more…and with a great cry of anguish, he stopped paddling and let go, ready at last to face his fate like a frog.

But something odd that happened…or rather, didn’t happen. He didn’t sink. He just sat exactly where he was. Ever so tentatively, he stretched out a foot…and felt something touch solid.

He heaved a big sigh, both sad and grateful, said a silent farewell to his drowned brother, then scrambled up on top of the big lump of butter he had just finished churning….

….and hopped out of the pail and off to the swamp, alone, but alive. 

One simple question: Which frog are you? Are you giving up or are you pressing on? 

The water hyacinth is a beautiful, delicate-looking little plant. Prized as an ornament, it sports six-petaled flowers ranging from a lovely purplish blue, to lavender, to pink. You can find it floating on the surface of ponds in warm climates around the world.

The water hyacinth is also one of the most productive plants on earth; its reproductive rate astonishes botanists and ecologists. Although a single plant can produce as many as 5,000 seeds, the method it prefers for colonizing a new area is to grow by doubling itself, sending out short runner stems that become “daughter plants”.

If a pond’s surface is fairly still and undisturbed, the water hyacinth may cover the entire pond in thirty days.

On the first day, you won’t even notice it. In fact, for the first few weeks you will have to search very hard to find it. On day 15, it will cover perhaps a single square foot of the pond’s surface – a barely significant dollop of color dotting the expanse of placid green.

On the twentieth day (two-thirds of the way to the end of the month), you may happen to notice a dense little patch of floating foliage, about the size of a small mattress. You would be easily forgiven if you mistook it for a boy’s inflatable life raft, left behind during a family picnic.

On day 29, one-half of the pond’s surface will be open water. On the thirtieth day, the entire pond will be covered by a blanket of water hyacinth.

You will not see any water at all.

A simple action compounded over time leads to success. Like the water hyacinth, apply simple daily actions, which at first may go unnoticed, yet over time make all the difference.

*From the book The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

Someone asked me today what dreambuilding was. So I thought it would be a fitting blog entry. This was my answer.

My wife and I dreambuild weekly, we have dreams that we are going to accomplish but the only way to make a dream a goal is to put it in writing or to have it in front of you all the time. Our refrigerator is filled with pictures of the dreams we have, what kind of home we want, cars, clothing, vacations, dogs, etc. Sounds different huh? Well, whenever one of those dreams comes true we take it down, and we put another one up. 

It keeps us focused on our future and not the past, because we can only control the future. Many times to really create a burn we'll go tour multi-million dollar homes and go test drive $100,000.00 dollar sports cars. It reminds us that we're good enough to have those things, we just need to keep growing and applying ourselves. It also reminds us that we need to associate with the people in our life that believe in us, encourage us, and stretch us to become better people everyday. 

Dream-building also doesn't always include material things, Chelsea and I are inspired by intangibles like giving to organizations and ministries that touch our hearts and so on. When you're trying to reach a goal in life, you'll need material motivation and when the material things aren't motivating you you'll need non-material dreams too. 

I don't think enough people go dreambuilding, and when we're kids that's all we did, at what point do people stop? Why do people stop? I guess they give up on their dreams? Chelsea and I aren't better than anyone by any stretch of the imagination, in fact anyone could do what we're doing. They just haven't opened their mind up to new opportunities. There are many opportunities out there, you just have to have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

Live The Dream.

Blake

They say that the people you spend the most time with everyday will determine where you end up in life, right? Well I think a lot of people misread that statement, they do not consider that out of their friends the person they spend the most time with is yourself! That could be good news for some but bad news for most. Most people do not take the time to think about what they want in life. People generally take part in daily routines and "work" everyday without ever putting their mind to work for them. A sad truth that I heard recently is that 95% of people plan more for a family vacation than they do planning for their life. 

Truthfully many people feel like it is easier to perform for someone else than it is to perform for yourself. Life is more fulfilling when you have personal goals and dreams to accomplish in life. Leonardo da Vinci once stated, "A well-spent day brings happy sleep." He was a daily visionary, among many other things. When you chase your dreams passionately everyday, it is easier to sleep at night, it's easier to spring out of bed in the morning out of excitement. Looking/planning into the future gives you space to run freely while people who are always focused on the past seem like they are always stuck in a hamster wheel.

The point of our blog today is simple. Get down to the foundation of what you want, then set a plan to achieve it. Be extremely specific, put it in writing, and put a date on it. This all creates a since of urgency and will allow you to be productive. A good example is when you are on a scavenger hunt and have a list of things to find within a certain timeframe, you don't want to loose so it seems as if you are willing to do anything possible to finish the tasks. There is a list, and a time in which you are required to accomplish it. 

Pursuing a worthwhile goal is a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly event. Successful people make it a habit to accomplish their goals, successful people make it a habit to be accountable to themselves. The challenge many people face is that when they say they are going to do something and don't, their self-image goes down. Personal accountability trumps a low self-image, knowing this will allow you to create a track record of success in your life. 

To wrap up I will say this knowing it may sound like a broken record but it's vital to creating success in your life. Reading success books and listening to successful people speak on audio cds or mp3s everyday will develop your mindset to a level that will allow you to reach your goals. Your brain is the filter in which you see the world, don't let that filter be the negative media, negative associates, a bad radio talk show, or stupid tv show about nothing important. Your brain is the most valuable real-estate in the world, don't let bad influences pollute it. From the neck down you are worth about $8.00 an hour, from the neck up you are priceless, which one are you feeding more?

Live The Dream.

Blake Kuhn

In order to catch spider monkeys, hunters in South America simply walk through the jungle and drop heavy containers on the ground. These containers have very a narrow top and a wider bottom. Inside the containers the hunters drop a special kind of nut which is particularly attractive to the monkeys. Sometime later, the spider monkeys come down from the tops of the trees, smell the nut, but the tops of the containers are so narrow they have a tight squeeze to get their hands inside. Once they grab the nut at the bottom, their fist is too large to remove if through the opening. And the containter is too heavy for them to carry.

So instead of letting go of the nut, the monkeys just sit there until the hunters come back, pick them up, and throw them in a bag.

The spider monkeys are not prepared to let go of a small nut in order to gain their freedom.

It's a tragedy to see so many humans subscribe to this very dangerous thought process. They deeply desire a great life, but they refuse to let go of a good life in order to pursue a dream.

"Most people don't lead their life, they accept their life." -John Maxwell

Face up to the reality of your REAL dream, don't deny what you really want. Don't allow a certain set of "comfort-zone" circumstances break the small window of opportunity to live your best life. The biggest success stories can always be traced back to an individual breaking out of their comfort zone. I hope you decide to break out of yours. 

Live The Dream.

Do you ever feel like the right place often seems like the wrong place, and the right time often seems like the wrong time? That sometimes what seems like a bad break turns out to be a really a big break! It all lies in the risk. Past experiences prepare us for future opportunities, the catch here of course being that often times those experiences come in the shape of failure, fear, danger and just an all round horrible idea. How we react when we are faced with these challenges will determine our destiny.

Just a quick reminder today: don’t cower in fear and run away from your greatest challenges. Chase after them and seize them! Look back on your own life and consider your scariest challenges, were they not most often the greatest opportunities? Take risks, taking no risks is the greatest risk of all. These are the moments when you will come alive.