You are not your past

Many people feel like they can’t have the life they want because of their past limitations or failures.

Maybe your family wasn’t there for you; you didn’t get the proper education, you’ve been fired from multiple jobs, or mistreated in relationships.

Many things aren’t fair and can cause a chain reaction of events that may take us far off course. There are also many bad choices we make, and as a result, we end up missing out on the life we want.

You may have made mistakes, gotten into trouble, fired from a job, lost a relationship, but that doesn’t mean it always has to be that way.

George Washington Carver said, “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.”

I agree with his quote completely. George Washington Carver was a more brilliant man than I will ever be. For today’s column, I would like to modify the selection to say, “Where there is no positive vision of the future, there is no hope.”

It seems most people’s vision of the future is dictated by the failures and limitations of their past, and therefore, they do have a vision, but it’s a negative one.

One trait of a successful person is they don’t allow themselves to be defined by their failures or their present unfavorable circumstances. Instead, they define themselves by a positive vision of their future.

That seems odd when you think about it. They define themselves by something that hasn’t even happened yet.

It’s easy to look at a great person and assume they had everything handed to them or that somehow life was much easier on them than it was you.

I have many fond memories of my parents taking me to Disney World. I’ve been on the rides, seen the movies, and heard about the man who built it all, Walt Disney. I’ve driven past the Disney skyscraper in Burbank, California, hundreds of times; I’ve auditioned at Walt Disney Studios dozens of times. When surrounded by all that accomplishment, it’s hard to imagine that Walt ever faced any hardship.

Most don’t know that Walt Disney was fired from his job at the Kansas City Star after his newspaper editor told him that he didn’t have enough imagination or creativity!

What if Walt Disney allowed himself to be defined by that moment, and for the next 20 years, he wandered from job to job, telling himself, “I’m not creative, I don’t have a good enough imagination….”

If he would’ve, he never would have created Laugh-O-Gram. Laugh-O-Gram was an animation studio that Walt was contracted to run. The studio was supposed to make twelve cartoons. Although the company started promisingly, it wasn’t long before Walt was living at the office, taking weekly baths at Union Station in Kansas City, and finally bankrupting the studio; what a disaster.

He sold his camera, which gave him enough money for a one-way train ticket to Hollywood, California, and the rest is history.

I wonder how many potentially great people never accomplished their vision because they believed in their failures more than their vision of the future. They accepted what their present circumstances were telling them rather than what their future vision was telling them.

If Walt Disney was one of those people. We’d have missed out on one of the most creative minds of the 20th century. Most obviously, he chose not to allow those negative experiences to define him because he became one of the most influential people of all time.

Like all great people, Walt Disney didn’t allow his future to be dictated by the failures or limitations of his past.