A daily personal blog

By
Michael E. Gerber

I am sure there are countless remarks about Steve Jobs’ retirement on the internet, and elsewhere.   I am sure mine are neither original, nor necessary, but I thought to share them with you in any case.  I was there, in Northern California, starting my company, The Michael Thomas Corporation, in 1977 when Steve Jobs and his buddy, Wozniak, were, just down the street from us, about to get inspired by their revolutionary idea of creating the world’s most ambitious venture, the birth of the true personal computer.  That was the time when if you used the word, computer, you meant IBM.  If you thought the word, computer, you thought Big Blue. And, as I was reading yet another column about Steve Jobs yesterday about how he brought fame to the name ‘business’ in the otherwise colorless world of commerce, how he brought  music to an otherwise notably unmusical endeavor, how he brought youth to the old, and play to the playless, I thought to myself, well, I never really got it before, but that’s what we did, Tom and I, in our new venture, MTC, when we wrote our first song about entrepreneurship, walking down the streets, knocking on doors, talking about entrepreneurship in a way it had never been talked about before.  Reading about Jobs, It was like coming back home, and appreciating for the first time how important what we had done, way back then in 1977, was, and how important it still is, to the millions we’ve touched all around the world.  And no, I’m not a rock star, like Steve Jobs is.  And no, ours was no Apple.  And no, we didn’t become the world’s largest company on the face of this earth, but, I’ve got to say it before it strikes me dumb, we were two extraordinary guys, Tom and I.  How come I never saw that before?  So, thank you Steve Jobs, for being as outrageous as you’ve been.  And thank you Apple for being the product of his eye.   And thank you, Tom, for inspiring me to go where I’d never gone before.  And thank all you good folks, for seeing the magic, the music, the mystery, in these wonderful things we’ve done.  And love to you all.

A daily personal blog

By
Michael E. Gerber

There are too many ways to find the sun,

Too many ways for one upon one.

Too many hearts to imagine, explore,

Too many souls to experience more,

And then, here we are, forgotten as men,

And then, here we go, to be gotten and then…

To be written, and done.

To be open, and won.

There are too many ways to find the sun,

Too many ways for one upon one.

A daily personal blog

By
Michael E. Gerber

Stimulation can come from so many places.  In my case, it’s most often visual.  What I see stimulates me.  We live on five acres in Carlsbad, California, overlooking the ocean (well, it’s about five miles from here, so not really overlooking the ocean – it’s more like we can SEE the ocean from here, but seeing is very important to me.  Because that’s how I get stimulated.)  More stimulating than the sight of the ocean is the extraordinary paradise my wife, Luz Delia, has been creating here.  Fruit trees of every kind.  Apples, peaches, avocado, mango, figs, and so much more.  And of course, this is the time of year when all of them are beginning to display themselves, with fruit beginning to speak to us with their lush expression of fruitfulness.  I love to see my beautiful wife, whose fruitfulness is also displayed in such a lovely way as she moves so eloquently and creatively about our gardens, picking this, seeding that, sitting and watching, wondering what next she’s going to be called to create, creating what she last thought of, saw, (she’s also a visual!), to add to the loveliness of the world. Of our inner and outer space.  Of this place we live in, create in, move about in, taste.  I can’t help but smile as I think about this idea of seeing as a spectacular series of events, of explosions of color and shape.  I smile because I realize that no matter how much this stimulation colors my life, or is almost impossible for my wife, the beautiful, so striking Luz Delia, to understand the feeling that lives within me all the time, every day, as my eyes speak and are spoken to by all and to all that surrounds me as I go about my way.  I truly know she doesn’t understand it.  Only I do.  I truly know that it is impossible for me to express this visual stimulation that lives in me in any way other than the ways I’ve learned to express it, as the roundness, the fullness, the diverse and extraordinary lushness of the visual world consumes me, enslaves me, stimulates me, to create.  And that’s the point of this blog, I suppose.  To simply share with you what goes on inside of me as I live in this world.  Because, by sharing it, by sharing myself, I might help you to discover something you’ve perhaps been missing.  That you’ve perhaps been under-appreciating.  That fullness, that explosive excitement that lives within you.  Explore.  And tell me about it.  And have a stimulating day!

A daily personal blog

By
Michael E. Gerber

My day, like yours I suppose, is a continuing puzzle.  Why, knowing as much as I do about what I do, does it always end up being so difficult to do it? Take this blog for example.  I made a commitment to write this personal blog every single day.  I did that because I’ve been told you would enjoy that – hearing from me about something which would entertain you, educate you, inspire you, and perhaps help you to do something you currently find so difficult to do.  So, I made the commitment, and I’m here to keep that commitment, assuming that all of the reasons given above are true.  And given that I presumably possess the talent, ability and knowledge needed to satisfy those objectives – that I can entertain, educate, inspire and teach you something you would find to be of sufficient value to return every day to visit with me. And now I’m not so sure I can.  I’m writing a blog, yes, but I have absolutely no ability to do what I set out to do.  None.  Zero.  At least that’s how it feels to me right now, as I’m sitting here trying to write this at 5:26 a.m., Wednesday morning, August, 17, 2011.  I don’t know what I want to say, and I don’t know why I’m even trying to say it.  I could simply pull the plug on this, here and now, and delete it, and go back to do something else.  (I could actually go back to bed!) I could do that, of course, but I won’t.  And I won’t do that because it would be depressing to do that.  It would be depressing to do that because I would have to readjust my expectations of myself, about who I actually am, about what I actually know.  And to readjust those expectations would mean my entire day would be shot to hell.  And that would, indeed, depress me.  Just thinking about it depresses me.  Saying it here to you, on the other hand, is kind of fun.  It allows me to say to you something that is true.  It allows me to share myself with you in a way that I rarely do.  It allows me to do anything, whatever shows up, for only the reason I’ve already given you, that I have made the commitment to write a personal blog, and this is about as personal as it gets for me, starting a day with nothing to say, other than what comes up, and what comes up – does it ever seem like this to you? – what comes up most days of my life, isn’t illuminating, isn’t shocking, isn’t inspiring, isn’t breakthrough stuff, it’s just this, what’s coming out on the page right now as I’m speaking to you — it’s just ordinary.  That’s right, just ordinary.  And there’s nothing more diminishing to me than to see how ordinary I actually am!  How about you, dear reader, have you ever come face to face with how ordinary you actually are?  Ow!  I think I’ll go away for a bit, and try it tomorrow again.

A daily personal blog

By
Michael E. Gerber

Have you ever noticed that when you change one thing in your life, you change everything in your life?  If you haven’t noticed it, you’re not looking.  Believe me, this phenomenon has an outrageously important meaning to each of us.  For example: yesterday I had a meeting with Cheryl White, who takes care of the details of my hopelessly complicated life.  (Hopelessly complicated because I believe I am hopelessly complicated, and always have been! Poor, poor Cheryl!)   We were discussing my schedule, Cheryl and I, namely my writing schedule, which now includes one personal blog a day for my website (you’re reading it!); two articles a month for Mentoring With Michael; one article a month for my column on BNI’s SuccessNet; two articles a month for our New Venture Development Program; a once-weekly email to all our Dreaming Room Facilitators (there are now 52, beginning to launch their Dreaming Rooms in 12 countries);  Two articles a month for Working On It!, and so forth and so forth.  There are many, many more, too numerous to mention here.  Additionally, I am writing a minimum of two new E-Myth books in our vertical book escapade – The E-Myth Chiropractor; The E-Myth Optometrist; The E-Myth Real Estate Brokerage; The E-Myth Financial Advisor – there are now nine such books, and hundreds more planned.  Add to that all my emails, my letters, my notes to myself, my notes to others, and you can just barely begin to understand what I mean when I say my life is hopelessly complex.  But, that’s not the point of this blog.  The point of this blog is that when you change one thing, everything else changes.  When you schedule one appointment it reschedules every other moment in your life.  When you schedule one blog, it alters the nature of every other blog you‘re going to write.  When you talk to one person, it alters every other conversation you’re about to have, even if you don’t realize it at that very moment.  And, if that’s true, and believe me dear reader, it is true (just take a moment out of your complex life and you’ll see it) then just try to imagine what the implications are for that and the impact it has on the universe – yes, the entireuniverse! – when each and every one of us do what we do.  It means that the universe is affected – Your universe.  My universe.  The universe. – every single second of every single day!

Yes, the universe depends upon what you do, and what you don’t do. The universe depends upon what every single one of us do and don’t do.  The universe depends upon every single action taken or not taken by every single scrap of energy whether made by man, or by the zeitgeist, or by a mushroom springing up in some dark and fulsome field, invisible to you right now, but springing up nonetheless, right now, along with every other scrap of thing happening as things happen in this universe of ours.  How to even take all that in?!  How, indeed?  So, give it some thought, dear reader, until we think again tomorrow.

This is Michael E. Gerber speaking to you from Carlsbad, California.  Another kind of man.