What To Do When You Have no Believer Or Help

I wanted to do stuff. Accomplish something. Break out. Succeed.

I wanted to go further than anyone ever has. Ever will. Change the world in ways that no one imagined. Like Ford. Gates. Jobs. Einstein. Bell. Elvis. Jordan. Bo knows.

I needed a believer.

I needed someone to believe.

I needed someone to believe enough to help.

I needed Open Doors and Opportunity.

I needed help.

I love the movie and story Seabiscuit.

"You know, you don't throw a whole life away just 'cause he's banged up a little."

I find it interesting because only one person in that movie was a winner. The others were losers and failures that no one believed in.

Except the one winner - and that one winner changed the lives of everyone around him - and it turns out, history.

The winner was always and forever talking about the future.

The future. The future. The future.

Never the now. Life is to be lived.

If it's hard it will get better. The future is that promise.

Successful people sell the future. Not the now.

"Even years from now you will look back on this moment and realize you bought the best investment money can buy" says the vacuum cleaner salesmen.

The future. In the future that thing will still be sucking up your dirt - and you'll still be making installment payments trying to pay the thing off just to make sure it does.

That's the future.

Ford didn't see the future.

He copied it from the past and then invented something to his liking about the future.

Like Edison and the rest all did.

Window DOS wasn't a new idea.

Neither was the car. The light bulb. Electricity. Dunking the ball.

Rock music.

Music existed. Elvis just had a way of presenting it. The Colonel believed and offered him help. Sam Phillips believed and offered too.

No one believed in the Beatles. Until someone did.

A great story is JK Rowling. Mrs. Harry Potter.

Divorced with a kid, living on welfare and nearly on the street she finished her first book.

It was turned down 12 times.

When it was picked up and published it was done so for peanuts and only 1,000 copies were printed.

Hardly the millions she would sell in only 24 hours of the last book.

She wasn't the future.

Other books had been written. Harry Potter looked to the past and made the reader guess what the future would be through his eyes.

Through hers.

She found a believer and that person pushed.

I remember when I was a new songwriter I learned that a couple of very successful songwriters lived around the corner from me.

In fact, I used to fish on one of their properties as a child.

I hadn't written too many songs at that point, but I felt like I needed a mentor.

Someone to help.

Someone who could coach me and help open doors.

I created a cassette of a couple of songs and wrapped a hand written note around the tape with a rubber band and placed it in his mailbox.

(something like this) "Hello sir, my name is Paul and I really want to be a songwriter. Here are some early writings and I'm hoping you will listen and give me some feedback. I appreciate it so much."

I was excited. Someone might listen to my songs. Someone might help me.

I wasn't under the illusion they were the greatest songs of all time. But I was certain they weren't the worst and, in fact, held the promise of the world's next greatest songwriter.

I received a note back "Don't quit your day job."

Clearly that person wouldn't be the believer I needed. Wouldn't help. Didn't care.

Shattered.

If at times you need help or need someone to believe in you, when you're running on empty and it feels like there are no open doors and even less opportunity, I know that feeling all too well.

You have do what I've always had to do: