Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition (32 page)

Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion.

You must set yourself on fire.

~Arnold H. Glasow

I
n 1977 I was a single mother with three young daughters, a house payment, a car payment and a need to rekindle some dreams.

One evening I attended a seminar and heard a man speak about the I x V = R Principle. (Imagination mixed with Vividness becomes Reality.) The speaker pointed out that the mind thinks in pictures, not in words. And as we vividly picture in our mind what we desire, it will become a reality.

This concept struck a chord in my heart. I knew the Biblical truth that the Lord gives us “the desires of our heart” (Psalms 37:4) and that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). I was determined to take my written prayer list and turn it into pictures. I began cutting up old magazines and gathering pictures that depicted the “desires of my heart.” I arranged them in a photo album and waited expectantly.

I was very specific with my pictures. They included:

1. A good-looking man

2. A woman in a wedding gown and a man in a tuxedo

3. Bouquets of flowers (I’m a romantic)

4. Beautiful diamond jewelry (I rationalized that God loved David and Solomon and they were two of the richest men who ever lived)

5. An island in the sparkling blue Caribbean

6. A lovely home

7. New furniture

8. A woman who had recently become vice president of a large corporation. (I was working for a company that had no female officers. I wanted to be the first woman vice president in that company.)

About eight weeks later, I was driving down a California freeway, minding my own business at 10:30 in the morning. Suddenly a gorgeous red-and-white Cadillac passed me. I looked at the car because it was beautiful. The driver looked at me and smiled, and I smiled back because I always smile. Now I was in deep trouble. Have you ever done that? I tried to pretend that I hadn’t looked. “Who me? I didn’t look at you!” He followed me for the next fifteen miles. Scared me to death! I drove a few miles, he drove a few miles. I parked, he parked... And eventually I married him!

On the first day after our first date, Jim sent me a dozen roses. Then I found out that he had a hobby. His hobby was collecting diamonds. Big ones! And he was looking for somebody to decorate. I volunteered! We dated for about two years and every Monday morning I received a long-stemmed red rose and a love note from him.

About three months before we were getting married, Jim said to me, “I have found the perfect place to go on our honeymoon. We will go to St. John’s down in the Caribbean.” I laughingly said, “I never would have thought of that!”

I did not confess the truth about my picture book until Jim and I had been married for almost a year. It was then that we were moving into our gorgeous new home and furnishing it with the elegant furniture that I had pictured. (Jim turned out to be the West Coast wholesale distributor for one of the finest East Coast furniture manufacturers.)

By the way, the wedding was in Laguna Beach, California, and included the gown and tuxedo as realities. Eight months after I created my dream book, I became the vice president of human resources in the company where I worked.

In some sense this sounds like a fairy tale, but it is absolutely true. Jim and I have made many “picture books” since we have been married. God has filled our lives with the demonstration of these powerful principles of faith at work.

Decide what it is that you want in every area of your life. Imagine it vividly. Then act on your desires by actually constructing your personal goal book. Convert your ideas into concrete realities through this simple exercise. There are no impossible dreams.

~Glenna Salsbury

There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you do not do them.

~Charles D. Gill

O
ne rainy afternoon an inspired 15-year-old boy named John Goddard sat down at his kitchen table in Los Angeles and wrote three words at the top of a yellow pad: “My Life List.” Under that heading he wrote down 127 goals. Since then he has completed most of those goals. Look at the list of Goddard’s goals that appears below. These are not simple or easy goals. They include climbing the world’s major mountains, exploring vast waterways, running a mile in five minutes, reading the complete works of Shakespeare and reading the entire
Encyclopedia Britannica
.

Explore:

✓ 1. Nile River

✓ 2. Amazon River

✓ 3. Congo River

✓ 4. Colorado River

5. Yangtze River, China

6. Niger River

7. Orinoco River, Venezuela

✓ 8. Rio Coco, Nicaragua

Study Primitive Cultures In:

✓ 9. The Congo

✓ 10. New Guinea

✓ 11. Brazil

✓ 12. Borneo

✓ 13. The Sudan (John was nearly buried alive in a sandstorm.)

✓ 14. Australia

✓ 15. Kenya

✓ 16. The Philippines

✓ 17. Tanganyika (now Tanzania)

✓ 18. Ethiopia

✓ 19. Nigeria

✓ 20. Alaska

Climb:

21. Mount Everest

22. Mount Aconcagua, Argentina

23. Mount McKinley

✓ 24. Mount Huascaran, Peru

✓ 25. Mount Kilimanjaro

✓ 26. Mount Ararat, Turkey

✓ 27. Mount Kenya

28. Mount Cook, New Zealand

✓ 29. Mount Popocatepetl, Mexico

✓ 30. The Matterhorn

✓ 31. Mount Rainer

✓ 32. Mount Fuji

✓ 33. Mount Vesuvius

✓ 34. Mount Bromo, Java

✓ 35. Grand Tetons

✓ 36. Mount Baldy, California

✓ 37. Carry out careers in medicine and exploration (Studied pre-med and treats illnesses among primitive tribes)

38. Visit every country in the world (30 to go)

✓ 39. Study Navaho and Hopi Indians

✓ 40. Learn to fly a plane

✓ 41. Ride horse in Rose Parade

Photograph:

✓ 42. Iguaçu Falls, Brazil

✓ 43. Victoria Falls, Rhodesia (Chased by a warthog in theprocess)

✓ 44. Sutherland Falls, New Zealand

✓ 45. Yosemite Falls

✓ 46. Niagara Falls

✓ 47. Retrace travels of Marco Polo and Alexander the Great

Explore Underwater:

✓ 48. Coral reefs of Florida

✓ 49. Great Barrier Reef, Australia (Photographed a 300-pound clam)

✓ 50. Red Sea

✓ 51. Fiji Islands

✓ 52. The Bahamas

✓ 53. Explore Okefenokee Swamp and the Everglades

Visit:

✓ 54. North and South Poles

✓ 55. Great Wall of China

✓ 56. Panama and Suez Canals

✓ 57. Easter Island

✓ 58. The Galapagos Islands

✓ 59. Vatican City (Saw the pope)

✓ 60. The Taj Mahal

✓ 61. The Eiffel Tower

✓ 62. The Blue Grotto

✓ 63. The Tower of London

✓ 64. The Leaning Tower of Pisa

✓ 65. The Sacred Well of Chichen-Itza, Mexico

✓ 66. Climb Ayers Rock in Australia

67. Follow River Jordan from Sea of Galilee to Dead Sea

Swim In:

✓ 68. Lake Victoria

✓ 69. Lake Superior

✓ 70. Lake Tanganyika

✓ 71. Lake Titicaca, South America

✓ 72. Lake Nicaragua

Accomplish:

✓ 73. Become an Eagle Scout

✓ 74. Dive in a submarine

✓ 75. Land on and take off from an aircraft carrier

✓ 76. Fly in a blimp, hot air balloon and glider

✓ 77. Ride an elephant, camel, ostrich and bronco

✓ 78. Skin dive to 40 feet and hold breath two and a half minutes underwater

✓ 79. Catch a 10-pound lobster and a 10-inch abalone

✓ 80. Play flute and violin

✓ 81. Type 50 words a minute

✓ 82. Take a parachute jump

✓ 83. Learn water and snow skiing

✓ 84. Go on a church mission

✓ 85. Follow the John Muir Trail

✓ 86. Study native medicines and bring back useful ones

✓ 87. Bag camera trophies of elephant, lion, rhino, cheetah, cape buffalo and whale

✓ 88. Learn to fence

✓ 89. Learn jujitsu

✓ 90. Teach a college course

✓ 91. Watch a cremation ceremony in Bali

✓ 92. Explore depths of the sea

93. Appear in a Tarzan movie (He now considers this an irrelevant boyhood dream)

94. Own a horse, chimpanzee, cheetah, ocelot and coyote (Yet to own a chimp or cheetah)

95. Become a ham radio operator

✓ 96. Build own telescope

✓ 97. Write a book (On Nile trip)

✓ 98. Publish an article in National Geographic

✓ 99. High jump five feet

✓ 100. Broad jump 15 feet

✓ 101. Run a mile in five minutes

✓ 102. Weigh 175 pounds stripped (still does)

✓ 103. Perform 200 sit-ups and 20 pull-ups

✓ 104. Learn French, Spanish and Arabic

105. Study dragon lizards on Komodo Island (Boat broke down within 20 miles of island)

✓ 106. Visit birthplace of Grandfather Sorenson in Denmark

✓ 107. Visit birthplace of Grandfather Goddard in England

✓ 108. Ship aboard a freighter as a seaman

109. Read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (Has read extensive parts in each volume)

✓ 110. Read the Bible from cover to cover

✓ 111. Read the works of Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Dickens, Thoreau, Poe, Rousseau, Bacon, Hemingway, Twain, Burroughs, Conrad, Talmage, Tolstoy, Longfellow, Keats, Whittier and Emerson (Not every work of each)

✓ 112. Become familiar with the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Ibert, Mendelssohn, Lalo, Rimski-Korsakov, Respighi, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Toch, Tschaikovsky, Verdi

✓ 113. Become proficient in the use of a plane, motorcycle, tractor, surfboard, rifle, pistol, canoe, microscope, football, basketball, bow and arrow, lariat and boomerang

✓ 114. Compose music

✓ 115. Play Clair de Lune on the piano

✓ 116. Watch fire-walking ceremony (In Bali and Surinam)

✓ 117. Milk a poisonous snake (Bitten by a diamond back during a photo session)

✓ 118. Light a match with a 22 rifle

✓ 119. Visit a movie studio

✓ 120. Climb Cheops’ pyramid

✓ 121. Become a member of the Explorers’ Club and the Adventurers’ Club

✓ 122. Learn to play polo

✓ 123. Travel through the Grand Canyon on foot and by boat

✓ 124. Circumnavigate the globe (four times)

125. Visit the moon (“Some day if God wills”)

✓ 126. Marry and have children (Has five children)

✓ 127. Live to see the 21st Century (He will be 75)

~John Goddard