One of the biggest reasons I so love to study history and the great men and women of the past is because of what I can gain from learning and knowing about their thought processes, their actions, and their efforts. It has always seemed to me to be better, easier, and less painful to learn from the thoughts, actions, and achievements of others who have gone before us,…as well as from their mistakes, disappointments, and failures. Great minds think great thoughts. Those thoughts, when coupled with a decisive effort and “followed-through-to-completion” always form the basis for the things that make for the betterment of our world. Those great initial thoughts are the catalysts for all great production and accomplishment.

While it is true that most all of the great people from our past are greatly varied and different in so many ways, it is interesting to note that they also share a good deal of commonalities. People who are great achievers are all decisive folks. They do not struggle with making decisions. They are risk takers. They do not fear failure and they do not fear other people. Therefore they are most willing to step out on to the edge of a new opportunity or environment and into the fringe of fear,…risk losing everything they have or own,…and work through every obstacle or hinderance that crops up until they either abandon their exhausted work efforts,…realizing that sometimes things just don’t work the way they would like them to work,…or they finish their efforts and are rewarded with a great new accomplishment and its related prosperity. In either case, they are not quitters. They forge on through the jungle of the required work tasks,…figuring things out as they go,…no matter the level of difficulty,…until they are finished with the project.

Pausing for a moment and peeking back through the annals of time, many different names pop up that attach to the creative and productive people from the population of all the world. These productive people’s names are automatically meshed and connected with and to great accomplishments that have benefitted and served mankind. Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, F. W. Woolworth, Douglas MacArthur, R. G. Le Tourneau, Henry Kaiser, Walter Chrysler, James J. Hill, and Henry Ford to name just a few. These men were not special or better than everyone else. They were ordinary people just like you and me who had good ideas within their own brains, relentlessly pursued those ideas, thought about them continuously and then proceeded to create and produce the necessary things required to allow them all to turn their dreams into reality.

All dreams that come to a person’s mind are originally from that person’s Creator. It was God’s dream before He gave it to you! God always matches His chosen Dream with and to His chosen Dreamer. With that truth in mind, I hope you feel and understand that there is a great amount of accountability that exists and is constantly present between the individual dreamer and his God. The Holy Spirit of God, your conscience, is the liaison between the individual performer and his Creator. Knowing that truth,…I hope you choose to be in submission to your Creator and obedient to complete the assigned tasks He has given you to do. Please…never lose sight of the fact that God has put you in the precise place and circumstance in which He wants you to be,…for His own very good reason and for your personal benefit. Everything that God does or allows to happen to you, is all part of His Will for your life. When you take time to study it, it becomes readily apparent that all these things I am telling you all fit nicely together, make complete good sense, and work together for your own good.

The truth is that all real success starts with a dream. You need to clearly and specifically identify your dream in full color and detail. You then need to write the dream clearly and specifically down on a piece of paper in your own handwriting, and you need to set a deadline for its completion. Dreams and goals without dates of completion never get reached or accomplished. Here is a Truth of Life. It is written in the Holy Bible in the Book of Habakkuk, Chapter 2, verses 2–4 NKJV:

(2) “Then the Lord answered me and said: ‘Write the vision And
make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it.

(3) For the vision is yet for an appointed time; But at the end it
will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come, It will not tarry.

(4) Behold the proud, His soul is not upright in him; But the just
shall live by his faith.”

Once you have followed and completed the above instruction, you need to get some pictures of precisely what it is that identifies your dream. Then get these pictures put up in front of you, all around your home or office, to where you can constantly see them every day. Bombard your subconscious mind with these pictures. Imbed and bury them into your own mind. For certain,…these pictures need to be in your bedroom and your bathroom. They need to be where they are the first thing you look at in the morning as you wake up, and they need to be the last thing you look at when you retire for the night.

Once these dreams are clearly identified and the pictures of them are up for viewing, then,…you need to formulate and write down a precise statement of the work plan that must be performed in order to create the proper funding to allow you to turn your dreams into reality.

You must, at all times, keep this statement of truth at the forefront of your own mind:

NO PLAN IS WORTH THE PAPER IT IS PRINTED ON UNLESS IT STARTS YOU DOING SOMETHING!

A true case in point, please……..

The great industrialist automaker, Henry Ford, was once asked by an inspiring young man hoping to achieve great accomplishment with his life, “How can I become a real success?” Mr. Ford quickly replied, “If you start something, finish it!”

Henry Ford learned this most valuable lesson early on in his illustrious career. When he began work on his first automobile, he worked many long but exciting hours in a little brick building behind his home. Excitement and enthusiasm about what he was doing simply overtook him. Soon he found it hard to take time out to eat or sleep. Interestingly enough, before he had completed his first car,…he became acutely aware that he could build an even better car. New ideas, thoughts, adjustments, tweaks, and improvements flooded into his mind as he worked on the car.

He was so sure of the need for improvements that the thrill and enthusiasm for his first car began to lessen. He asked himself this all important question…“Why spend all that time finishing a car that he already knew was inferior?” Still, something inside of him forced him to continue,…forced him to focus his total energy on the first car and finish what he had started,…before he allowed himself to fantasize about a second car.

As things would go and eventually turn out, Henry Ford later said that he learned even more about how to improve the second car by finishing every detail of his original car. He confided to a friend that if he had given in to the temptation to quit building the first car, he may never have made any car at all.

Here is a closing Truth of Life:

Many people strive to be “Perfectionists,” but it is the “Completionists” who are the ones who usually accomplish much more in life.

Please permit me to give you who aspire to accomplish great things with your life, two simple words of personal counsel. They apply to all of your good and righteous efforts and expenditures of time and resources. As regards what it is that you have chosen to do with your spare time and spare money,…FINISH IT! You will always be glad that you did!

Peace And Love to All of You……………….Poppa Bear