Smile

Take a deep breath. With each breath you take, there is an opportunity to improve your well-being. It provides you with the privilege of thinking differently than you have thought in the past; to see life as you never seen it before. To project toward others the great power you are as a human full vitality and vigor.

Your power is contagious. Smile and people cannot help it; they are engaged to return the offering. Your smile could mean a myriad of things: I’m tired but I won’t let you know, it’s a good day, and I’m getting better." Your smile could mean anything. Share it, SMILE!

However, the person to whom it is cast, they interpret it into their prism of life and the energy of a simple simile takes on a completely newer meaning. Like lightning flashing through the sky, it electrifies whatever and whomever it contacts. A smile can be the jolt that lifts a sunken soul from the depths of depression and despair. Just a smile, it costs nothing; it’s free, but impacting.

If you do nothing else today, SMILE at someone and change a life.

©2010 Ben Walls

Remember Your Shingle

Outside my bedroom window is a little shed I used to play in as a kid. Today when I looked out, I could see something was still there - a shingle. I guess it was during my earlier teenage years when I would go out, work in my “shop”, and build things. One day, I decided to put up a storefront sign. Only today did I ever think of it as a shingle.

Professional firms use shingles to establish their presence in the community. You know: Lawyers, Doctors, and Consultants, etc. Shingles tell the public about their trade, skill, their preparation and their availability to serve.

Today, I want to remind you of YOU. Are you doing your IT? Whatever your IT is, are you doing it now. I love the commercial, “It’s my money, and I want it now.” Have you forgotten what shingle you once hung out, your childhood dreams and aspirations? The things you daydreamed about and never did. Why? Why haven’t you moved on them? How have you talked yourself away from those ideas and perhaps innovations? Come on now, stop simply remembering, but rather get recharged and take steps to make those dreams realities.

I know. The challenge stands in your way like a daunting wall. It should be there. It serves a purpose. Challenges bring forth the best ideas, newer concepts and better ways to approach and solve problems. Challenges are there help us over the obstacles. Challenges make us Champions! However, you must choose to do something. Go ahead and make the choice to change your life. Once you realize in your heart the impact that change can make on how you think, feel and act; you will love the better person you have become. You can do it. Allow yourself to be inspired to climb your wall.

Every day I go to a local gym. Some days I am pumped and ready to go, other days, I drag. On the mornings I feel slow and unmotivated, I see Mrs. F. She is 86 years old, carries an oxygen bottle on a roll-about walker, and she faithfully comes and with a smile on her face, does her routines. When I see her, that gets me going. I often tell her, "YOU INSPIRE ME!"

If she can, I can! Her actions say to me, you are never too old. You are not too tired. Get up off that couch and live! Workout, lose the fat and make a change. Do what you must to get prepared to hang out your shingle. Develop your trade. Invest in your skill. Prepare for success. Show your availability.

You should hear about my friend Mitchell…next time.

©2010 Benny R. Walls

How to Get Ahead

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of speaking for the eighth graders who go to the Oxford Boys and Girls Club. By the way, the people there are doing a great work. It was an opportunity to share with the group thoughts from my recently published “Time for the Exceptional”. At the conclusion of the talk, I asked for comments and one young musician blew me away when he shared what he had learned. He said, “I learned. You have to choose your friends carefully.” This got me excited, because that was not part of my original presentation; it was simply a speaker’s side-comment.

Choose wisely

We cannot choose our family; the Universe is in command of that. Nevertheless, as far as our friends are concerned, we can decide who we will befriend, and who we will “feed with a long-handle spoon” as old folks you used to say. Our friends are the ones we congregate with around the water fountain, play ball with, hang out on the phone with and oh yeah – Text with very often late into the night.

Being choosey about our friends does not mean being nasty, unkind or hurtful toward others. It does mean. However, being selective about how you will allow them to influence your life. The old saying “birds of a feather flock together” still holds true in many instances.

We all make choices daily. As the youth of today, you must be mindful; the decisions you make today can follow you the rest of your life. Hey - think about that! At 48 years of age, I can share with you how a decision I made in the eleventh grade directly set the course for the rest of my life. These principles do not change with time. It is important we learn to use wisdom in a way that it becomes a habit if life.

If we want to get ahead, we must choose friends who want to move along the same road of life. People who are getting ahead in life want to be with other people who are working in the same direction, for iron sharpens iron the good book says.

Be a dreamer

It is important to surround yourself with people who are willing to let you dream, imagine, and think outside the box. Better yet, they will imagine with you. Imagining is the creative stamp of the Creator upon us. It is the place where the conception of the next great invention is taking on the way. The cure for cancer is being developed in a lab somewhere; but the genesis of it will first be in imagination of some scientist who allowed herself or himself to dream and think outside the conventional - To go into the mind where we have never gone before. So wish upon your star.

Lay a foundation

Upon every great structure is a steady and firm foundation. This is true for our lives as well. Education and learning are so essential. Go to school and learn from the masters. Study, learn as much as possible. Go to workshops, museums; take community classes at the local university or college. Learn something new. Heck! Turn the titanic of your life around and head into a different direction if the one you are traveling is not serving you well.

A word about education. Primarily, I am speaking about “formal” education. However, one of the smartest men I ever knew was my father – Elton Walls. He was a tree-cutter, farmer, inventor and the world’s greatest handy man. He had very little “formal” education – his education was his experiences and LIFE. It must be understood he lived in a totally difference era. To depend on that today, is not smart; even he would admit that. I guess that is why he sent my sisters and me to college. Even with education, it is not a piece of cake.

The technology is changing daily; we are moving faster than ever-in terms of world competition. Innovation drives our culture. Look at how email, iPhone, and the internet has catapulted our world into other stratospheres. The key to being successful in your time is to be prepared. It is hard work; well, what else do you have to do, sit around, and wait for something to happen? Things ARE happening right around you and when you are blind you cannot see these things, nor can you SEE how to be a part of their invention or development into an industry. That is where an opportunity is. That is where you want to be – but you must first lay a foundation in order to build a steady structure to support your involvement.

Never, Never Give up

Sir Winston Churchill said it best. You cannot stop wishing, wanting and working. You just can’t! Successful people are not quitters. They find a way to climb the mountains of life; they moved around obstacles and seeking other options. Ironically, that is usually where we find our greatest discoveries.. That one simple nugget can open the door to your Comstock Lode.

Finally, be a friend

Remember the Boys and Girls Club? The story I told the group was about the day I quite the football team in the 9^th grade. The club now sits on that same football field from years ago.

Coach Bridges told me to do seven laps around the field. I said I could not and would not do it. He said, “Okay, you can’t play on my team.” For a few hours, I had stamped across my mental forehead “QUITTER.” The next day, I went back and said, “Coach, I’m no quitter.” “Do the laps” he said.

As I ran, about the fifth lap I was having a hard time, practically crawling. My best friend Arnie came along side and ran with me. After practice finished, others came along and paced me the entire time saying, “Benny you can do it, c’mon man”. I did the seven laps, thanks to good friends who encouraged me and were on my side; these are the people you want running with in life. Even today, Arnie and I talk frequently. I had the privilege of marrying him to his bride years later.

To get ahead, never give up – stay the course.

©2010 Benny R. Walls

"Oh my God - No Hope?"

I can’t sleep. I’m driven awake. My soul groans. My heart weighs heavy with the dripping blood of humanity's vile degradation. The depths of our sinfulness are so great. My spirit is touched. The deep hole that sin has punctured into the very heart of my God – no wonder he grieves. It’s sad. As a people, mankind has so fallen. The Creator’s beautiful creation is so ugly now.

For the first time, I saw the movie Precious. To me, it is the double edged sword of Hollywood’s expression of rights. Satan’s promise to humanity wasn’t a lie, “You will see as God sees." The aftermath of the fall tells us that while knowledge is powerful, it brings an awareness that was never meant. As perfectly created being, there are some things we were not created for, like Sin - our spiritual kryptonite. But, since we have opened that proverbial Pandora’s box, we are now privy to its poison. We tasted it, and determined that it is good.

Today, we freely pull back the covers and gaze upon the nakedness of our father and mother. Just like Ham of old, we jest, and we too are cursed with his stain upon our hearts. The stain? Depravity.

We tell ourselves that it is only what is reality, or what is "real" about today's times. True. But, sometimes "keeping it real" has a corkscrew like effect. The more it turns, the deeper it gets. The more we indulge, the further down we go, the worse-off we become. It is like a deteriorating progression. So our depraved expressions and exposure becomes our reality - the illusion of what is permitted, even by the standards of our Creator. This toxic exposure does nothing to “lift” us; it merely shows how deeply we can descend into the waters of Titanic issues which can arise. Can you imagine what a risen Titanic would look like today, raised from the deteriorating depths of the sea? In the words of comic Eddie Murphy, “That’s just Nasty.”

With such compromise, are we not driven toward the putrid? The filth and stench draws us like flies toward a decaying corpse. Show us more. Tell us more. On some level its, entertaining. We love to the see the gladiators decapitate helpless victims. And hear the screams of life jerked from a living soul.

The box is open now, and can’t be closed. What’s done is done. We can’t go back – only forward.

We can only be raised. We must become passive. We must surrender.

Give up. Become humble.

Or can we?

Is it possible?

What are you thinking?

P.S. When I wrote this piece, my writing partner and good friend said, “So, are you going to finish that piece or what? You left us with no hope.

Worry not…..Hope is coming!

©2010 Benny R. Walls

Time for the Exceptional

It’s not my fault nor it is your fault, it just is what it is. It’s the time of the exceptional, and you must appreciate this. The average is so far beneath the “bar” you can crawl on your belly to attain it. With the advent of globalization, the world stage has changed. Making it through high school and not having a child, for some has become the new “high” expectation. These often find themselves living on the lowest level of the human food chain. Don’t get merely mad, it is what is it is. But, It don’t have to be. “That’s Right I Said It.”

To our youth, we must again reclaim the spirit of our forefathers. Reach for the stars – what are they there for? It’s tough yes, and it isn’t going to get any easier. The world is more competitive. The world wants higher wages and we won’t work for nothing.

So we must prepare. Some folks can afford to goof-off in college we can’t. We must set goals and reach them. Remember, while you are partying someone else is studying. Who do you think is going to get “The Job” when opportunity hits. Trust me it will hit, it always does. Perhaps you are looking at the kids at the “other” school and they party. They most often have a safety net. It’s call money. You got money? Did your great great-grandfather leave his linage a life insurance policy that is now worth millions? No! You better study and get prepared.

Benjamin Mays’ quote still rings, “Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done.” The question begs, what unique and distinctive thing were you created for?

Hey. Be remembered for more than someone who took a life. But for someone who saved lives. Be remembered for someone who raised the level of your community. Be a hero for righteousness, good and all that is pleasant. This is still possible.

Look around, see for yourselves. If we continue on the current path we are headed for extinction. Our greatest enemy isn’t “across” the water in some dusty sandy desert. He and she are across the street. Down the block. Your neighbor and mine!

This is reason for alarm. Only we can take claim of what we want for our communities and wish, want and work it into reality. We have to remember what was and reclaim it for our future.

The government can’t build enough jails. We must decide we don’t want to go and live according to the standards of a civilized society. Today is the day of our salvation.

It is well said, it takes a community to raise a child. Sadly, now the question has become, “What if the community is broken; what do the righteous do?” The healing must come from within.

The seeds of greatness perhaps lie dormant. My favorite quote by James Allen is Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions. But when he realizes that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.

As a community, we have become captive to a master of self-destruction. Our young geniuses think they are in control; they are not. Though many are at liberty, they are destined to the literal incarceration of some state’s criminal correctional facility because their true self is captive even now. Ignorance is the oldest and largest jail known to mankind.

Now is the time to escape. Breakout! Run away. Go to the far country where freedom is. The land of freedom is still knowledge and education. And it’s even free. You live in a country that will pay you to get educated. But you have to prepare. You must be among the exceptional – and you are. You are in that class!

Dig deep into the soil of your being and tap the root of your potential. The seed was put there by your creator – it’s in you baby. Reach deep. Struggle long. Work hard. Sprout up and reach for the sky.

When you have emerged, the Sun will greet you. The rains will refresh you and the air will fill you as you burst forth. Then you will really reach as you have never reached before. Soon, fruit will naturally come and others will feed from your freedom.

Around you a new community emerges.

Wow!

©2010 Benny R. Walls

bennywalls@email.com