Thursday, March 24, 2011

I've got nothing...

Richard Andrew King writes, “To become everything we must first become nothing…”

Surf the flat screen and every show wastes no time feeding your imagination with thoughts, plans, dreams and reasons to believe that you could be The Next American something. We’ve been poisoned with the idea that success can’t and won’t happen until we become something first.

I’m so guilty of this daily diet! At 2:35 AM on March 11, 1985 a giant beat up ugly old U-Haul truck pulled into the Ramada Inn on Kings Drive in Charlotte, NC filled with more radio ego than furniture. The man sitting behind the wheel was completely fixed to a single vision, “I’m cruising from market #286 to market #37 to learn adult radio then bolting after two years so that when I enter the lines that make up California I won’t be just another anybody.

Twenty six years into the book and I’m still here. I love Charlotte but the biggest mistake in my career was agreeing to come to the Queen City. The ego heard #37 and without hesitation shot out, “Yes!” You do the math…a lot was missed on the radio journey that could’ve helped me in the art to become a better talent in the business of talk, talk, play a song, talk again, play a commercial.

Learning to surrender your ego invites tremendous power. This isn’t just a radio thing. Every business including the fast food joint sticking its tongue out at you on the corner of Sharon Amity and Randolph road comes with a box of way too much attitude which becomes easily damaged when destinations aren’t met.

Richard explains, “Accomplishments are not our life; our life is accomplishment. Its far better to live life filled with life than a trophy filled life.”

Becoming everything by becoming nothing gives you permission to become a single raindrop falling from the sky onto a mountain top. Once your parachute is rolled up and the pup tent is sitting next to an open fire the first mission becomes your vision, “I want to find the ocean.”

Sounds like a great idea until you realize the mountain you fell onto are the Snowies located in the center of Montana. Prairie mile after prairie mile then poof…a giant rock. What? Now find your way to the ocean knowing at any given moment a drought in the Dakota’s is waiting for your tail feathers to come walking by the Black Hills.

I can’t stand it when someone says, “We have limited powers.”

We are students of the 21st Century and we are brilliantly strong, unstoppable and fully capable of achieving the highest goals…and then a 9.0 earthquake rocks Japan followed by a tsunami and everything alive is tossed around like toys in the attic.

When you allow your career, love for shoes, BBQ pits and fancy cars become your ocean…we lose our identity. My way out of it…the name on the black belt wall at Martial Arts University has nothing to do with the radio career. A new drop of water was sent down the mountain wearing a pair of those tennis shoes with toes; its mission…find Nemo.

How many times during the average day do the little things tork your attitude to the point of expressing a little bit too much energy? Now people see you as an a**. Like Chutes and Ladders toss your little piece back to the position called start and with great hesitation we get things rolling again, again and again until one day you wake up and say, “I’m done.”

And that to me is the very reason why the unemployment rate in America stands where it does because silently millions of innocent hard working, deeply dedicated and fully experienced professionals are saying, “I have found my raindrop and this time it’s going to locate the ocean.”

To become everything we must first become nothing…

Looks great on paper but reality has taught us that Duke Power and Time Warner aren’t free and have you seen the price of gas? One of the greatest lessons Julia Cameron teaches is to write down ten things that bring true happiness to your life. Even if it’s a weekend wine buzz or flea market chasing…look deeper into the picture. If what you feel is incredible happiness…reach out there and get it. There are wineries in every state. Flea markets always need fresh ideas and people. The only reason why people don’t allow themselves to build there lives until the big crash called "the change" is the fear of not having anything.

Welcome to the first step of your brand new beginning… This summer allow that image in the mirror to see something other than your tired, depressed self with a frozen frown the size of clowns shoes. Be you by discovering you. Fear of change is a horrible place to be until you realize how incredibly positive life becomes when you’re finally doing something that your tiny rain drop put into play before leaping from the plane.

I’ll always believe in you first…

arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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