Linda from Lockton started me down this path. Thanks, Linda.
I love music with a message as most of you have already discovered. My favorites are U2, Johnny Cash, John Mellencamp, and Coldplay. Every day, one of them is in my ear and in my mind. To the dismay of my family, I’m adding another artist to this slowly, expanding list. His name is Bob Dylan.
Here’s a word from him taken from the DVD titled, NO DIRECTION HOME. “I find myself writing this song. This long piece of VOMIT that’s 20 pages long! And out of it I took the song, Like a Rolling Stone and made it a single. I’d never written anything like it before. And it SUDDENLY came to me that this was what I should do. After writing that, I wasn’t interested in writing a novel or a play or anything else. I knew like, I had too much…I wanted to write SONGS!”
As I research great teams and great lives I hear this story told over and over. Call it an “aha” moment, moment of truth, calm in the storm, or any number of other labels. We all have moments in life where we can clearly see our way home.
For most of us though…they pass quickly without much thought and without any action.
My wake-up call came from an unlikely source and activity. I was flying high running sales for CompuServe, hanging out and working with my best friends! Our CEO, Maury Cox asked me to go to the Center for Creative Leadership to “check it out” for the team. I fought him like mad. That was the last place I wanted to go. One thing I knew for sure…THAT was not home. After 6 of the longest days of my life I had a change of mind. It hit me like a “ton of bricks” that this WAS what I should do. I loved being there when people “got it” and this clarified it for me. Thank you, Maury!!
You may not write songs, but at BUILT TO LEAD we want you to begin to write narratives. Most BUILT TO LEAD clients become journalers. And this is what I hear them reflect back to me. They gained clarity around their CORE as they wrote and rewrote about their deepest held beliefs. They gained clarity for work and life. It seems to me, that writing points us in our direction home.
Discover your voice. Sing your songs. Author your life. Everybody has fear. When it SUDDENLY comes to you what you should do, don’t hesitate. Take the leap. You have what it takes.
What are you writing? Still bullet points…or narratives?
How are you experimenting?
What’s holding you back?
BUILT TO LEAD 
good stuff. i’m praying jeff’ has more “aha” moments while in cuba. that his vision would be further clarified.
Awesome…I’ll add your prayer to my list. Hope to see you soon.
An astonishing record – “the Pete Seeger Sessions” by Bruce Springsteen – and the “Chet sessions” set me up to appreciate the “old-man” music of Bob Dylan.
I don’t know how to present him in a modern light. I’m a punk rock girl. Bob Dylan was old fart music. These paths never crossed. Until Martin Scorsese.
Generally, I find his films to be cartoonishly violent and emotionally absurd. “The Departed?” No. Just no. But his Dylan documentary is a revelation.
Keep unraveling the wool rug. The music. The lyrics. The interviews. His buddies. The concert footage. His performance. It’s all Chet – and I don’t think I would have appreciated Dylan, or picked up on his fierce knowledge of who he is or what he wants to do, if I hadn’t have been in a Chet session as the same time as a PBS fund drive.
So yeah. The best thirty bucks you’ll ever spend – even if you think folk music is “wuss rock.” Bob Dylan is an American genius. This realization will ripple through your mind and soul while you watch “No Direction Home.”