One Man's Dream

It’s 1:00 am and my family and I are eager to get home after a fun filled week at Disney World. If a restful vacation is what you desire, Disney is not the trip for you. I’m pretty sure I need a vacation from my vacation. But, if your goal is to see your children (including the 43 year old big boy you’re married to) experience joy and happiness for six solid days, then sign up! I learned on this trip that Walt Disney opened Disneyland in 1955 to be a "play place for families" and that it is exactly what it is.

This is the fourth time my husband Scott and I have taken our children to see Mickey, a fact that I’m actually not proud of. It seems excessive to me given their ages. Over the course of our three prior trips, I thought we had seen everything Disney has to offer. It turns out I was wrong. Tucked back in the rear of Hollywood Studios is an attraction that we had never visited. It’s titled One Man’s Dream and it chronicles the life of Walt Disney. It’s pretty much a museum filled with artifacts from Disney’s professional life, followed by a 20-minute documentary. Sound boring? It was actually anything but! The artifacts displayed included a comic of the first character that Walt Disney ever created, Oswald the Rabbit (who by the way looks a lot like Mickey Mouse), as well as the desk where Disney sat when he created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (The little girl in me loved that!) In addition to these classic artifacts and stories shared, there were many examples of Disney’s failures and setbacks. That’s right, MANY examples.

While soaking in all of that history, I had to ask myself, why? Why focus so much on the things at which the great Walt Disney failed? After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that in order to celebrate our successes, we must first recognize our failures. Now that’s a lesson we need to teach our children, both at home and at school! We are constantly telling our children/students that it is okay to take risks and to fail, but do we ever show them prime examples of how those failures can lead them to be better, inspire creative thinking, and build character? When our children have life successes, do we point out how prior failures contributed to those successes? If the answer is no, should we consider doing so?  Should we connect those dots for our children, or hope they all possess that natural drive and determination that Walt Disney seemed to have that allowed him to overcome his failures?

I hope that on this, their fourth trip to Disney World, my children walked out of the “happiest place on Earth” with more than a pair of mouse ears or a roller coaster fluttering tummy. I hope that they walked out with an appreciation for the creativity, perseverance, and grit that it took to create such a place. I also hope that when one day they take their own children to visit Mickey, they make this attraction a priority. That, my friends is this One Mom's Dream.

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Welcome the Butterflies, Welcome Change

Does anyone really like change? Change is one of those things that takes away that of which we are comfortable. Change pushes us to grow and morph into something other than what we were before. Even if the cause of the change is a negative one, it brings about a growth process that has the potential to make us better, happier, or at the very least more experienced. So why do so many people hate change? Are they scared of it? Is contentment really so satisfying to us as people that we will shy away from, or battle anything that changes our current situation?

This may be the only blog post that asks more questions than provides insight. I guess it's because I really don't understand the fear of change that seems to exist in all of us, myself included. Fear and anxiety are the emotions that seem to come first when change is introduced. This is the case when faced with change both personally and professionally. So how can we deal with it? My grandmother used to say, "If nothing ever changed there would be no butterflies". I thought she was so wise, but it turns out this really is a saying, not at all her own wisdom though the original author is unknown. When my grandmother would say this to me as child and as a teenager I would take it at face value. Caterpillars change into beautiful butterflies, so her message to me was change can be beautiful. Remembering this has always made situations of change a little easier for me to handle. Even when faced with the death of my beautiful grandmother many years ago. Her death marked a change huge change in my life, yet her own words helped me to find the beauty in her passing. 

Now I've reached a point in my life where I see opportunities for change a bit differently and this saying takes on a deeper meaning, something a bit more abstract. At age 39 when I call to mind the saying, "If nothing ever changed there would be no butterflies", I take to mean in my stomach. Change can be exciting. Change can challenge you and your belief system. Change can be a motivator. Change can lead you to a places you've never experienced and without it you never would. It can improve your situation, but even if it doesn't at least you can learn from it. Change can make you better. So as we face change whether in our workplace or in our personal lives, let's try to embrace the butterflies we feel in our stomachs and enjoy the excitement of the possibility of being better for it. Without change, those butterflies and all that they stand for wouldn't exist. 

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