Werner Erhard, one of our century's great philosophers, connected Creativity with Responsibility" when he said that responsibility is not seeking someone to blame for the events and circumstances of our lives; rather, it is "the opportunity to experience ourselves as cause in the matter".  He was pointing to the possibility that we create our own reality at every moment and that our true power lies in acknowledging what we've created and in taking responsibility for it, like a man owning up to fathering a child. Then we discover we also have the power to consciously create and design lives that we love living. Toward the end of 1990, I was working through the twenty-four tapes of Personal Power, Anthony Robbins™ terrific course in fulfilling our potential as human beings, and spent five hours one night contemplating, writing down and refining my goals for the coming months and years.

My three primary goals were 1) to own a beautiful contemporary home of wood and glass in Boxford, Massachusetts, 2) to have two fully-expressed kids running around within three years, and 3) to leave real estate development for a life immersed in music: teaching, playing, composing, recording and performing. Is it really so remarkable that although indications were against them, all these things came to pass within two and a half years?

Soon after I wrote them down, my wife and I gave up trying to buy a house in Boxford and though my heart was still in the rural beauty and peace of that ancient village, we found an acceptable contemporary in another town and moved in while waiting for our mortgage to be approved. Amazingly, the seller couldn’t sell it to us because he didn’t own half the land it was built on! We returned to Boxford with a mortgage approval and as pre-qualified buyers, who could close in two weeks, negotiated a rock-bottom price for the house I had pictured in my goals! 

Regarding the goal of two children, I didn't know it but my wife was already pregnant and our second baby came along 19 months after the first. And yes, they are wonderfully self-expressed in dance, music, art, sports and games and so full of love.

When I wrote down these three visions for the future, I had turned away from my degree in music from New England Conservatory and was working 80+ hours a week acquiring, renovating and renting real estate. The men's team I met with every Friday at 6AM had begun to talk me away from the business world and back toward a life of creativity. We had each worked on a statement of life purpose that year and they voted against my business-oriented first draft, saying they saw me as a creative musician and not as a real estate tycoon and wondered how long I would keep up the charade. There was no evidence that I could ever earn enough at music alone, but I couldn’t deny that that is where my heart was.

When the real estate market crashed that year and my holdings were reduced to half their previous value, my income dropped to almost nothing and they leaned on me hard to get a regular job to support my new house and family. When I told them I had decided to commit to making a living at music alone, they threw me off the team for disregarding their advice. Ironically, I earned more my first year of full time music than any year in business!

The lesson I learned was that when you create a powerful goal or vision of the future, it often comes into reality like a newborn child, accompanied by pain and tears. The deal that fell through cost us $5,000 and forced me to move my pregnant wife into one of my properties in a dangerous neighborhood for a couple of months, but that was a fair price to pay to wake up every day now in a state of gratitude for the artful beauty of our house and the wonder of nature surrounding us.  Letting go of my failed investments was a long and painful process, but today I am living from my life purpose, "to share my Creativity with people."

I wonder how many of us have begun to harness the power of our own Creativity to design lives we wake up with gratitude for, lives we can live with passion and joy, doing what lights us up and being the person we’ve always wanted to be.