What are you thinking?

~ David Willis ~ 2 Comments

Every once in a while you read something that unsettles you. I am currently reading Do The Work by Steven Pressfield. It is a challenging little book. It is a great read. One line stuck out and bit me.  Mr Pressfield states that he didn’t have a thought of his own until he was 30.  Every thought he had until that time was most likely a regurgitation of things he learned from his family, school, etc, etc.

It sent me on a journey into my own mind to see if I have done the same thing. Most people want to believe that they are self made. They want to believe that the thoughts and information and decisions residing in their heads  came from deligent study and rigorus application of what was learned. For some this is true at a young age. For the rest of us, I don’ think this is so. Many times we don’t know why we believe what we say we believe. We spend our lives filling our heads full of other peoples thoughts? Why is this?

We live in an age where information is hurled at us in a constant stream. We are so inundated that it is hard to take a moment to process everything that has come our way. It is hard to have an original thought and form an opinion on many things because the noise won’t stop long enough to let us start. I am not the only one this happens to right? Good. I didn’t think so.

So, what do you do if you find your mind full of thoughts that are not your own? If you examine your dominant thoughts and you don’t think they sound like you, it is time to take a break. An information break. There isn’t much new stuff out there anyway. It is time to take a few days and rest. What are your sources of information? Disconnect them for a few days. Let your mind go clear. When it does, you can start to think for yourself.

What do you believe in? What do you value? Who do you love? What do you want to be when you grow up? It is questions like these that help you make the most of your days. They shape the way you see the world and how you spend your time. Life comes into focus. The days are more meaningful. You can live them to the full because you know what you stand for. Until you can clear all the noise out of your head and have some thoughts of your own, this isn’t going to happen. Original thoughts won’t come. That is a shame too. The world needs more original thinkers.

New Music for Monday

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Many of the songs that I have written have been drawn from personal experience. Those have been the easier songs to write. You don’t have to crawl inside of anybody else’s head. You are just writing what you feel and what you know. Sometimes these songs turn out really good. Sometimes people look at you weird and wonder what is wrong with you…ok, that doesn’t happen often. Anyway.

Then you get this cursed thing called writer’s block. There have been times I have sat for hours with the desire to write a new song and nothing that has happened in my life is speaking to me. It bugs me when this happens. But, every once in a while something that happened to someone else, or something that could have happened to someone else grabs your attention.

The song linked below is one of this kind. I took a situation that happened to a friend of mine (an awful breakup with someone she had dated for some time…he messed it up) and I tried to imagine what would have happened if the ex boyfriend had realized just how special the someone he gave up was. What if he snuck into the her wedding and was filled with remorse over what he had done and had to watch in agony as someone else walked back down the isle with her? Who knows if he ever felt this way, but it was good food for thought.

I really like the way the song turned out. The recording is one I did here at my home. The sound quality is decent considering I recorded it on my iPhone. I hope you enjoy.

The One That Got Away

If you don’t know where you are going…

~ David Willis ~ 3 Comments

I saw the title of a book recently that made me laugh. It is called “If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going You Might End Up Somewhere Else.” I haven’t read it, but it made me think. You have to have an idea of where you want to be before you can get there. You can say you want to be successful, but that is way too vague. What does successful look like? How do you see yourself fitting into the picture? How do you start from where you are now and get to the picture you see? This process of discovery is true with most any endeavor.

Let’s take physical fitness for instance. Say you have gone to the gym and you see someone who looks like you want to look. You have that end picture of what successful looks like. Now you can do your homework and figure out how much you are going to have to work out and diet to reach that goal. All the time knowing, they didn’t get there overnight and neither will you. You are now a work in progress.

This may sound like a strange statement, but I am glad that I am a work in progress. In most every area. Sure, it would be nice to be perfect, but there was only one man I know of that was…and I ain’t him. I look in the mirror and I see potential and setback, promise and frustration, the desire to be better and the fear of getting worse. Many times it is two steps forward and that many back, but over time I am progressing. It has been slow at times, but I keep moving forward. Get knocked down, get back up. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I am almost embarrassed to admit that I am only now figuring out who I really am and what I call successful. I thought I had it figured out at 18. Yeah, right. (Regarding what I knew as a teenager, I think of the Mark Twain quote, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”) I had flashes of it during my 20s, but that wasn’t much better. Now in my 30s I am beginning to see things more clearly. I know now though that I don’t have to have everything figured out. I have to do the best with what God has given me and keep moving towards the goals I have set.

Do you know where you are headed? What does success look like in your life? How are you going to get there?

What is in a name?

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

This past week at Lifechurch.TV, pastor Craig Groeshel started a new series called Getting Past your Past. I will be totally honest here. When we sat down at church I just wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t in the mood to sing. I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I have no good reason for this. I was just in a funk. That usually is the case when a good message is about to be given. Fortunately the fog lifted and what followed was awesome.

Pastor Craig asked this question near the beginning of the message: What negative label follows your name? This could be anything. Do you know what yours are? Mine started to pop up in a hurry. Granted, I know them well so it didn’t take much thinking. I have two that have bugged me for years: fat boy and quitter.

When I was a teenager I had a fat boy complex. I used self depreciating humor quite often to get a laugh. Looking back I see a huge problem though…I wasn’t fat. I was a husky kid, but when I hit my growth spurt I spent several years skinnier than I ever knew I was. See below. What did this view of myself get me? I promptly gained 40 pounds after high school. I graduated at 190 and weighed 230 the next year. (The freshman 15 is one thing, but 40 pounds..good grief.) I have lived with this false label for a long time. I wasn’t a fat boy. I am bigger than I want to be right now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. This label doesn’t own me. God created me for more than that.

Summer 1995

I have also lived with the label Quitter. There isn’t a sport that I have played that I haven’t quit. I played basketball in high school and when it was time to pass out the jersey’s I was one of two guys that didn’t get one. I saw no future with it and I quit. I signed up for the football team my sophomore year and made it through 3 a days and quit. I played a season and a half of baseball and wasn’t happy with it so I quit. From the paragraph I just wrote it seems that label would be true…but it isn’t either. I am not a quitter. Looking back I realize I chose other things over the sports. I chose to sing in the choir and had some success at it. (Went to college with all tuition paid for two years singing.) That label doesn’t own me either. There are several more important things that I have not quit at all. I have been married to the same beautiful woman for 12 years. There is no quit in my game. I am, however, more selective about what I start these days. Had I chosen choir in the beginning back in those days there would have been no need to play the sports. Singing was what I enjoyed doing.

Through the message I have been encourage to go back and look at many of those negative labels that have attached themselves to me over the years. As I look at each one and examine them closely I am finding that they are inconsistent with what I know to be true. As a follower of Christ I am a new creation. I have been made new. Labels that may have defined me at one time no longer have to. God has purpose for my life. Holding on to the past and being crippled by it is not it.

Are there any labels that have defined you in the past? What are you doing to overcome them? Were they valid in the first place? The service was eye opening. I am so glad I shook the funk and really heard what was being said.

She’s Everything…Including An Awesome Mom!

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

This evening while I was getting the little on down for bed I happened upon a song I hadn’t heard in a while. While surfing through my Vevo App on the iPhone, I found She’s Everything by Brad Paisley. I have his Time Well Wasted album and have listened to it a few times, but I don’t think this song ever reached out and grabbed me the way it did tonight. I feel the same way about my wife as he does about his: she is everything to me.

With that said, I celebrate her in a special way today. She is an awesome mom. I look at my son and I see the amazing job she has done and continues to do. I am proud to be her husband and proud that she is the mother of my son. We are so very blessed.

Happy Mother’s Day my love. You are the best. You are everything to us.