I attended a conference in which the keynote speaker was Roy Spence. He is a successful marketing guru who has advised presidential campaigns. I did not get much out of the presentation, sorry Roy. I did take a look at one of his books and read a chapter or two. I came across the story of the day that he and his team decided to create his marketing firm.
They were in a bar or some place similar. Trying to figure out if they should try to pull off this crazy idea of starting their own firm. When walking out, they looked up above the door. There was a quote posted up there, “Tomorrow, We Ride at Dawn.” That became their theme and they did that exact suggestion. They started that marketing firm the next day and never looked back.
This is not from a Western, but rather the movie Clash of the Titans, but you can imagine a Western. A temporary posse established in a local bar room scene. In a dramatic moment, the man with the tin badge tells the band of ragtag cowboys, “tomorow, we ride at dawn.”
This phrase has become one that I have planted in my mind. Now matter what is going on in my life, I can always pick back up and ride at dawn. This is a critical concept. If you allow yourself to take any setback, or any dissapointment as your reality, then you fail. You will start to slip and not keep up any good practice or habit. You must start each day as a new one, as if it was the first one. Ride at Dawn.
This is a mentality. You never want to be thinking, “someday.” You never want to be thinking, “next week, month, or year.” You want to always have in your mind, ride at dawn. If you forgive and forget all each night, then the next day is always new. The next day is always the first. If you ponder this for a moment, you will realize that the past actually does not exist. What you did or did not do today is no longer in existence. The only thing you have is what you can do now or first thing tomorrrow. Ride at Dawn is a forgiveness paradigm. Who cares what you did the day before, you are on the trail now and you are going to ride.
This is the second powerful phrase that I use to motivate myself during the darkest of times. Ride at Dawn.
Day 353 – les Lumières
Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay, “What is enlightenment?” marked the end of an era, much like we might be at the cusp of a new one today. The Enlightenment, characterized by reason and a departure from superstition, was known as *les Lumières* by the French and *Aufklärung* by the Germans. We are now entering an “Age of Knowledge” where access to information is ubiquitous, shifting the focus from acquiring knowledge to exercising judgment.
