Dan Gilbert - Snow, Creativity & The Fresh Start of 2014 lyrics

Snow. I love the clean, bright white stuff. In fact, the only thing whiter and brighter than snow is Elmer's Glue. Why do I like the cold, fluffy white stuff so much? Because, like a clean white board, it cries of opportunity. When I walked into the office yesterday which was the unofficial first business day of 2014, I took a few minutes and just stared at the squeaky clean white board in front of me and it felt like the solid, writable, rectangular surface was staring back at me, daring me to write my first thoughts of the fresh new year. Behind me, the clean gla** windows seemed like they were letting in even more light than usual. There is something the bright snow does to the sunshine that almost gives it an additional boost of energy….and optimism. And so it goes with the new year. There is something about it. Maybe one can argue that the calendar is just an artificial invention that us humans have arbitrarily created so we can keep track of things. This may be the case, but so what? It's the common mechanism that regulates the way we look at and manage time and the reality of it all is that the new year gives us all a new starting line and an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin anew. So here you are in the infancy of your 2014 journey. So much to do. So many ideas to explore and potentially implement and so many day-to-day things that just need to get done. This is where the natural conflict arises for almost all of us. The best way to describe and define the yin and yang of this constant struggle is a simple question that I am continually asking myself and I am sure you often ask yourself: How do I find the time to explore and create new things while I am also responsible for keeping the day-to-day trains running smoothly? There are no easy answers to this critical question. However, what I do know is that in this fast-changing and technologically driven world, if you don't find some time to focus on your ideas, creative thoughts, and implementing the “new” stuff, those trains that you are focused on running daily will soon come to a screeching halt. So this year, I am challenging every single one of you to find the time to spend on exploring the new. Commit the time to improve the mousetrap in and around every single thing that you do. If it's broke, how do I get it fixed? If it's going fair or O.K. how do I make it good? If it's going good, how do I make it great? If it's great, how do I make it outstanding, world-cla** and absolutely AMAZING? If it isn't yet so, how do I make it be?! That's how you bring real value to this world. That's how you differentiate your business, your team, your mission and yourself. Too many people have been brought up to believe they are not creative or they are only good at getting things done. Garbage. There is not a human being on this planet that doesn't have creative ability. You are born with it. Every single one of us. It may be muted because the environment you have found yourself working in over the years or maybe grew up in, but it is there. You just have to reach down and find it. Creative thought and innovation is not something that should be turned on one day each year because somebody labeled today ‘idea day'. It is something we should all be living. Change the ‘prism' that you see the world through and suddenly the world looks completely different to you. Take a look at this picture. Here is a different angle of this same house and pool. What do you see? Think you got a great feel of this back yard? Pretty confident that you fully understand the set-up of the back of this home? Now take a look at this picture taken from yet one more angle. Not quite what you thought you saw in the first two pictures? Change the prism or the angle of how you look at things and suddenly the world looks completely different. Funny thing, it's not the world that changed one bit is it? IT'S YOU THAT CHANGED. Or what do you see here? And how about now? Only one word comes to me after looking at this picture: “WOW!” But I am just the new person around here. What do I know? I don't want to rock the boat. Why should they listen to me? Stop it. Nothing could be further from the truth. ‘New people' can actually see things that people who have been engaged and involved with for a long period of time just no longer see. Everyone needs to improve things and create things. And that includes you. Last year at this time, I posted about greatness in the year 2013. I am hoping your journey is now closer to that ideal than it was one year ago. But the path to greatness never ends. Greatness is an ideal. It's not a place. You can always become better. You can always grow more, learn more, help more, create more, produce more and positively impact more human beings and this world more. All of this stuff is a choice. You can choose to remain on the frequency that is always aware, always paying attention, always taking a mental ‘step back' and looking at every situation through the prism of how can this be made better or I have a better idea, always looking for the threads and connections….In some way, everything is connected to everything else. Take a look and you will be truly surprised at how much you see. You can choose to go on “mental cruise control” 100% of the time, 50% of the time or 0% of the time. “Mental cruise control” tunes you into a different frequency. It's a frequency that may allow you to run the trains O.K. But it's a frequency that will not allow you to tune in to the countless opportunities for improvement, new ideas, creativity, and to add real VALUE by positively impacting others and this world in ways that maybe, you never imagined you could or would. You can play somebody else's music all of the time or at least some of the time you can choose to make up your own song. Who cares if it's not any good? You learn so much in the process whether your new ideas turn out special or not. Remember, on the road to greatness there are no one-way streets. You can always turn around and get back on the right route. So let's make 2014 our best year yet. I am expecting great things from all of us in the 353 days that remain this year. We are now 21,000+ team members spread across 112 different companies all doing different things, yet doing them all from the same culture and foundation that is the single biggest reason for ‘who' we are and what we have built. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.” -Steve Jobs Let's keep building, folks and be open to viewing the world through a little different lens than we have become accustomed to seeing it through. The opportunity has never been so great. Are you going to seize it? Dan Gilbert January 7th, 2014 Detroit, Michigan