We are all dots, the people, experience, dreams and memories in our lives are all splattered dots on the canvas of life.  Some big, some small, some with color some dark.  Sometimes you chase a dot, sometimes youll find yourself being chased by one and sometimes youre sitting on a dot and you dont even know it.  Dots can look like chaos, like the stars in the sky they can either be formed into constellations or look like speckles with no rhythm or reason to be found.  Most of us bounce from one dot to the next with no end in mind. In search of reason for existence and purpose the journey of life has lead me to start connecting my dots.  In this process I have realized that my dots are now connected with sharp lines, but in the beginning of my journey there was only faith that they would one day connect to form my personal masterpiece.  A puzzle of sorts; sometimes when I look back at early formation of my dots, I draw the analogy of a maze-like experience. In a maze, without elevation you are forced to run from wall to wall bouncing from one (dot) to the next.  The goal of this writing is to elevate our thinking and to help you understand that without Faith life can look like unrelated, coincidental scattered dots, not connected, or connected with no purpose.  My belief is in order to evolve and create our personal masterpiece we must understand our dots, connect the dots of the past, and with faith, embrace those of the present so that when our personal dot burns out we will leave behind a great constellation for others observe. 

Ive found that life can be surmised by the memories (dots of the past) that we have experienced.  At the end of your day you only have the memories of the past hours, a few days later perhaps youll remember one of those memories and a few months later the days blur together as we dont have the capacity to vividly recall more than just a few.  The collection of these memories images are connected together with a touch of sound, becoming the slide show of life.  My 28 years on this earth has yielded two hundred powerful memories thus far and I have not the capacity to vividly store many more, so I will make room and release them to you, so I may create a hundred more. My first one hundred memories, starting when I was three, were that of despair.   

Brought into this world a frightened child living in fear of the unknown; my mother and father were unfit to be parents.  Both of my parents were abused children and neither of them came to the realization that they were repeating the cycle that they had despised all of their lives.  I am the youngest of six children, separated from my closest sibling by five years; therefore I was alone most often.  Some of my fist memories were as a witness to and later a victim of the same abuse that had plagued my parents childhood. At a young age I began to uniquely develop for my own survival. I would later learn that I developed a powerful gift for auditory processing.  I learned to differentiate tonality from afar, storing sounds and words into a memory bank that I would triage for survival.  In part due to having an older brother whose name tonally was the same as mine.  As the voice of my father would bear down and the anger would build, I learned to determine if the focus was me or my brother Brian before he got too close.  I also learned to set crafty traps at a young age, sacrificing my older sibling to deter my fathers punishing ambitions.  To say the least my fist hundred memories created a rare identity and a rare set of skills.  I would later learn that I was different in many ways from my peers.  My fist expression of such difference was that of rebellion.  I was a rebel, once considered the most dangerous juvenile in the county where I grew up.  Like Huck Fin, I would find myself in compelling situations.  I like him, would receive attention by way of attracting it for my negative actions.  As a result I quickly learned the power of fear and that I could stand out the most by use of it; the same sword that I was suppressed by had a double edge.  I learned that the wielding of fear was a powerful tool.  Like the great conquerors of ancient time, I would have my time as king of the suppressed; fear would be my power source.   

By the age of 16 such experiments worked and I had exactly what I wanted.  An overachiever in my chosen sport, unfortunately society requires that game be played in jail.  A chance meeting with a mentor arranged by my mother would soon free me from the identity I had created.  The man came into my life not as a threat but rather as a curiosity.  He did not have the making of most men that had been in my life.  A hint of femininity, a fruity nature, I could find nothing intimidating about him.  His intelligence was not outstanding; in fact he would tell me he thought higher of mine.  Those words were a surprise having built a contra-society identity, as he was the epitome of a successful society member.  A millionaire many times over, he had exactly what everyone wanted.  He would later rescue my mother and I to live with him in his moat surrounded castle. In a moment we went from a home infested with rats and murders occurring just a few yards away, to living on an island where I would awaken to exotic birds and fish jumping lakeside by my bedroom window. This exposure would awaken a dormant trait that was hidden within me.  

Evolutionist often sight mans use of tools and later weapons as the building block toward evolved thinking.  In the same vein, I was merely a pre-evolved man.  I was a child in the body of a man entering early adulthood.  Having sharply developed survival skills, all I needed were a few tools to take my mind off of my primal needs and free it to evolve.  And in a moment those tools were delivered to me.  My first hundred memories were now behind me and I could evolve to create the second hundred, my dormant trait of ambition came to life and a thirst for accomplishment had awoken. My evolution began with an ambitious course of study. I had to make up for lost time having only achieved a 9^th grade education; with massive ground to cover I forced myself to complete high school in less than a year and simultaneously entered college.  For two years I would learn with the innocent curiosity of an infant baby and in just two years my knowledge and intelligence would surpass my wildest expectation.  Having my hands freed to learn I would do so at a record pace.  According to anthropologist the survival of our species is linked to adaptation and I was perfectly made to adapt ditching a non-serving set of traits the second I learned they were no longer useful.  I would absorb knowledge from books and people like a tide onto the sand, I would encompass all they could offer and then pull back to my ocean.  I developed an appetite for application; my hunger fed day in and day out.  This would facilitate my second evolutionary transformation.  

As adaptable as a mouse, I learned to take form quickly.  I learned to squeeze into places not thought possible.  By the age of 23 I was shedding my cocoon, reborn a success with wings to fly.  I recall stepping out on the branch newly hatched and spreading my wings.  Becoming an entrepreneur was my fist flight.  Now I had a vehicle and an identity that would further my growth. My cocoon shed and left behind, I would fly away from the past, now considered a specimen of beauty and an inspiration, my new body was formed.  I would no longer be bound by the prior vehicle; I could now take flight toward my future.  Following my instincts and the gravitational breeze, where I would wind up I did not know.  My only tool was an attitude set to grow; my next hundred memories would read like a story tale.  Having gained notoriety for being special, for being different, for being intelligent, I would surround myself with great thinkers and great leaders to become their student.  I would fall in love with everything about them that made them unique, my gift to them was the feeling of contribution their gift to me was their experience and knowledge.  Building on my strengths and not afraid to ask for help, I persuaded a master investor to fund my cause.  As his protg this man would challenge me and give me no choice but to succeed.  With his support and the wind at my back I braved new territories, but would I succeed, would I metamorphosis onto my next evolution?  

With the disease of status anxiety, I would move forward with a relentless disposition towards persistence, with clarity of outcome and a nothing can stop me attitude. I would anchor down on my path and define my purpose.  With clarity of mind I would move forth on my master plan.   With such ambition comes collateral damage, there are high costs to such aspirations and a tricky mind field to navigate.  With the help of my mentors I always on the edge a short few steps from disaster or massive success at all times.  Having my standards set by such great mentors, I became very ambitious.  An interesting thing about ambition is the very nature of it.  Ambition is uncontrollable and when your ambition is in momentum its fees are paid in the currency of emotion.  Ambition is not so much a trait, but rather an uncontrollable driving force.  Ambition keeps you up at night, it drives you to work 18 hours a day and it takes you over.  I have often been told by friends that I should seek balance, however I counter that success is a zero sum game where for every achievement there is loss of something else.  For every home owned there is one less for someone else and therefore when one is seeking success balance and ambition are like yen and yang, bulling onto each other.  The bad news is the more infected with ambition you are the more it becomes a virus, constantly mutating in the form of new ideas, and new approaches.  With each encounter I was a host to its spread.    

In retrospect I (as a dot) have developed an interesting trait, one observed in many animal species.  If youve ever watched a liter of wolves you will find an ambitious male.  He pushes aside his siblings and forces more milk from his mother.  He edges out the competition to become the ruler of the pack.  His reward is in the form of greater experiences being gifted to travel further, to eat in abundance and live more fulfilled. This evolutionary adaptation is exactly what I found myself becoming; the alpha male.  I did not know it at the time, but my ambition was in hibernation lying dormant my whole life.  The thaw of my spring awakened me to a new perspective. I would spend the next several years experiencing memories that few have such privilege.  These memories are my dots. And this writing is designed to show how all dots are connected. 

The process of connecting our dots is designed to better equip us to have faith in the dots of our future. My goal of these writings is not to impress you, but rather to impress upon you that life is merely a summary of action took, people experienced and behavior learned.  Fall in love with this process as I have, and you to will live a life in awe. Please be with these writings and feel your connection.  Perhaps you are a dot in my masterpiece or just an observer to it.  

Please apply if you think you can help.  We need marketers, coders, project managers, bloggers, etc. 

One of our most important New Years Resolutions at PathConnect is to launch innovative new features each and every month, a goal that we hit for January with the release of our awesome new blog feature! If you aren’t familiar with blogging, this is a simple way for you to write about anything you want.  Share a story about your weekend, write a poem, rant about a bad movie you got dragged to, you name it.

What we’d really love to hear about, however, is how PathConnect has made an impact on YOU.  Tell us your story about an obstacle you were able to overcome or a goal you were able to achieve thanks to PathConnect.  Visit your Member Home, click on My Blog, and Write Entry.  Label your entry “My PathConnect Success Story,” and if yours is among the best stories you could be published!

Our winner will be featured on the PathConnect Home Page and published as our Blog of the Month.  Entries will be accepted through the end of January, so get blogging!!!

Remember to title your blog-- "My PathConnect Success Story," so we can identify your entries.

My Mother Is My Hero [Ryan Blair- 10.22.06] 

Much can be said about the "American Dream" having come from anything but a "Dream". I can tell you that I am glad I "lived" and I am grateful for every moment I've experienced.  It gives me an appreciation for life that I would not have otherwise. 

In my neighborhood, crime, drugs, and poverty were common place.  This was all my mother (a single mother) could afford living on the minimum wages of a deli worker.  My mother and I lost our entire family to drug addiction: my father, my brothers, my sister. Like many families, we lost everything and everyone to drugs.

For this reason, my mother is my hero. She gave me faith, faith that I would overcome my challenges, those with learning, those with poor self-esteem, those with the societal class system that had labeled me a kid from a bad neighborhood, in poverty. 

A young man growing up without a male role model is a recipe that often creates a bad taste, and as a young man, I was "We'll.. acting in bad taste". 

Living on the streets, in the care of families other than my own, kicked out of high-school practically the day after I started, I was forced to grow up in the blink of an eye, in an environment that was taking me nowhere good. 

My own babysitter murdered in a drive by shooting, my every belonging robbed from me, my family stolen by the addiction of drugs, my own dogs poisoned to death by a vengeful neighbor, I remember laying awake night after night wondering why I was dealt such a bad hand. 

A teacher once asked me "what are you going to do with your life" and I replied, I won't make it past 21. I can name half-dozen close friends that didn't make it past 21.

Yet today I live a life unlike anything I had ever dreamed of growing up. 

In Awe of all the experiences I am so proud to live.  I am so grateful for the memories that have led me to this very moment. I am grateful to my mother, my family, the mentors, teachers, business partners and true friends for all that they've given to me.  I guess you could say I now live the "American Dream".  One, where opportunity is limitless, where you are in the driver's seat, the vehicle, entrepreneurship.  The destination...  The dreams and visions we seek.  

I am a student.  A student of business, a student of human potential and a student of life.  Ironically, I am also a teacher, teaching anyone who will be open to learning about the truths that I know, about the future that I see and about potential that we all have within us. 

I've had the pleasure of crossing off many goals from my list.  At an early age I've created 4 significant companies and worked side by side with the smartest minds in many subjects. Yes these accomplishments are nothing compared to what we are now creating.

My proudest moments are in the subtleties of life.  The fact that now I am able to help people get the same opportunity I had.  To witness families come together in unity, to work toward family goals.  To see single mothers pass on the entrepreneurial values that we teach, to attract to our team with both the brightest entrepreneurs in the nation, and those just beginning their journey, to feel people of all ages and backgrounds create a new perspective on life and to hear sounds of paradigms shifting all over because of the work we do.  There's no greater sensation, there's no greater victory than the feeling of contribution. 

I am of the belief that everything happens for a reason, I believe that all my experiences, both the victories and the defeats, were for a purpose. I believe that you are reading this for a reason.  I wish I could be there in person right now to shake your hand.  Hopefully soon that wish will come true.  I have no doubt that our future holds massive success, how much will be determined....  Determined by the value we provide, determined by the quality of those individuals that join us, determined by all the visions of life, health and prosperity, that we transform into a reality…