Every day (except one) my parents took me to Cowan Avenue Elementary School. The one off day was a basic schedule conflict that left both my parents unavailable, so I went with my best friend and his grandmother.
Trouble ensued in my mind when I realized we weren’t about to have the same morning routine. We stopped by the library before school and I remember my young brain felt so unprepared for the day. My goodness — I didn’t have the library on my visualization schedule!
Who knew I was mentally preparing for kindergarten? Not me!
Here the power of visualization was born!
Since as long as I can remember, I’ve imagined things clearly in my mind before hand to achieve them. Moving the gym from the park into 110 Lincoln was a big step in the DEUCE Gym story. We were a rag tag bunch of kids trying to turn an old garage into something special.
But, it didn’t take long to imagine a bigger future.
With no money, no experience, and no pathway forward, I imagined one day buying our building and the adjacent garage to expand our mission. Visualization is a funny, but powerful practice. It’s funny because of the details you do (or don’t) include in your vision can be surprising.
When I imagined expanding the gym next door, I never could see who was around or what would happen inside the building. The only image I kept in my mind over the last 12 years was that the three bay doors would perfectly hold the inscription of our circular model for development as described in three words:
Performance | Community | Lifestyle
The doors were to be painted black with simple white block lettering. That image was etched in my mind through more than 4380 days in a row. In some ways, every email, clogged toilet, student birthday, and programming meeting would somehow contribute to some far away future where we can paint the doors and make the building our own.
Well, here we are.
And, I don’t know what this means to you the reader, but I hope it means you’ll use your imagination to see a beautiful, impossible future for yourself.
Thank you to Pacman Jack who hand painted the doors we’ve dreamed of more than a decade after he painted our original building.
I love you all.
