Do you have what it takes to reach your dreams and succeed?
你具備了追求夢想以臻成功所需的特質嗎？
by Erik Lacitis / © 2014, The Seattle Times. Distributed by MCT Information Services.
Douglas Nickson makes lists of goals. Lots and lots of lists. Then, unlike you and me, he accomplishes them.
Eighteen years ago, he was financially busted—bankrupt. He had just gone through an emotional divorce. Nickson decided it was time to pull himself out of “my own Dark Ages.”
He gathered a bunch of magazines and travel brochures with photos of landmarks around the world: Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower [and] the Great Pyramid in Egypt. He cut out the pictures and glued them on 2-by-4-foot cardboard.
“I am going to go to all those places,” he vowed.
Now, at age 68, he says he has been to more than 100 countries and all seven continents.
These days, that framed cardboard collage hangs in his home office. You bet he’s proud.
Collections and mementos
If [Nickson’s travel stories were] a hoax, it would be an incredibly intricate hoax. He has passports with stamps from various nations. He has photos of himself at various famous locations.
That’s him on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. That’s him on a camel in Egypt. That’s his certificate from a marine cruise vouching he landed at Neko Harbour, on the Antarctic Peninsula.
And he keeps making lists.
In carefully cataloged envelopes, he has currencies from more than 50 of the nations he has visited. He not only has visited every state in the U.S., but is only six away from visiting every state four times.
He has collected tiny pebbles from 138 well-known locations, from Waikiki Beach to the ruins of Pompeii in Italy, which he keeps in a porcelain vase.
In his home, Nickson has turned a room into a shrunken version of England’s House of Lords library, complete with the well-polished wood bookshelves that are crammed with hardbacks.
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Discussion Questions
-Do you write down your goals? Why or why not?
-Do you enjoy reading? If so, what are some of your favorite books?
-Have you ever let fear prevent you from doing something you really wanted to do? Explain.
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