Kalpana_Chawla_Dare_Dream

Kalpana Chawla Dared To Dream

My wife and I were watching the SpaceX rocket launch last week and it reminded me of a post I wrote about Kalpana Chawla. Kalpana inspires me because she is an example of making dreams come true by her thoughts. She accomplished much in her short life. Today, millions of people are inspired because Kalpana Chawla dared to dream.

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I’ve always been interested in space travel. I watch every launch I can. I remember watching the first astronauts launch in the 60s and continue to watch the SpaceX launches. My first recollection of seeing Kalpana Chawla was when she was a member of mission STS-107 and was about to board the space shuttle Columbia on January 16, 2003. Kalpana stood out to me as the seven Columbia crew members were shown walking to their vehicles. She appeared too young and small to be an astronaut. How she carried herself with such confidence was what stood out to me.

Kalpana Chawla

Kalpana Chawla was born July 1, 1961, in Karnal, India. She always enjoyed flying and held many pilot licenses. She could fly about any airplane. Her family was middle class and she graduated from high school in 1976. After graduating from high school, she found herself as the only female in the aeronautics batch at Punjab University. Her parents resisted her career choice but nothing could stop Kalpana.

Kalpana Chawla dared to dream and always had big dreams. Her dreams were to travel beyond the blue yonder, fly into the heavens, and touch the stars someday. She became the first female Indian-born NASA astronaut. Kalpana wanted to show the world that dreams do come true with hard work and patience. She said, “You can achieve what you dream with strength, endurance, willpower, and confidence. She was 1 of 2000 applicants for a civilian scientist’s position on Columbia’s voyage.

Kalpana’s Thoughts Became Her Reality

When she was living in the dorms while studying for her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, she had pictures of space shuttles taped to her walls. She didn’t think at the time she was putting them up that one day she would fly on one. When I read about this it didn’t surprise me because what you look at every day becomes your thoughts in your subconscious. Your thoughts turn into your reality.

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Kalpana is a great example that we can become anything we want to if we put our mind to it. She dreamed of flying to the stars, surrounded herself with pictures of the space shuttle, which became her thoughts. Her thoughts directed her actions and interactions became reality. She set goals to keep her on track and enjoyed the journey. Her thoughts on goals were, “When you are going for a goal, the journey is the best part.”

Heading Into Space

Kalpana’s first opportunity to travel beyond the blue yonder and fly into the heavens came when she was selected to be part of the crew on mission STS-87 in November 1997. She flew on the space shuttle Columbia as they completed 252 orbits of the earth in just over two weeks. In 2000, she was selected for her second voyage on Columbia as a mission specialist on STS-107. Because of many delays they didn’t launch until January 16, 2003. It was an ill-fated launch due to a piece of foam that broke off and damaged the heat tiles on the spacecraft wing.

On February 1, 2003, I was running on a treadmill at my gym and turned on the TV to watch Columbia land. They showed maps of the flight path Columbia would take to land at Kennedy Space Center. I began reading at the bottom of the screen that they had lost communication. The next images were from cameras in Texas and showed fiery streaks in the sky. I realized at that moment that Columbia had broken up in the crew had perished. It was a sad day for the world and particularly the country of India.

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Women’s Struggles In India

Kalpana Chawla had accomplished much while growing up in a male-dominated society and country. In the 1970s and 1980s, women in India were fighting battles against:

            – Dowry

            – Rape

            – Caste Crimes

            – Unjust Laws

            – Better Working Conditions

            – and more.

My admiration for Kalpana Chawla comes from the fact that she would not let anything stop her from her dreams. She had a definite purpose and persevered to achieve her dreams. For millions of young Indians, she was inspirational. Kalpana Chawla dared to dream. She gave them hope that they could dream and work hard to achieve those dreams.

Don’t Water the Street: Creating the Right Mindset

Don’t water the street: creating the right mindset. Success is based on work. If you’re not willing to do the work you’re probably not going to have very good results. It all begins with your mind though; you have a thought about something that you would like to accomplish. You start off with a dream about being wealthy or losing weight and having a different body. How about living in a mansion instead of your studio apartment that’s worse than the apartment you lived in at college? Now that you have this dream; How are you going to go about turning it into a reality? If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll know that how is not really important. WHY is the most important part of the equation.

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Don’t Water The Streets

This is where your thoughts come in. If your mindset is right and you’re thinking positive thoughts, then HOW to obtain your dreams will come to you. You will see an ad, or maybe bump into an old friend and they will give you inspiration. You might even overhear someone talking and it gets your mind thinking. Don’t worry, if you are thinking positive thoughts, you will know it when it happens.

This business started because I listened to a podcast that was recommended to me by a friend I hadn’t seen in 35 years. I didn’t know what a podcast was! Now is the time to take your seats because here comes Story-time. I wake every morning very early, way before the sun rises and after enjoying a talk with my Lord and Savior and spending some time in meditation, I exercise.

Sprinklers

At that time of the morning, several lawn sprinklers turn on in my neighborhood. I have one neighbor whose sprinklers are mostly facing the road. He even has one sprinkler that shoots from halfway in his yard all the way to the other side of the street. This sucker doesn’t even oscillate, it’s just a steady stream of water in one place. It caught my attention because I have to divert my path completely across the street to keep from getting soaked. The only grass that receives any nourishment is a thin strip, maybe six inches wide.

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What do your DREAMS look like?
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A Lush Lawn

Watching this guy’s sprinklers water the street got me thinking that this is just like bad thoughts. You will only be able to accomplish your dreams by thinking positive thoughts. Dreams, like grass, need to be nourished and watered. If your irrigation system is adjusted correctly then most of the water lands on your yard and nourishes your lawn. The grass grows healthy and full, chokes out all the weeds, and you have this lush green lawn that’s the envy of the neighborhood.

Feed Your Dreams

If you water your dreams with positive thoughts then they will grow, flourish, and choke out those pesky “Doubt Demons”. On the other hand, if you’re watering the street your lawn suffers and nothing grows. Grass does not grow on asphalt. If you’re constantly giving into negative thoughts you might as well be watering the street because nothing is going to grow.

Begin a daily habit of affirmations. Write them down on an index card and carry them with you always. Read them first thing in the morning, several times. Throughout the day pull out your index card and read them over and over. You need to program your positive thoughts into your subconscious.

Adjust Your Thoughts

Just like you adjust your sprinklers to only water the grass, adjust your positive thoughts to water your dreams. They say you have to do something 10,000 times before you get really good at it. I’m no scientist but maybe that’s how long it takes before your subconscious mind takes over and you start doing and saying the right things without thinking about it.

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Good Times

Throughout my military and law enforcement career, we went through constant training. Whenever we would make an arrest or execute a search warrant, my actions were automatic. I don’t have a clear memory of what happened from the time after we arrived at the residence, up until the house was cleared or the person was in custody. In that time-space, I was operating with my subconscious mind and doing what I was trained to do without having to think about it with my conscious mind.

Operating In The Subconscious

One day my partner and I were taking a break at Starbucks and sitting outside when two people ran out of the store next to us. The owner ran out saying that he was robbed. My partner and I ran after them and after a little while, I realized I had my gun in my hand. I had no recollection of unholstering my weapon. The answer to your next question is, yes, we caught them. One of them became completely winded, gave up, and just laid down next to the street. The other one we found hiding under a house and wouldn’t come out, so we called out the K-9 unit. He crawled out and was completely cooperative once the dogs got there. Good times, good times.

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No More

Alright everybody, no more watering the street. Start your affirmations, repeat those things you want in your life until they come true. This is the point where a lot of people sabotage themselves because it doesn’t happen quickly enough for them. Keep in mind this isn’t McDonald’s and you can’t order a new lifestyle, drive up and pick it up at the little window.

Give Your Dreams Time To Grow

Dreams take time and we are not in control of when they come true. You can’t see the grass seedlings when they’re under the soil and it’s usually at the point where they’re about to break through the soil that you get frustrated. You begin thinking and saying they will never grow and point the sprinkler back at the street. A lot of people get frustrated when they don’t see results and turn to negative thoughts and words. If they’d only kept the positive thoughts for one more day, one more week, or one more year their life could be radically changed.

Success

 Do you have a time limit on your dreams? How long are you willing to wait to achieve the life that you want and deserve? Some people seem to have boatloads of success when they are children while others don’t have success until they are in their 60s and 70s. Some people graduate from college in three years, some in five or six (You can put me in the latter timeframe). Both of them still have the same diploma.

Success is success. If you’ve ever graduated from college, you might have put your dreams on hold for those four years. A lot of people take 4 plus years to get a college diploma but will give up on their dreams after a few months. If you create the right mindset and don’t put a time limit on it, the universe is at your fingertips and you can live your dream lifestyle.

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“This train is moving on, you can get on, you can get off, but the train keeps moving on! We are going to the top of the mountain!”

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Draft Day

Today is the first round of the NFL draft. It is a day that will see several young men’s lives change dramatically. I look forward to watching the NFL draft every year because you get to see their dreams come true as it happens. You see the emotions they go through as they get the phone call from the NFL team that is selecting them. You see the emotions of the families that are there with them. What you don’t see are the countless hours in the weight room, the infinite number of sprints they have run, or the endless hours they spent studying in the classroom. What you don’t see is the countless miles the families put on their cars driving their kids to practice, games, or camps. You don’t see the time the families might’ve had to put in working a second job to pay for equipment or fees. The families do all this to help their children achieve all their dreams. Draft Day is special for them.

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When their name is called and the tears flow, you know this is the culmination of a dream that they have had for so many years and worked so hard at. For most of these young men, their dream started when they were children lying in bed. They held onto the dream probably through many ups and downs, successes and failures, until tonight. Tonight their dreams become reality. These are dreams that most of these young men have and they learned to write them down several years ago. Recently, former NFL running back C. J. Spiller was elected to the Clemson University Hall of Fame. Spiller said he wasn’t surprised by this selection because he wrote down his goals and dreams as a seven-year-old in Florida. His mom keeps that same note and has it locked up in a room. He looked at that piece of paper every night and one of his dreams was he wanted to go off to college and leave that program as one of the best ever. I’m sure that the young men selected tonight, on Draft Day, will have a similar piece of paper with their goals and dreams written on it and their moms will keep it forever.

This makes me think about my life and how I arrived at where I am today. I don’t remember if I ever wrote anything down but I do remember that I used to read a lot. As a kid, I was always reading books about adventure, space travel, and explorations. I was always fascinated with the military and read a lot of books about World War II. My favorite books though were mysteries by Alfred Hitchcock. I would spend hours reading these books and loved pouring into the investigation of solving these mysteries. My life up to this point has turned out just like the books that I used to read and the dreams I used to have. I was an officer in the U.S. Army, investigated and solved mysteries as a Special Agent with DEA, and had many adventures in the jungles of South America and on the streets of US cities. Not everything I dreamt about came true in my life though. I, like probably every other sports-minded child did dream of one day playing in the NFL. That dream didn’t materialize….., maybe I should’ve written it down.

A vast majority of the men selected today will feel humbled, honored, and gracious when they hear their name called by the Commissioner. It is a pleasure to see them when they speak give thanks to God, their family, their coaches, and everyone who ever help them achieve this dream. Unfortunately, there are usually one or two who expected to be drafted earlier than they were and are unhappy. When you see them on camera they have a scowl on their face and you can tell that they are angry. Now, I’m sure that they think that they are the best player and feel slighted that so many teams passed them up, I can understand that. What I cannot understand is how they cannot feel gracious enough to put the other feelings aside. I’ve heard it said that less than one percent of all boys playing high school football will make it to the NFL. Just having the talent to be in that small pool should make you one of the most thankful people alive.

Photo by Simon Maage on Unsplash

When I see people who aren’t appreciative of what they have been given, I become more gracious for what I have. I have been given a wonderful, beautiful life, with a future full of unlimited possibilities. If you can’t be thankful for where you’re at right now in life, how do you expect God to reward you with a better life in the future? One major point that the ungrateful players forget is that no women will be selected tonight. There are women coaches and women referees in the NFL but no women players. I fully believe that soon there will be women players in the NFL; they will experience Draft Day. As the father of two daughters, I can see that women can do anything they set their minds to. They just have to change their mindset and flush out all the negative things they have been told in the past.

Photo by John Torcasio on Unsplash

Draft Day is special and is going to be a great night for these young men; I can’t wait to watch it. It will be different because of the pandemic but will still be exciting. It will be the culmination of one dream and the beginning of another. They will be checking off one goal accomplished and writing down a list of new goals and dreams they can start working towards. How about you, have you written down your dreams and goals? Are you reading them every day, several times a day? If not, today is a great day to start!

Works Cited

Hood, David. “Hall of Famer: CJ Spiller Takes Wrong Call, Learns He Is in Hall of Fame.” TigerNet.com, TigerNet.com, 22 Apr. 2020, http://www.tigernet.com/story/Hall-of-Famer-CJ-Spiller-takes-wrong-call-learns-he-is-in-Hall-of-Fame-18749.

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