Keyword: mountain

  • Ring of Fire

    “Ring of Fire” by Jason Kotecki. 20 x 20. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    Everyone thinks the excitement that accompanies the start of a relationship is the best. 

    Granted, it IS intoxicating. Everything is new and mysterious. You’re wondering if the other person just likes you or actually “likes you” likes you. A simple touch ignites an inferno of passion. There’s so much to talk about as you’re constantly learning new things about one another. That way he chews, and that way she steals your jacket when she’s cold, is still cute and endearing.

    There’s no doubt about it: The beginning of a new relationship is pretty great.

    But then again, in the beginning, you’re just two separate entities. Like bread and cheese. Cheese is good. Bread is good. Put them together and you have a cheese sandwich. Also good.

    But Johnny Cash was right when he sang that love is a burning thing. It doesn’t get really good until you’ve gone through some fires together. That’s when you really get to know what you’re made of, as you melt together and you become one. That melty, gooey goodness is where the magic’s at. And have you ever tried to separate a grilled cheese sandwich? It’s not easy. Which is how it should be. 

    Combined, my parents and Kim’s parents have been married for over 90 years. They have struggled and endured many, many fires. But through it all, they’ve stuck together. In today’s day and age, that’s no small feat. Is there a secret? I don’t know. I’m sure there’s luck involved, but I know that it’s not all luck. I know communication is really important. And mutual respect. And a willingness to give more than you get.

    But I think the real secret is that it comes down to a choice to stick together, no matter what. Infatuation is a feeling, but love? Love is a choice. When my parents exchanged vows on their wedding day, promising they’d be there for each other no matter what, in sickness and in health, through the good times and the fires…they meant it. For reals. 

    And when I married Kim, that’s how I looked at it too. Death will have to break us apart; it’s the only option. We have not left an escape hatch for ourselves. The ships back to a world where we go our separate ways are smoldering sticks of charcoal. When disagreements emerge, a fight erupts, and feelings are hurt, Plan A is to work it out.

    There is no Plan B. 

    When you don’t burn the ships, there’s a very high probability that someday, you’ll use them to sail away from one another. 

    Of course, you can throw all of this out the window if both people aren’t on board. If one flakes out or doesn’t live up to the promise, it all falls apart. And that is nothing short of heartbreaking.

    I write this to give hope to the newlyweds, to the people thinking about giving this love thing another go, and to those who are in the middle of one of those scary fires right now. 

    As James Blunt sang, “Everybody wants a flame, they don’t want to get burnt.”

    It’s true: once you get past the lovey-dovey stage of a relationship, and experience the fires that flare up when things get real, you will come out a little charred. 

    But that char – the battle scars from a life lived together – add a richness, depth, and magic that a regular old cheese sandwich can only dream about. 

  • Here Goes Something

    “Here Goes Something” by Jason Kotecki. 24 x 30. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    “Here goes nothing.”

    It’s a phrase we often use when we’re not sure how something will turn out. In fact, since it tends to come from a sense of desperation, we use it to admit that there’s a pretty good chance of it not working. It’s our little way of softening the psychological blow of failing.

    It makes me think of the pass play in football referred to as a “Hail Mary.” The team with the ball is losing, and time has nearly expired. They need a touchdown but they’re so far from the goal line that their only hope is to launch a long pass into a sea of waiting defenders. It’s a pass with a very low chance of success, but at that point, you’re out of options. 

    Here. Goes. Nothing. 

    However.

    This isn’t a football game.

    Trying things that might not work is not nothing.

    It takes tremendous courage, vulnerability, and faith. Dare I say it’s the most important thing we can ever do?

    Doing things that we are sure will work is safe and comfortable. Chasing guarantees is one way to go about our days, but if this is all we ever do, we will have wasted our lives. This is not why we were born.

    When you try something that might not work, it’s true: it might not. But in the end, many other good things will have come of it. At the very least, you will have learned something, and your comfort zone will have inched a little larger.

    And that’s definitely not nothing.

    We recently hosted our third Wondernite. Before our first one, I had no idea if it would work. I didn’t know if anyone would come. I didn’t know if I would even sell one painting. There was a distinct possibility that my brother Doug would go through all twenty items up for auction and not receive one bid and I’d have the exciting opportunity to descend into a catastrophically humiliating shame spiral while sitting in the back of the room. Thankfully for all concerned parties, it turned out well enough that we are currently planning our fourth.

    By the same token, we’ve also invested thousands of dollars into trade shows that did not deliver a good return on investment. They drove us deeper into debt. They bordered on soul-crushing. But the lessons we learned in the process, about marketing, positioning, pricing, and branding, were invaluable, and part of the reason Wondernite turned out to be a success.

    Tinker. Play. Experiment. Try things that might not work. And when you cast off into the unknown, you can be confident in saying to yourself, “Here goes something!!!”

  • Where The Party’s At

    “Where The Party’s At” by Jason Kotecki. 16 x 20. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    Piñatas are great fun, but only if they actually contain candy. We may be drawn in by the bright colors that promise a good time, but it’s quite a disappointment if, after a few whacks, it’s revealed that there’s actually nothing inside. Whomp whomp.

    The thing that makes a piñata so irresistible is what’s inside.

    The idea behind this painting is that if you’ve got a piñata, you’ve got a party, even if you’re in the middle of a barren wasteland. It was inspired by a song by the Newsboys, called “Wherever We Go.”

    Here are some of the lyrics:

    Wherever we go, the dumb get wise
    And the crime rates drop and the markets rise
    It’s a curious thing
    But it’s just our thing

    Bullies make nice, crooks repent
    And the Ozone layer shows improvement
    It’s a curious thing
    And it’s humbling

    Where we’re led, all the living dead
    Wanna leave their zombie mob
    It’s a touching scene when they all come clean
    God help us, we just love our job

    Hands up, holler back now
    We don’t claim any know-how
    We’re giving God all that
    Wherever we go, that’s where the party’s at

    One of the reasons this song has always resonated with me is that it feels like my life. I am a professional permission granter. I encourage people to make ugly cakes, to draw on their children, and break stupid rules. I make colorful paintings featuring objects with smiley faces on them. When people hire me to speak, they gain permission to have all kinds of fun with the theme and branding. People love it when I bring my family with me to gigs.

    It feels like wherever we go, that’s where the party’s at.

    That being said, I have a confession to make: I have never been the life of a party, and our family is not as fun as you think it is.

    Don’t get me wrong. We do have fun together, we do more than our fair share of kitchen dancing, and Adultitis is not welcome in our home. But I often get the sense that people think that living in our house is like being on an episode of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Well, if you’re old enough to remember that puppet-fueled gem of a show, today’s secret word is: “letdown.”

    Even as we prepare to leave our beloved neighborhood in Madison for new shenanigans in Sheboygan, our neighbors are flooding us with heartfelt well-wishes. It appears we will be missed. And although I’ve never felt I’ve misrepresented what life is like in our family, I got the sense that people were seeing something more.

    One day, I realized people were resonating with more than our outside appearances and outward actions. Like a piñata, what people are really attracted to is what’s inside us. 

    Our joy.

    In my twenty years of writing and speaking, I haven’t talked that much about my faith, preferring to live by the old St. Francis adage, “Preach the gospel always, and if necessary use words.” But the truth is, our faith is what drives everything.

    It’s where our joy comes from. I know some people don’t have it, but I can’t imagine my life without it. It’s what sustained us in the long periods of darkness when we were in debt and didn’t know if we’d ever make a living with the business. The Holy Spirit is what stirs my imagination and gives me the courage to do things I never could have imagined as a shy, scared little boy.

    In our household, we are celebrating the season of Advent as we prepare our Christmas. My favorite song of this time is O Come Emmanuel. 

    Emmanuel means “God with us.” 

    And that’s the difference between a party and an empty piñata filled with nothing but disappointment. 

    Some consider faith to be a crutch. An opiate for the masses. But I see my faith as a gift. 

    I don’t know how to give it to someone, but I do know this: People are searching for happiness, but what I think they really crave is joy, which is deeper and less fleeting.

    Joy is an inside job.

    If you have it, wherever you go, that’s where the party’s at.

  • Enjoy the Climb

    “Enjoy the Climb” by Jason Kotecki. 16 x 20. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    If you were to place your nose really close to this canvas and focus only on one of the goats, what would you see? A mountain goat on a snowy mountain. The environment around them is boring, plain, cold, and possibly treacherous.

    I was reading some old journals the other day. I was struck by how concerned I was about details of projects and initiatives that are no longer relevant to our current business model. Problems that needed to be solved, or else! Pitfalls that seemed like backbreakers. At first, I felt disappointment that I had wasted so much time on things that, in the end, didn’t matter at all. But then I realized that’s how life works. You struggle through, doing the best you can with the information you have. Hopefully, you learn from your mistakes, grow, and move forward. I realized that in ten years, a review of the journal I wrote this morning will probably feel the same way; only the details will have changed.

    Back to the painting now. Look at the big picture.

    Holy cow, those goats are surrounded by ice cream! 

    Sometimes we miss the cool things happening in our lives, because we’re too focused on the struggles right in front of us.

    A few years ago, I was enjoying a wonderful dinner with some speaker friends. We started a table discussion about the best place you’ve ever been that you’d like to go back to. While others shared amazing stories of Tuscany, Brazil, and Ireland, I felt silly because all I could think of was the Quality Inn in Clearwater, Florida.

    I’m pretty sure the year was 2007. Kim and I didn’t have kids yet, and we were in the early stages of my speaking career. We’d recently been to a speakers’ convention where a guy named Randy Gage talked about these exotic bungalows in Tahiti. He noted that some are perched over the water, featuring cool glass-bottomed floors, and wondered why anyone would invest the considerable expense to vacation in Tahiti and then settle for the slightly cheaper but extremely less exotic wood-bottomed accommodations a few hundred feet inland.

    So as we checked into the Quality Inn, the host offered us the option of upgrading from our “Garden View” room (which savvy travelers know as code for “Ugly Roof and Air Conditioning Unit View”) to an “Ocean View” room.

    “How much extra would that cost?” we asked.

    “$20 a night,” was the reply.

    We huddled to talk it over. Twenty bucks was a big deal for us, which should not come as a surprise because, as I mentioned, we were checking into a QUALITY INN.

    With Randy’s rallying cry still ringing in our ears, we threw caution to the wind and said YES.

    Isn’t it funny how often it takes far less than a million dollars to feel like a millionaire? That’s definitely how we felt as we triumphantly surveyed our ocean view.

    Photographers often refer to the hour before sunset as “magic hour,” because the light from the sun casts a beautiful golden hue on everything it touches. I remember lying on our bed, watching the sun sink into the Gulf. And I still remember how beautiful Kim looked. I’m so glad we snapped this selfie before selfies were a thing.

    I also remember that back then, we spent a lot of our time dreaming of “making it” and looking forward to the days when we’d be checking into much fancier hotels, you know, like Quality Inns in Tuscany.

    I spent a lot of time striving, worrying, and wishing I were somewhere else. Somewhere better. But I look back now and realize what an exciting, fun time that really was.

    Sometimes we get so caught up chasing the next moment that we forget to savor the one we’re in.

    Wherever you are on the mountain right now, enjoy the climb.

  • Willing To Relocate

    “Willing To Relocate” by Jason Kotecki. 24 x 24. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴 Shop this art!

    When Kim and I decided to move to Madison after we got married, neither of us had jobs or job prospects for that matter. I’m sure some people thought we were crazy.

    Kim and I didn’t have to leave home. It was fine, and it offered an opportunity. But we wanted an adventure to call our own, and suspected that the life we wanted to live would require a change of scenery. 

    And so we were willing to relocate.

    We had to leave behind that which was familiar in order to grow into who we were meant to become. We picked Madison, but in our case, the need to move away from our comfort zone was more important than the actual location itself.

    Sometimes we have to be willing to relocate to make our dreams come true. Of course, that might mean moving across town or across the country.

    But it might mean moving into a different group of friends.

    It might mean moving from where our customers are today to where they will be tomorrow.

    It might mean moving into a new way of seeing ourselves, perhaps from the role of victim to that of victor.

    When I was a brand new speaker, Kim and I helped form a mastermind group with a few of our peers, talented people at a similar stage as us. We had the harebrained idea to invite Robert into our group. Robert was a true pro that we all looked up to. He’d been speaking for years and had a thriving business. We never thought he’d actually say yes. 

    He did. 

    The thing that impressed me most about Robert was his openness to new ideas. He shared hard-earned lessons, but never paraded the fact that he was further along than any of us. He looked at us as true peers. He was always curious and open to our ideas. He regularly asked us for our opinions and was eager to try out our suggestions. 

    I remember thinking that when I grew up and got really successful, I wanted to be like Robert. 

    Here’s the thing. I now see that he wasn’t patronizing us; he was smart. He knew that in order to grow his business and get better as a speaker, he couldn’t stay where he was. He had to be willing to relocate. 

    Sadly, the reason he stood out is that his attitude is rare. I’ve seen many speakers – and businesses for that matter – slowly fade into oblivion and irrelevance because pride held them back. They already knew it all. They weren’t open to a new path.

    Robert was successful. But he wasn’t about to settle.

    If you are not satisfied with your life as it is now, you have to be willing to relocate from where you are now to where you want to be.

    If you want to experience the summit, you have to say goodbye to sea level.

  • Someday (Cubs Win)

    “Someday (Cubs Win)” by Jason Kotecki. 16 x 20. Oil on canvas.
    Original is in Private Collection 🔴 Shop this art!

    This is my tribute to the 2016 World Series Champs, the Chicago Cubs. (Did I just write that?!) 

    The 2016 season was as magical as it was historical for the Chicago Cubs, who had not been to a World Series since 1945 and had not won a championship since 1908. I started this painting after the Cubbies won the pennant, but could not get myself to finish it when they fell behind in the World Series. The path to the top of the mountain is paved with baseballs, which represent the 108 years of futility. The ball in the mouth of the cub has the year 2016 written on it, a year I will never forget.

    As a lifelong Cubs fan, there are no words to describe the satisfaction of finishing this painting with the strike through the word “someday.” Finally, after so many years of ups and downs, the Cubs are the World Series Champions.

    #FlyTheW

  • Cherry On Top

    “Cherry On Top” by Jason Kotecki. 20 x 20. Oil on canvas.
    Original is SOLD 🔴  Shop this art!

    I’m really not a fan of how often I base my happiness on what I haven’t accomplished, or what inconvenience just popped up.

    The truth is, life really is amazing. 

    Unfortunately, Adultitis would have us think differently. 

    Your washing machine goes kaput. You’re in the middle of dinner and realize you don’t have a crucial ingredient. You don’t get the promotion. That nagging cold won’t go away. Your goals are taking longer to achieve than expected.

    It’s easy to get lost in the weeds, focused on what we’re missing or what’s going wrong.

    Sometimes we just need a bit of perspective. The average world income is five thousand dollars. If you make more than that, then you’re in the top 50%. If you make more than $50,000, you’re in the top 0.5%. 

    We live in a time where Oregon Trail is a fun computer game, not a harrowing months-long journey replete with danger and dysentery.

    Are you alive? Do you have a job? Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have something to eat today? Does someone love you? Do you have a dream in your heart? Is today a chance to let go of yesterday and start fresh? Although you may not have said yes to every single one of those questions, I’m betting you can say yes to most. 

    And if that’s true, regardless of what goals remain unattained, or what inconveniences are currently plaguing us, I think we can agree that our lives are pretty dang good. 

    Anything else is a cherry on top.