What does it cost you to think about positive things? Does it cost you anything at all to dream? Why are people afraid to pull really good images out of themselves of a future that they’d like to create? If you’re willing to dream and visualize those dreams and seize them over and over again to yourself, eventually the body and mind begin to accept them as a future reality.

Unfortunately, in your quest to accomplish your dream, you will more than likely encounter naysayers – negative people who have immersed themselves in a world of mediocrity and fear of an unknown future.

Of course it’s fine to work hard and check your thoughts because you don’t want to do anything blindly, but it’s another thing to allow negative people to penetrate into what you most desire.

So be careful of who you surround yourself with. In my short 44 years, I have learned to surround myself with “possibility thinkers” – positive people who help me to feed more and more energy and possibility into whatever ideas I’m working on.

I find it quite interesting that when I’m in a room of people who are energized and are sharing their successes with me, and I’m sharing my successes with them, that an almost euphoric state of mind begins to take over. It’s like a complete battery recharge, which then gives me more energy to go out and chase the dream, more energy to put into my desires so that I can make them come true.

But it’s not fair to be only a taker of good energy. You must also be a giver of good energy. And when both parties are giving good energy – miracles happen.
So find your possibility thinkers – and energy up!

I was 22 when I bought my first self-help kit. I’ll never forget watching the TV and seeing this older gentleman talk about his life’s accomplishments. I connected with this person because he built things and I wanted to build something too. While he was full of wisdom, I was a young buck full of enthusiasm and determination. One of the greatest things I learned from him was that the simplest of activities can change your life. He told me to write down on a piece of paper things I would accomplish today, tomorrow, in one week, in one month and in one year.

At first, I thought it would be easy, but I realized after investing an hour or so in thought that I better really know what I want. I did write it down and then I had to write a promise to myself that I would do them and then sign and date it. Little did I know the gift that was given to me that day. I stumbled upon that paper today and realized how much this impacted my life. He taught me to start with small wishes and promises. One of them was to fix a broken door handle in my car … can you believe it? That was something very important to me back then.

I learned what it means to fulfill promises to myself, and it led me down a path of fulfilling promises to others. I have come to realize that the greatest reward I will ever have in life will be seeing people grow (like students the first day they arrive at school and then those students upon graduation) and seeing ideas grow (like the napkin sketch that arrives with little hope that, when dreamed about and built upon, turns into a product on the shelves).

Lesson: You can grow you. Write down what you want to accomplish. You should start small, build on your little successes, grow your belief in you, and keep writing them down with a promise signed by you, to you.

Can you imagine how great it would be to know what one question you should ask before you get started on something you’ve never done before? The answer would tell you whether a person or company is legitimate so you can trust them with your idea.

In the inventing and new product development business that one question is: “Where can I go to BUY the new product ideas that you worked on for your clients?”

If their clients’ ideas are not in the stores, politely thank them and move on. Do not, I repeat, do not listen to any other answer.

This may not be a typical blog topic, but I thought it was time to address it. We have more and more customers who lost outrageous amounts of money from all the bad advice they got from invention promotion companies, fast-talking patent attorneys and others, before they found us. It’s becoming increasingly frustrating.

People who are doing this for the first time need a complete solution from someone with experience in all areas of product development. We research, design, engineer, build the product sample and negotiate the license and patent with the corporation. On some of the packages in the stores you’ll even see my cursive “D” on the back.

If anyone says it can’t be done all under one roof, it’s because they want to sell you on whatever limited service they offer. These invention marketing companies do not design, engineer or build anything. They will just talk, talk, talk you into thinking that you will get royalties for an undeveloped idea or undeveloped patent. Wrong!

These invention marketers tell people all they need to do is dream up an idea or make a website of an idea and that some major corporation will pay them royalties for it. They pretend they made a prototype and call it a virtual prototype.

Even if invention companies have pretty literature, glorious testimonials, lots of paper patents or even a fake product package, tell them you want to go see some of their clients’ products on the store shelves; better yet, three or four client products in different stores. In reality, all they build is ink on paper or pixels on an electronic screen.

Go to the stores and find out who is for real, before you trust them with your idea or your hard-earned money. In my case, you can find my clients’ products in stores all across the country – or, to save gasoline, just visit Davison.com’s Product Section.