Goals and Dreams and Inspiration - video blog

I'm coming right out and asking.... please donate a buck or two!

It is time to come right out and ask… Please donate a dollar or two for the cause.
I know there are a lot of friends and family reading this, and it goes to show that actually getting people to click and make a donation is difficult, even your friends and family don’t do it right away. There are many of you that have been meaning to and likely know that you have lots of time so you have just put it off. We all get inundated with so many commercials and suffer from marketing overload, and so we actually consciously act very infrequently. The premise of this whole project is to prove that I can get people to act, in good faith, and spend a minute of their time and a dollar of their hard earned, to help me achieve my goal. If you don’t want to do it, I totally appreciate that and I would love to hear why, but remember you could probably just donate a dollar in less time and be done with it? Think of all of the strangers that you have thrown a buck too and they likely just went got a bottle of booze with it. I promise that I will make your donation into something worthwhile.

So I am asking, can you please click on the link below and donate a couple of dollars?

Jim Moss Bio

James Ronald Moss was born in Toronto, Ontario Canada on March 3rd, 1977. Raised in Brampton, Ontario, he spent most of his 32 years in Canada until his move to San Jose, California in 2003.

Jim, a professional lacrosse player with the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League (NLL) learned to play both box and field lacrosse when he was only four years old. Since that time, his accolades include; winning the National Men's Lacrosse Championship in 2002, being honored with the Gold Medal for winning the World Championship in Field Lacrosse as a member of Team Canada in 2006, and joining other elite lacrosse players such as Paul and Gary Gait in the Brampton Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Jim not only had a love of lacrosse, but as a true Canadian, had an equally passionate love of ice hockey. Jim played college hockey for the University of Western Ontario where he captured a Bronze Medal with the Canadian National Hockey Program in the International University Sports Federation (FISU) World University Games and professionally for the Huntington Blizzard, of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL). Through his experiences playing lacrosse and hockey, he had the fortune to visit Australia, Europe and Japan, giving him a thirst for travel and exploration.

Currently employed by STX Lacrosse in sales management, he enjoys working with others who are passionate about lacrosse. His previous experience includes sales management with Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment, representing the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League. Jim achieved his post secondary education at the University of Western Ontario and at San Jose State University with continuing education at Stanford University. In July, 2007, he welcomed his son Wyatt Douglas Moss into the world and his daughter, Olivia James Moss arrived in November, 2009.

Shortly before the birth of his second child, Olivia, one of Jim's biggest life-changing moments occurred and came in the form of an illness named Guillain Barre Syndrome. Guillain Barre is an auto immune disease that causes the body to attack its own peripheral nervous system. In late 2009, Jim fell ill with the H1N1 virus and as a result, he contracted Guillain Barre and was hospitalized for four weeks. Jim had to re-learn to stand, walk and handle basic daily functions before returning home. Upon returning to his home, Jim continued with ongoing physical and occupational therapy, writing about his experiences along the way. His blog about these experiences:  www.sidewaysisforward.blogspot.com, discusses the ups and downs of dealing with life's everyday challenges, thoughts on how to stay positive through stressful events, and realizing one's dreams and turning them into goals.

Jim is excited to embark on this journey into outer space and looks forward to writing about this his experience along the way. His wife Jennifer and children Wyatt and Olivia are rooting him on and he can't wait to give them a wave from his spot looking down on earth.

  

Day 9 – Please put your own oxygen mask on first

You know when you are on the airplane and the flight attendants are doing their spiel before takeoff and they mention that "in the case that the cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will come down from overhead, please place your own mask on first and then proceed to assist children and other passengers". That is what I am attempting to do with this project. If I am going to provide advice to others on how to accomplish things in their lives, I am going to start something big, from scratch and take my own medicine in the process. Then I can proceed to assist others who might be interested.

Lead and motivate by example – that was always where I excelled in my sports career and now it is time to take that skill and translate it into real life. In recent years, playing professional lacrosse, I felt myself losing some ground and I stopped to analyze where I was going wrong. What I came up with was that I was leading but not always in the right direction. And, when I was allowing others to lead instead of me, which is fine, I was sometimes allowing myself to be misled. That was my responsibility, no one else's. So, I will take from that lesson that a requirement of leading is to make a positive example of yourself and to speak your mind when things get off track. It is your responsibility. Please let me know if I start to get off track. I openly invite all opinions for discussion through this process. Safe, open communication is going to be key in making this project successful and so that must be a cornerstone for this project as well. That makes three solid cornerstones so far 1) altruistic right minded intention 2) open honest communication 3) Be a leader.

The "I'm going to space guy"

Jim Moss

Day 3 – Rethinking you dreams as goals and knowing with certainty that you can accomplish them

My Dream is to spend my life helping others to be happier and healthier human beings. Something about the word dream, infers that it might not be attainable, that you could spend your whole life chasing it. Over the past few days, I have been spending some time analyzing the language that we / I use. I figured that at this important juncture on my new path, so freshly moving down a new fork in my road, I would look closely at the words that I use as I work towards defining more clearly, my renewed life plan.

Aspirations, Goals, Dreams, Aims, why do we accomplish some and not others. Asides from the obvious reasons, not working hard enough not committing to them etc, I am learning that a lot has to do with the way that we actually phrased it to ourselves in the first place. For instance, I have been tying in the word "crazy" in my description of this project, and I am realizing that is a genuine emotion I feel about it, only in a very small way, but I need to get to the point where it doesn't feel crazy at all, a point where it feels absolute. I promised that I would be totally honest along the journey. Right now, I want to be absolute, but part of me still feels like it is a little crazy, a little too lofty. I am working to eradicate that feeling and replace it with certainty. It seems like language might be the key to that. The more that I say " I am certain that I can accomplish my goal of raising 200K and go to space, so that I can use my experience to help others accomplish their goals and live happier and healthier lives" the more concrete that will become in my mind and then take roots in my life.

By allowing it to have less than certainty, it seems to be floating a little, taking shape, defining itself further, but floating a little still, not yet grounded and therefore unable to take root. I apologize for all of the metaphors but they are so appropriate right now and representative of how I am feeling. If this idea of mine were a tree, it is in the pot still, on the way home from the tree store and it needs to find a permanent spot in my mind where it can grow roots, become permanent and then I can make it grow. As long as it is in the pot, I can still return it, once I plant it, it will be there for a long time. Seems like some visualization might be in order.

Today's project, plant my tree. Eliminate the word crazy and communicate with certainty each time I discuss this topic. Say it outloud, write it down, type it, think it, see it happening in my future, not in my imagination but in my future.

Today I am firmly making my Dreams into my Goals.

GOAL –noun

1.	the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.

Day 1 - I have decided I am going to space

I am going to space – yes, you heard me – I am going to space.

I decided that we can accomplish anything we set our mind to and with that realization, I decided a trip to outer space wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Since coming down with Guillain Barre Syndrome, I have been blessed with a new view of my life. For whatever reason, throughout my hospital stay I was able to maintain a positive attitude. Even after a couple of minor setbacks, I stayed focused on my happiness and remained upbeat – finding the positives in most situations.  During this time of reflection, I reevaluated my life and identified what I do and don’t want to be doing with it. One of things that I’ve always been certain of is that I want to spend my life helping others to be as happy and fulfilled as they deserve to be. Ultimately, I want to help motivate others to pursue the happiness that they deserve.  What better way to accomplish that goal than to lead by example? With that in mind I have decided to change my life course and commit to becoming a life coach and a personal motivator.  I firmly believe that we as human beings can overcome any adversity and that we can achieve anything that we commit ourselves to. I am committing to a pretty lofty goal and I will utilize the experience to learn and prove that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. At 11:23 on December the 7^th, 2009 I made the decision that I am going to space.

In less than five years, I plan to go from a view from my hospital bed to a view from the shuttle, orbiting earth. How am I going to accomplish this you ask? Here goes: For the first time in the history of the United States, Virgin Galactic, a spin-off of Virgin Airlines, will be offering commercial trips to outer space. The cost is $200,000 and you need to put $20,000 down as a deposit. I am going to raise the money, blog about it, document the experience on video, learn as much as I can about how to set goals and achieve them, write a book and aim to teach others as much as I can about this experience along the way. I plan to speak at schools and teach children about setting their sights high to achieve anything they hope for in life. I will speak with adults to prove to them that it is never too late to change your direction and accomplish your dreams. These thoughts I am certain of and so I will set out to prove them. After being affected with Guillain Barre Syndrome and fearing the worse – that I may not see the day where I could hold my newborn baby in my arms. Then relearning to stand, then walk, then run, and finally, being present at my daughter’s birth, I can say with all certainty, that I will raise $200,000 to take that journey into outer space. Most importantly, and the bigger reason for this trip, I will be able to show others that that they can achieve anything that they set their minds to.

To set this in stone – I pledge to:

Commit to do everything I can to accomplish this goal.

Commit to sharing my experience as openly and honestly as I can from this day forward.

Commit to having openness to learning and to finding new ways to define and accomplish goals.

Commit to document all of my experiences in a book and or documentary and to direct all of the proceeds to teaching humans how to live happier and more fulfilled lives and to accomplishing their goals.

To follow my adventure, I initiated a new blog – imgoingtospace.blogspot.com

It may sound crazy to some of you at first, but I challenge the non-believers to at least stop and check in on my progress and watch me make it happen.

The “I’m going to space guy”

Jim Moss