Ever since I can remember I was fascinated by Disney. From the Saturday morning Cartoons to the Sunday night Disney Movies and of course, the theme parks, merchandise and even the games.

As an adult this fascination hasn’t stopped. It’s evolved really. Don’t get me wrong, any chance I get I will plug in (or rather now that Disney + is out, I tune in) to watch one of the classics or current specials and if I get a chance, head to Disneyland or Disney World.

The past couple days I’ve had a fair amount of driving to do and prefer to listen to audiobooks rather than the radio. And since one of my mentors had suggested a while back that I study successful people that I want to emulate the things about them that I would like to add to my own personal character, I’ve put on audiobooks even more. For example, I’d purchased a book a while back about Walt Disney.

I’ve always been fascinated by Walt Disney’s child like creativity and he is always talked about as a great leader, with flaws but he was great. He failed many times, he was bankrupt at least once, he was too trusting some said and ended up getting burned and yet he still had the audacity to dust himself off and ask himself, “Ok, now what?”

Thus I purchased this audio book titled, How to Be Like Walt – by Pat Williams.

It’s funny, insightful and definitely gets me thinking.

In studying the great leaders, teachers, people in history and even those from our times, today, I see one thing they had in common… Imagination!

Walt said, “Every great leader is a dreamer, but not every dreamer is a great leader.” This has me thinking… a lot.

Once I got home this evening, I turned on the TV, hit the Disney + app and started watching The Imagineering Story, while making my famous Cheater Cabbage Rolls. It’s about Walt, his legacy and where Disney is going from here. About how people are working on filling his shoes and fulfilling his dreams as he would have wanted.

It’s an amazing story and there is so much to learn from his life, including his faults to help me be a better person. I am so grateful that I grew up in a home where my parents never stopped me from dreaming, imagining and being creative. Now to just figure out how to get my mind to work like Walt’s did.

It was a great afternoon with Walt, between the listening to the audiobook, reading a book on him, watching and hearing his voice in the TV show, it definitely felt like I spent the day with Walt. And I really liked it.

Thank you Walt for being such a big Dreamer and Doer. You really knew how to get people to follow you, even after you’re gone.

As Walt once said, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” So that means I still have time to find my impossible and do it.

Until tomorrow, Dream big and dare to believe.