Quotes from "Celebrate What's Right With the World"- With Dewitt Jones

When I was growing up, I used to hold that maxim -- I won’t believe it, until I see it. Yet the more I shot for the Geographic the more I realized that I had it backwards. That the way it really works is -- I won’t see it, till I believe it. That’s the way life works.

But vision controls our perception, and our perception becomes our reality.

Nature was showing me incredible beauty standing just beyond the rat race saying “Hello, Hello…” Always there if I was open enough to see it.

Do we choose to see those possibilities? Do we truly believe that they’re there? Perception controls our reality and if we don’t believe it, we won’t see it.

And I was just about to leave when a little voice inside me said, “Come on, Dewitt, what’s here to celebrate? I know it wasn’t how you planned it, but what’s right with the situation? Where are the possibilities?”

A vision that showed me that no matter how bleak and desolate, no matter how dry and devoid of possibilities the situation might seem,

that if I was open to it... I could always find a perspective. In this case just by dropping down in that crack in the slick rock, and looking back. A perspective that would transform the ordinary …

into the extraordinary.

Because, by celebrating the best -- that allows us to fall in love with it, that connects us with our passion, that emancipates the energy.

By celebrating what’s right, we find the energy to fix what’s wrong.

Because, by celebrating the best -- that allows us to fall in love with it, that connects us with our passion, that emancipates the energy.

By celebrating what’s right, we find the energy to fix what’s wrong.
The power of vision is extraordinary. It transforms the way we look at the world. It can take us from flapping in the middle of the flock to soaring to heights we never dreamed of. But we have to be willing to trust it, to come out to our edge.

And it’s not just the external edges that we have to test; it’s the internal ones as well. If we’re going to really learn to soar, we have to know ourselves as well as we know our craft.

I realized that if I was going to take it higher in my own life, I had to spend time not just with what I do, but with who I am.

That’s a lot harder; at least it was for me. Discovering who I was and being comfortable with it- a lot harder than taking a photograph.

And yet, I knew that was the move from good frame to great frame. That was the edge I’d have to press. That edge in each of our lives between success and significance. That subtle edge between being the best in the world and being the best for the world.