Dreams Found Me in a Barbershop Next to a Piggly Wiggly

Where Dreams Actually Arrive

I have a friend named Sonny Melendrez. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas. His father cut hair for a living. And Sonny will tell you something that I think deserves your attention.

He says, "dreams don't care who the dreamer is or where they come from. They find you. They came to me in the back of my dad's barbershop next to a Piggly Wiggly in San Antonio."

Think about that. Not a studio. Not a university. A barbershop next to a grocery store.

"When I was eleven, Dad built a tree house in my backyard and I sat there at dusk imagining who I'd become. That's where my three dreams took root: radio, voice work, and eventually Disney."

A kid in a tree house at dusk. No business plan. No mentor yet. No credentials. Just a seed, sitting in the quiet, beginning to know its own nature. I have spent over fifty years studying how people grow, and I can tell you this: the seed does not wait for perfect conditions. It starts where it is.

Your version of that barbershop exists somewhere in your memory. Maybe it was a garage, a kitchen table, a back porch. The setting does not matter. What matters is that something found you there.

The Education You Give Yourself Before You Know You're Learning

Sonny did something in that barbershop that I find remarkable. He started practicing before anyone told him to.

"I made my own radio shows on a portable recorder, calling friends one at a time from the payphone in my father's shop. I didn't realize I was giving myself an education."

That line stays with me. He did not realize he was giving himself an education. He was just doing what interested him. Playing. Experimenting. Following a curiosity that had no name yet.

I know something about this. In 1972, I started spending an extra hour a day studying human development. Then two hours, then three. I was not enrolled anywhere. I had no syllabus. But those hours were compounding into something I could not yet see.

Sonny's portable recorder was his version of my extra hour. The preparation was happening before the opportunity arrived. And when opportunity did show up, he was ready. "By the time I walked down that college hallway and saw a radio station through a small window, I was ready to change my entire major in an instant."

Readiness does not announce itself. It accumulates quietly, like rings inside a tree. You may be further along than you think.

Giving the Dream Permission

Here is the part that changed how I think about Sonny's story.

He did not describe his career as something he built. He described it as something that moved through him. I put it this way: "life seeks expression through us, and we're either a portal for that expression or we're not. The question isn't whether you have a dream. The question is whether you'll give it permission to come alive."

I have spent decades teaching the Acorn Principle, the idea that you already contain the design for who you are meant to become. What Sonny adds to that picture is the notion of permission. The acorn holds the oak. But the oak still needs the acorn to crack open.

You do not manufacture the dream. You do not earn it with a resume. You recognize it, and then you say yes. You give it room. You stop telling yourself that someone like you, from where you come from, does not get to have a dream like that.

Sonny cracked open in a tree house at age eleven. I cracked open listening to Earl Nightingale on the radio at age twenty-six. The timing does not matter. The permission does.

Gratitude as the Daily Practice That Keeps the Portal Open

So how do you stay open? How do you keep that portal from closing when life gets heavy?

Be Grateful! Gratitude is spiritual magnetism. It draws to you more of what you're grateful for.

That is not a bumper sticker for Sonny. It is a discipline.

"I write prayers every morning, ending each one with thank you. I date them, sign them, keep them. There's something about writing it down that puts it inside your heart and sets the stage for everything that follows."

Dated. Signed. Kept. This is not journaling as a trend. This is a man who understood that appreciation, practiced daily and recorded in your own handwriting, changes the soil you grow in.

I have always believed that the person you become is more important than what you accomplish. Sonny's morning practice is one way of becoming. It is quiet. It is repeatable. And it keeps the conditions right for whatever wants to grow next.

You might try it. Not because I am telling you to, but because you might discover something about your own nature in the writing.

The Kid on the Bicycle

Of all the things Sonny shared, one story stopped me.

"What moves me most is remembering the kid who rode his bicycle to the radio station every afternoon to watch me work. Twenty years later, he wrote to tell me he'd become a general manager at a station in upstate New York. He never forgot that I encouraged him."

Twenty years. A boy on a bicycle, watching through a window. And someone inside who took the time to notice him, to say something kind, to treat his curiosity as something worth respecting.

That boy became a general manager. Not because Sonny taught him broadcasting. Because Sonny showed him that someone like him belonged in the room.

I think about my own life this way. The moments that mattered most were not the speeches or the books. They were the moments when someone saw something in me before I could see it in myself. Earl Nightingale did not know I was listening. But his words found me, and I became proof of what he taught. The circle closes when you pass it forward.

Somebody is watching you right now. Maybe not through a window. Maybe from across a conference table, or from the next desk, or from the back row. They are watching how you carry yourself, how you treat your work, how you treat them.

The Real Work

Sonny said it plainly. "That's the real work. Not the accolades or the appearances. The moments when you help someone else see what's possible."

I believe that. I have believed it for fifty-three years.

Somewhere inside you, there is still a version of that kid in the tree house. The one who sat at dusk and imagined who they would become. That dream did not expire. It is patient. It is still looking for a willing host.

Your job is not to chase it. Your job is to give it permission. To crack open, to stay grateful, and to notice who is watching.

How would the person you'd like to be do the things you are about to do?

In the spirit of growth,

Jim Cathcart