More About David Sweet

Bob Hough, Brother Bill, David

Paula Vail Interviews David Sweet

Paula Vail started her broadcast work with Voice America, hosting a radio show, "For the Love of Reiki". Paula Vail is proud to be sharing the beautiful modality of Reiki and positive energy and quickly expanded to another show "Why Am I So Happy?" on the BBS Radio Network.

When Paula Vail started "For the Love of Reiki" she never imagined it would grow to have so many followers! Today, Paula Vail hosts my radio show Choices: "Finding Your Joy" on the Seattle radio station 1150 AM KKNW and my channels on 5DTV!

Paula Vail feels so blessed to share the world of Reiki, positive thinking, and tools for self-empowerment.

By David W Sweet

Go-Kart Days

This photo was taken on a quiet Sunday afternoon around or about 1956 at Villa Plaza,
the original regional shopping mall in Lakewood, Washington.

There’s no happy expression on David’s face; he’d been completely caught up in the
sound, “fury,” and excitement of the day’s go-karting when it unraveled for him and
others in a heartbeat. Minutes before he had sped out of the “designated” asphalt
parking area his father had wisely instructed to use for the day’s shake-down runs.
Feeling justified and certain for what he believed would be the “high-speed” run of the
day, David’s goal had been derailed by an unexpected “whoosh” and a large black mass
hurtling across his go-kart’s path a hair’s distance behind him.

The math is easy; David came within inches and a nanosecond of being obliterated on
the spot—the driver of the big black sedan never saw him. His parents, brother Bill,
sister Dani, and a neighbor, Bob, had watched from a distance with no way to judge the

closeness or foretell the outcome as they watched the two vehicles converge. A heart-
stopping moment for all.

David has never stopped embracing feelings of gratefulness and thanks. His question,
“For how many reasons was my life spared that day?” can only remain unanswered.

The Stark Reality
David built this go-kart when he was 12-13 years old, when the craze was just starting
and at a time when both money and parts were none too plentiful. Most of the
components were scavenged and/or improvised. The angle-iron frame was bolted
together, the clutch was barely up to the task, and the Clinton four-stroke lawn mower
engine always seemed to have quirks of one sort or another. Still, he would take it to the
local grade school—Park Avenue in Tacoma—and run it on the asphalt adjoining the
back of the building. Luckily, David lived a short block away, so pushing it home (a
common occurrence with often struggling equipment) was not too arduous, however
embarrassing at times.

Picture This:
During those times (was it fate that they always seemed to be there at the same time?)
some high school seniors, who lived several blocks away, had designed and constructed
their own powerhouse go-kart (how did THEY accomplish that? David wondered). With
an engine that roared and huge, super-traction tires, it screamed! Every time they would
be running nonstop up and down the school’s dirt playing field throwing up gigantic
dust clouds and rooster tails. While the roar of their powerful, tuned machine resonated
and echoed off the school building, young David often watched in awe, lamenting his
own futile efforts to coax a few more miles per hour out of a suspect clutch and a
laboring, under-powered engine . . .

THIS WAS NOT FAIR!

Books, Business and Life Lessons

Failures? Yes, and flat-broke more than once - David

Honing Selling Skills: The odds were ten to one:
Picture two computer salesmen, including the author, up against an IBM sales team of twenty strong. “We gained by listening and probing until we knew the client’s real motivation and our advantages,” David says. “If we missed a detail, assumed wrongly, or had not gained our clients’ total confidence, we would have lost.”

Real Estate Success with Innovation
David’s subsequent real estate career started with brokering raw land and ranches in Washington state. To excel, he developed and innovated extensive listening and probing skill sets for himself and as training for his agents. “All the hard work paid off,” David says. “The twenty-five or so men and women averaged greater incomes per person than any similar company in the state.”

David’s tutorial Heart of Listening is a compilation of the author’s personal experiences and training in sales, listening, and life coaching. It’s dedicated to giving you advantage in real time and face to face: general discussions, sales, negotiating, finding hidden motives, third-party influences, and key points of concern.

Listening IS the First Part of Real Advantage

David's Heart of Listening Creates an Epiphany - Surprise!
David recalls that “as with all my first tutorials/workbooks, I printed each and sold them to first be tried out. In the case of the Heart of Listening, the audience was, by no small chance as it turned out, to be quite successful, each within their own right; e.g., top-tier management in IT, a co-starter/creator of a national business, at least two people achieving eight-figure annual incomes, and a PhD with years of solid college administrative success, and more.”

What was a common thread and a “personal life advantage” expressed amongst them?

“The more you practice listening, the more you know about yourself.”

Random, Growing Up Adventures

I celebrate all art and enjoy artist friends. As a youngster, I made model planes and cars, did wood-burning projects, built with Erector Sets, Lionel model trains, Lincoln Logs, carved leatherand bars of soap, built model airplanes, played Army, built toys from scratch, i.e., carved rifle stocks to look real and used pipe for the barrel.

My friends and I were “well armed” for playing Army and digging a fox hole, bunkers, etc. We even had real hand grenades (w/o powder), which I personally can attest were still lethal. In one of those episodes, I rounded the corner of our neighbor’s house just in time to be a split-second late for my brother Bill’s excellent throw toward the bunker area. (Bill was an excellent athlete and still is.) My head collided with the missile, which caused a lot of blood, a trip to the hospital, and a few stitches.

We made firecracker cannons that shot large marbles down the alley at other neighborhood kids’ tree club house. We also devised smaller cannons using small firecrackers called “lady-fingers” that perfectly fired spent 22 ammunition brass obtained from our father’s shooting practice. Those little cannons worked really well with a small copper pipe. We plugged the back end and drilled an angle hole to insert the little “lady-finger” and then dropped the small spent 22
cartridge into the open end. Boom! It worked every time and was very accurate. So accurate that we found ourselves enjoying the precision as we shot from our back patio all the way to the neighbor’s home across the alley. It was great fun until the police came and took us for a ride downtown in their black and white. From then on we concentrated at shooting the regular marble cannons down the alley toward our neighborhood enemies’ treehouse. It was far enough
that the accuracy was suspect, however, somehow it made us feel big.

Later on it was go-karting and then cars.

PS
I built a lot of models with my brother, Bill, and our neighbor, Bob. Then we experimented on how best to destroy them with the most excitement: for example, firecrackers, gunpowder from our father’s 30-06 rounds (he never knew or let on), and various other concocted, destructive, and incendiary experiments, most of which failed. However, once in a while “the gods” were in our favor . . . and that was a good day for all of us. Celebration, and on to building more.

The End

David's Life

Poems of Reflection:

Grave Dreams
By David W Sweet

How do you dream?
Do the cobwebs of your life
ever suck you in, grab hold,
and attempt to take your mind?

Imagine, like an ax falling,
your blissful childhood dreams
cease and suddenly you’re in a
desperate place with no choice

a pitch blackness with no sound,
a space that becomes smaller
and smaller as you spiral
down through it—an evil trap.

Your being can’t help;
there’s no fight available . . .

your very soul is seized
and compressed in its vise.

Your breath is squeezed
until there’s no more air,
and you awaken with a start—

blood chilling, adrenaline coursing
through your body like fire.

Panicked and gasping for air,
your breath will come back,
however, the fear and shock
stay, and stay, and stay.

Your life continues; however,
you never know when it’ll revisit
to let you know your mind
is still well within fear’s grasp.

Your soul tries its best to cope
however, here and there a puddle of
black water appears with no reflection . . .

this is your normal world.

Hidden memories of abuse
and panic die hard.

Years pass and you begin to search back,
“a simple digging up” of those old
memories, or so you believe;
only to discover your dreams were exactly
what was happening in your very young
life at that time. You were being stifled.

You were being ripped off; plain
and simple, beyond your control.

Easy to say; hard to reset, to reverse.

So you excavate the coffin shovel by
shovel full, bit by bit, until there it is
How dare you open me?
We’re the adults.
We know what’s best for you!

Now it’s all yours: pry it open quickly,
and stand back for your last look and feel
as you release all the mental toxic waste.

There, it’s done!
The pit’s caved in and collapsing.

The open coffin’s crumbling to dust.
Bad times and mental torture exhumed!

Burn the old thoughts, send them to exile.

Go back to the child and give love,
compassion, and understanding.

The child has no blame.
Have an uncle arrive to protect.

Let the child know they’re never alone.
Feel it all, and claim the new goodness.

Turn to the blue sky,
the towering maple looking down,
birds on the wing; the harmony
and support of Nature are alive.

A warm breeze gently surrounds
and welcomes you as a part of it,
welcomes all of you . . .
welcome back.

Backstory

The author had this recurring nightmare as a young child. It reflected what was happening in his life at that time— “a young soul being squished.”

Moments of Impact
By David W Sweet

I had a friend named Mel.
The last time I visited him
He couldn’t talk much.
He sat on the side of the bed,
And slowly extended his hand.
As I completed the handshake,
He squeezed my hand very tightly.
I looked into his eyes
And knew he was saying goodbye.

The little dog knew it was
Going to die soon.
You could see it in the eyes.
There is no learning to this look.

I did a bad shot on a deer;
It just lay there.
I walked up to it to kill it.
Before I did so, I looked
Into its eyes.
After that I stopped hunting.

I hadn’t seen one of my oldest
Friends for a few years;
We’d grown apart.
The last time we talked was
On the phone.
He called me "pal" in a flippant way,
"See ya, pal," something like that.
A few years later he died suddenly.
Then I discovered how much
That friendship meant to me,
Recalling the adventures,
It bubbles up.
It still hurts . . .
The missing.

I had an uncle in the hospital.
He could barely talk,
However, I know he said,
"I love you."
He’d never said that before,
However, as I think back,
He’d shown it in lots of ways.
Those words and that moment
Are precious to me.

We listened to the hunters
Explain why the zebra
Was one of the eight different species
Of animals they paid to shoot on safari
(Or rather for a sum of money
They were allowed to kill
One each of eight designated species).
"Zebras can be really
Dangerous when provoked.
They’re really mean."
One of the other animals designated
Was a small deer-like creature.
The world record for its horn length was
(To the best of my recollection
of this conversation)
Maybe six or eight inches in length.
As we all sat pondering this,
No one asked how dangerous
Those could be.

I found myself looking
At the rather small stuffed Alaskan bear
Amazed at how much it had shrunk
Since I first heard the hunting story.

People really do good for others,
Every day,
Many times.

How David Began Writing

What’s behind the real story, the meat of it, that resonates with the reader’s soul? What
about those reminders that life is short, that we can triumph and step over the crap
shoveled at us, that we can find the silver linings and come out with positive attitude
adjustments and hope? What starts it all?

Whether it’s about a painting, a sculpture, a sacred piece of land, an endangered species,
a memorial, a tribute, or a timeless love, David Sweet works hard to create verse that
achieves the intended (conscious or otherwise) results—with no extra words. His
intuition and life experiences add insight.

David began as a writer of sales training manuals and advertising copy, as well as a
personal life coach and consultant. One night in 1993, he was “awakened” by a muse and
felt the need to write more; something was stirring deep in his soul. What he wrote that
night was the first in a sixty-five piece collection of middle-of-the-night thoughts and
reflections that became his first book, Stones Winds and Life.

When he isn’t writing or engaged in real estate, David enjoys constructing, restoring,
painting, and finishing. “I enjoy waxing a car or working with my hands anytime for
inner satisfaction and mental release,” he says. In addition, David believes “there isn’t
enough focus on art in our culture,” so he supports all of the arts, and other artists,
whenever possible.