Arroe Collins Forest Stories

If team leaders spent more time crafting the skills of the individual we'd have amazingly stronger forces on the workplace front. But it doesn't work that way. The goal is to empower the team with playful atmospheres without studying the source of how an individual's playing field processes birth and rebirth. Isn't that what creativity is? One project leading to the next, two never being the same?...

Why does it feel like time flies too quickly and yet the seasons are always on time? No day passes that each of us don't endure our own personal seasons. We just like to cover them up, run and hide and or just ignore. Then one day it all catches up. Unexpected lows, a disconnection from work, friends and family. A Debbie Downer outlook on the layout of the future. During a conversation with a nati...

When it comes to anything creative I'm pretty much a daredevil. I love the thrill of giving birth to new ideas while breaking down what's required to see the entire project through. I've earned the honor of being the author of six published books. You don't wake up one day and suddenly all the pages are sitting in front of you. The book Blizzard White Canvas/Halloween 78 took 32 years to get publi...

We've all got that one thing in common, Asking questions that never come with answers. Does that give us permission to ask another question except this time around we get to make up the answer? It's almost like living in our past. We really aren't. The physical act of hanging out with memories is our natural way of rewriting the story that best fits where we are today. I'm blessed with the opportu...

I've always had a difficult relationship with the word "promise." I didn't grow up that way. It was actually one of those situations you're forced to play along with or face bad news. In the mid-1980's I learned the radio station wanted me to stop using the word "promise" on the air. They said new research shows that listeners aren't in favor of hearing the word. The moment someone says "promise"...

We've all walked beside slow moving streams and almost never moving ponds and have been greeted by murky stale water. Now that the picture has been painted how does your murky flow look in your everyday life? I hear it everyday from every shape of profession or just hanging out in the hood, "I don't have time for this or that. I don't want to try new things because I keep failing. Don't ask me for...

If you've been to church in the past three to five years the running theme of so many leading is that God is testing your faith and trust. Your bad moment or season is because God is trying to strengthen your heart and way of thinking. This isn't to bring up bad points or reasons to argue but on this side of the pulpit the receiver is getting the word that we should be grateful for all things ugly...

I love writing inside a forest. It could be connected to my early years in Montana. I openly admit to being a tree hugger. It could also be associated with my Native American spiritual beliefs that say trees and rocks are the greatest storytellers on the planet. On this podcast I step back to August 1, 2019 and read about so many beautiful things that have happened inside this forest located in so...

Oh you know how we are. Those people that live by the power of a written word. I've always been connected to the book. I just didn't make it as public as I do today. It became my calling to stop hiding. My preacher friends or those extremely close to the message warned me of the changes and how those around us will have opinion. On this podcast I step through that learning hoop by opening a conver...

There are multiple things they don't prepare us for in high school or college. One of them being the physical act of watching your parents fade. Making it even more difficult is being two thousand miles from the soil that raised your ambitions and dreams. Therefore you rely on family members to help bring peace to all that is changing. I find it difficult to locate the right words to say. I'm a wr...

I am a poet. I write in a lot of forests. Its because I believe trees are the storytellers not the human. Pretty weird thinking right? We're all on our own journey. How you get from each corner is determined by how much energy you place in a reason. On this podcast the collections of words placed on a giving tree's gift to those who enjoy writing, I'm going through the methods of calm madness on p...

A wealthy businessman once said to me "You cannot be successful without conflict." This taught me to walk into every meeting expecting to make disconnections. The true winners are those that make their way back to a solid foundation of building tomorrow before it gets here. Behind closed doors we all admit to having good and bad days, struggles and far too many loses then victories. In front of th...

I write in a forest. There's an energy there I can't seem to explain. I go there to listen. I finally started paying attention in 2015. The Billy Graham Library in Charlotte. The journey didn't end there. After a year of scribbling junk into the trunk of a tree now paper... I realized something was moving through me. I heard a calling. Because I write in a forest you see plenty of things on the cl...

One of the most abused words set free to roam the planet is Trust. Too many times it's shoved out there to help calm those in question or just seeking truer shapes of leadership without having to dive into a vat of worry or fear. Politicians and preachers thrust trust onto our daily plates and because they said it we are required to participate with the presentation. The moment a business leader u...

Hey it’s Arroe. I’m a Poet. One that just happens to write in a forest. In 2015 I stepped into a very special collection of trees at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, NC While there. I did nothing but write. But they weren’t my words. They were The Lyrics From Billy’s Forest. Nearly two years later God spoke to my heart. It was time to grow beyond the library, to write within other collection...

I'm far from being the only one that asks this question and we'll probably spend the next 50 billion years still trying to locate the answer. What wakes us up in the middle of the night? On this podcast we talk about a 1:50 am stroll through the forest to do nothing but write. A forest is a very scary place to be alone. You truly can't see what's watching you. Will you be tripped by unseen vines?...

In Paul Stanley's new book Backstage Pass he brings up the differences between having a dream and holding onto a fantasy. One is real while the other keeps generating mental images of something you're probably not going to hold. Being part of a dream means you accept the pitfalls that go with the itty bitty victories. Whereas a fantasy keeps the door open for false actions and reactions that are m...

Look... Nothing swipes the air from my lungs faster than reading another story about a comedian, actor, musician, famous chef or canvas artist that's stolen the life from the origin of ambition. I can't figure out why it feels like so many creative people are giving themselves permission to turn off the lights. Is it the world of social media? We get news and information so quickly that we no long...

No day passes that we don't feel like we're being pushed or pulled toward something. It's an invisible energy that may or may not have a positive destination. We just know that we showed up and answered the call. I wish I had the strength or knowledge to walk a path where the reply to this so called pulling is, "Hey! I've got this handled." Most of us aren't designed like that. The other day I spe...

I'm no expert but because we are presently living in the core of what's become the digital generation I still want to see the research as what it's doing to us as everyday walkers and talkers. I utilize the strength of digital. My life as a broadcaster wouldn't be where it was if we were still using tape and razor blades to splice and dice creativity. Where I begin to disconnect from the digital a...

Please let me be open and extremely honest before we leap into this podcast. I can only speak of this story by way of close association. I'm not presently a caretaker but I've spent most of my adult life watching my brother Teddy being taken care of and now I have two sisters accepting their roles in life on two different journey's with my mother with Dementia and my other brother with Parkinson's...

Words. We use them all the time. Until the internet most words either warmed the ears of the person on the other side or they caught our mind body and souls on fire because the way we've always used words is to herd cats and cattle. I've read so many articles fed by the waves of the way we are as a community based on the methods of word use we put into play. Basically meaning we truly don't watch...

Learning how to take those moments of words being shared and allowing them the needed purpose to be activated in your present place of growth. My father would always say things like, "Stop being a know it all and begin growing with all." Endlessly we remind ourselves to keep clear of the past. It's one of those things we can easily change by way of creative thought. In doing so we miss out on the...

It's completely human to think we're instant stars. Television shows like American Idol, Americas Got Talent and The Voice all take from the depths of the invisible and suddenly put a face on possibility. What we don't see are the personal struggles beyond the three minutes they're featured each week and we don't get to experience the afterlife of where those that once stood on that stage presentl...

I received a letter from my sister. She was deeply feeling the presence of our brother who had passed away a year and a week earlier. I very peacefully replied, "He has risen." Within seconds a little boom boom pow hit my social media. Her reaction was anger, "I don't want to think of him as a spirit. I need him in flesh." I'm no expert here. But it was obvious that we were seeing this life and de...