Humility / Humanity / Happyness

Yes that last word is to pay homage to Chris Gardner. Today I am inspired by my three daughters Bree, Cayla and Destinee. Although technically they are my step-daughters I have embraced them as my own. They have given me such inspiration. I have been through many challenges with them and many happy moments. Through everything they have been vastly a great source of understanding and commitment to what being a father and Dad is all about just like the movie The Pursuit of Happyness.

In many mythos, there are mentions of three wise or old women that kings and great men would go to for understanding and Knowledge. In the cinematic movie of Clash of Titans, the story of Perseus is lead by Bubo (a mechanical owl) to the Stygian Witches, three blind women who disclose the information he needs. In Greek times, The Delphic Oracle exerted considerable influence throughout Hellenic culture. The Greeks consulted her prior to all major undertakings, wars, the founding of colonies, and so forth. Woman have always represented great wisdom, and have granted men such understanding. Guidance when uncertainty is present. There are times I have no clue about my daughters thoughts and actions yet, when opportunity presents itself I gain so much from them. They are free-spirited, compassionate, loving, hurting, angry, energetic, powerful, silly, fun, stubborn - pain in the neck, beautiful and sometimes emotionally not so great. But They are so Human, so full of life so invigorating. I love seeing them in their passionate mode of just being. Today we played volleyball together for the first time in a long time and it felt so good, so amazing so magical. yet days before we struggled with understanding each other to the point of isolation and separation. I am so humbled by their grace and love, their passion and embrace of life. Their willingness to struggle and deal with big chucks of understanding this so-called complex life.

Sometimes my daughters are like the magical Sirens, singing their song as I stir my ship towards the doomed shore. their emotions and drama play the part of their song. And the rocky shores is the aftermath of what my wife and I deal with to restore the ship after the fact. Our daughters are blessed with such gifts: fortitude, strength, courage, love, independence they are self-reliant and driven. Yet searching for what they want. I admire this quality in them. Nothing could please a Father so much as to see their child growth and deal with tough issues and understand more about life.

My wife wrote in her book RocketRisks (www.rocketrisks.com) that children are our greatest teachers. I am fortunate enough to have the oracles, my sages, my sirens, my inspiration wrapped up into three amazing women who will in my lifetime effect and touch many peoples lives because who they are now is just the beginning of who they are becoming, and I am deeply humbled by that.

Thread The Sword - The Dream Message

Do you remember your dreams? I remember as a child that certain dreams would last until the morning and I could recall them all day long. In my adult years, with all the activity my mind and body digest I would be fortunate to remember any dream. Just last week I had this memorable dream. So vivid and detail that the message of the dream came true. Let me share with you events leading up to the dream and then what occurred afterward. Before the dream I made a connection at my 20th year high school reunion that had a potential new client opportunity for my company. I was thrilled for the referral. As Monday and Tuesday roll pass this potential client contacted me to arrange a meeting. We set the meeting for Friday. The night before is when I had this most memorable dream. On Thursday night I was in a dream where a Male actor who in real life is much older, yet in my dream he was in his prime. This actor tossed me a wooden something that I could easily grab or catch. Once I caught the object, I looked up at the youthful celebrity and he said convincingly and full of courage stated “THREAD THE SWORD.”I term that I was completely unaware of until it was spoken. What did it mean? With this new potential client about to jump onboard my thoughts told me the phrase meant prepare for battle and glory the new client is sealing the deal. However this message, dream, Godsbreathe, holy spirit, God’s word was a special phrase. So i did what any technoGeek would do....I Google the phrase. And an ancient Greek myth sprouted - The Sword of Damocles: (From wikipedia)

The Damocles of the anecdote was an excessively flattering courtier in the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse, a fourth century BC tyrant of Syracuse. He exclaimed that, as a great man of power and authority, Dionysius was truly fortunate. Dionysius offered to switch places with him for a day, so he could taste first hand that fortune. In the evening a banquet was held, where Damocles very much enjoyed being waited upon like a king. Only at the end of the meal did he look up and notice a sharpened sword hanging by a single horsehair directly above his head. Immediately, he lost all taste for the fine foods and beautiful boys, and asked leave of the tyrant, saying he no longer wanted to be so fortunate.

The story has many phrases that we use still to this day...
“Hanging buy a thread”
(”Try walking in my shoes - perception)

The main concept of why it was delivered is unknown for know, but what I believe the message is about respecting Change.

After Launch - Fuel to Life

Letting go of what you know. I hope you can relate, after spending the last week exhausting myself to the brink of
passing out and having everything go wrong that could wrong for launching my wifes book and signing event
I was rather surprised how smooth and amazing life became with tremendous support from others. Asking for assistance
is so freeing of the mind and physical aspects of oneself. My wife just launched a book called RocketRisks™ and I had many challenges to deal with: learning a new tool to create the video, handle my clients and business all while finding a new printer for her books and spending hours repositioning the text for her book. What a week! Then to top everything off our books were not going to arrive on time, thanks to unforeseen weather conditions and a certain BROWN company that will not under any circumstances live UPS to customer service (I am joking here) they did their best, I hope. In authentic meltdown mode my stomach was doubling over in stress ball knots and my body was shutting down from the lack of sleep - 2 to 4 hours the whole week. The event was amazing, I kept breathing, and doing special moments of prayer and breathing more, just to calm by steam engine and get me through the night. My wife was simply brilliant - her client mentioned that same evening a very profound insight:

Friday, june 20th, 2008 we have just witnessed the birth of an amazing dream! It did feel like that. After only 5 hours sleep - I felt like I slept 12 hours. My body and mind completely refreshed. Today as I have come to my office and catch up on this blog and some emails I came across an amazing video - its so full of life and how profound it is. When Matt is by himself the video is quarky and funny but when others join in you can feel the living planet and spirit resonate through everyone.

I’m excited this week to share and continue this journey in launching more dreams to becoming reality.
Enjoy the video.



Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

The origins of MThree

MThree (M3) - Beginning The Search

In Search of Meaning, Message, and Mystery the origins of M3. through preliminary research, a fanatic who wants to uncover the mystery of the name may find themselves in an expedition more mysterious than the series of universal sequences that formulated the name M3 (MThree). Although many inquiries speculated I was a BMW vehicle fan, or a copy cat of Mach 3 razors I will state for the record the M3 BMW series did come out prior to the name, yet had no influence whatsoever. However , the Mach 3 blades in a bizarre state of sequences may have been influenced by my work to formulate or evolve their name.

Pre - Origin History:

While in college earning my degree in design I started a company to sell and design T-shirts to various organizations for their yearly debauchery celebrations the name was called dm design Lab. I simply used my initials and I love the uniqueness of calling a design studio a design Lab - brings a weight of knowledge to the name.

OMR - The Next Step

In 1996, I started my second company o’miley|ryan advertising design (OMR) the name was created from a rebelious point of view to advertising agencies naming themselves after the principals - an old school, corporate structure that stimulated us fellow artists to a calling of dening that status quo by pure mockery. To this day I laugh at all the calls we had asking for a o’Miley or Ryan, - they simply didn’t exist in our studio so this allowed us to play with creative sensationalised ideas of explaining where they were or why they were not in the office as if they were real people. We flat out lied and had a blast with it. OMR lasted 4 years before closing its doors, in the second / third year of OMR expansive growth, I sold my partnership to OMR to gain creative control and design freedom once more. Upon deciding to sell my partnership our third partner asked what I was going to do? “Start up dm design Lab again?” - I never thought about it and that remark angered me because the decision to sell my partnership wasn’t easy and the partnership dissolving was due to emotional trauma and lack of relationship growth by the partnership. “What would I call myself?” I graduated college in 1992, did my tour of duty with other design firms until 1996, launched my business to financial success and it was time to grow once more into a new entity a new mature design firm. “What should I call myself? “

How It Came to be - MThree

I find it amusing how God enlightens artists, the mind puts the question out to the universe and if open enough one can find the answer in the most amazing of ways. I was valet parking my Toyota 4runner at a Las Vegas hotel when the valet asked me for my last name, I stated boldly “McElhattan the third” the valet stared at me as if i were speaking a foriegn language. (A normal response when I ’m prompted my last name,) so I just stated it and he said “no worries, M3” and put on the ticket M3! and thats how its the name came to be. the beautiful irony is clients loved the name but wanted to know what it meant - which became a filter in understanding most of my clients thought patterns. So I developed a simple message to those that didn’t quite get it at first: Meaning (understand what you do and how you do it) Message (develop the voice to communicate through design and words your message) and Mystery (allow the art of design to define and develop your corporate communications).

The Mysterious connections / meanings

As time passed more layers of the onion was revealed how special the name M3 is, various movies would use the letter “M” (Bond, Golden Compass) and the number “3’ (Mission Impossible 3, Will Smith’s son is named Tre, The Island -room number, etc..) I recently discovered M3 as a star in the part of the Canes Venatici Constellation. The letter M was named after Charles Messier, a French astronomer, a Messier object means Nebulae and Star Clusters. M3 is the third object he recorded and was later named as part of a constellation Canes Venatici the first galaxy recognized as having a spiral structure. The photo attached with this blog M3 is located on the bottom paw of the dog. The Canes Venatici is one of three constellations that represents dogs , along with Canis Major and Minor. Digging deeper into the symbolism and mystery was the year of my birth was known as the Year of the Dog, which ties in nicely to the constellation. Within this galaxy M3 is a Whirlpool Galaxywhich was discovered by Charles Messier on October 13, 1773. ( Ironically my daughters birthday is October 13 she shares her Birthday with Marie Osmund, Kelly Preston, Jerry Rice, and even Borat creator - Sacha Baron Cohen.)

Every day is a new discovery in the development and meaning of MThree, I welcome anyone to send any pictures of Threes or Letter M’s or combinations that show M3 to add to our Chronos series of calendars. After a three - year break they have been brought back to fruition to be received in 2009.