As I write, we are facing tough economic conditions in America. Many people are out of work. So how does one find inspiration in depressing times? What do you tell a person who can’t find a job, though he is willing and able to work? Despair can be devastating to someone who has no place to turn.
There may be a job opening that draws hundreds of applicants. How can you compete against hundreds of résumés? There are surely better résumés than yours amidst the staggering competition of hundreds of other applicants.
My only answer is: creativity. Be different. Use your imagination to stand out from the crowd. Maybe you can take out an ad in the help-wanted section of the newspaper. Maybe you can do research on the firm at which you are applying and make a booklet, including their history, photos, and bullet points of why you specifically want to work for them.
Maybe you can be bold enough to write up a contract spelling out, on top of all other things, that you will work for the firm for one, two, or three months for no wages, as long as, after that time frame, you will be considered first out of all other résumés for the full-time position.
This system has been used similarly in temporary positions where the temp job becomes full-time and is filled by the person who held the part-time position.
Be different! Be unique! Stand out from the crowd! Tough times call for tough-thinking people who are bold enough to make a difference. It is easy to follow the crowd. But go-getters will always find ways to succeed, even in tough times.
Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.
—Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773), British statesman
We Are Each Born into This World Destined for Greatness!
Bette Nesmith’s name may not ring a bell with you. But the Nesmith name does sound familiar to many in the music business. Michael Nesmith was one of The Monkees in the popular television series, and the band recorded many hit songs.
But Bette, Michael’s mother, went down in history in the office supply business and in offices around the world. Bette invented the “Liquid Paper” correction fluid in a bottle in 1956.
Bette had always wanted to be an artist. Instead, she was an executive secretary in Dallas, as well as a single parent. She used her own kitchen blender to mix up the first batch of Liquid Paper. She concluded that a painter would cover mistakes in his paintings with a certain type of paint, so why not fix typing errors in a similar manner? So, in 1956, Bette invented and perfected the formula, and the rest is history. A unique idea to solve an everyday problem. Why did it take so long for someone to fix such a common problem?
We all have greatness deep within. If one is determined with all his heart, that greatness will indeed find a way to come out into the open. What are you fired up about? What is the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing you think about each and every night? You can create such an intense desire, even if none currently exists. But just like all greatness achieved by others in the past, you must carefully plan out and devise such an elaborate goal that you will hang on right till the end. Remember, you must always focus on the finish line!
I have always been amazed at the amazing miracle of life. If anyone believes that any form of life is anything but a true miracle, he should do some serious research into the subject. I appreciate the life with which I have been blessed; I have for many years. But, honestly, when I was very young, the miracle of life all around me meant very little. I didn’t give it a second thought. Now, as I look all around in my middle age, I look at life, the world, and the stars entirely differently. It all amazes me.
Life exists in many forms, from plants and blades of grass to insects and microscopic organisms. Some say the smallest organism that exists is a form of virus. I, on the other hand, understand what I can see. There are insects so small they are called fairy flies at one-fifth of a millimeter in size. They have a respiratory system, wings, and microscopic hairs on their bodies.
My point is this: Life is so precious; do we maximize our own existence, or do some of us merely pass our lives away, thinking that time is on our side and we can always catch up to our goals and dreams that have been put off indefinitely?
Earl Nightingale, the motivational speaker and author, once said: “Most people tiptoe through life, hoping to make it safely to death.”
What is our purpose here on earth? Do we have a purpose, and do all living organisms serve some purpose? Let’s explore it more closely.
Last night I found a snail. No big deal. But I found the snail attached to the inside of an electric timer inside a large plastic storage bin. Now, what was amazing to me was that the storage bin had been closed for one year, only accessed last Christmastime, some twelve months ago. Yet, when I opened it up, there was a live snail. The miracle of life! I wondered how that snail, deep inside the large storage bin, could have survived. What did it eat and drink? And surviving in total darkness! Now, I am sure that there is some explanation, but I simply marvel at the perseverance and survival instinct of all living things.
What is the purpose of it all? From the moment of birth, each form of life has a purpose, a pre-programmed cycle we must follow, much like the cycles of seasons that change. Most living things have inbred cycles of routines and schedules. Take, for instance, the cicada. The cicada is an insect that lives approximately one to eight feet underground and emerges only once every seventeen years. When they do emerge, many thousands of them emerge at the same time, resulting in a great deal of noise. Purpose, cycle, routine!
We are much like insects. I believe that we act like insects. Take the ant. An ant farm is very organized, with leaders and workers, each with a purpose and a structured life cycle. Our lives, in many ways, seem to mirror some of nature. It is important for us to be cognizant of this so we may be able to adjust our lives accordingly, and strive onward where others may merely be complacent.
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth I will apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
—Og Mandino (1923-1996), American motivational author
How many individuals do only what they have to, just to get to the next day? Their workday is basically performing tasks they are told to do and no more. They treat work like some form of punishment, just to survive till that clock hits five o’clock, telling them that they can rush out the door and race home. Not once do they act as if the company they are working for is theirs. Many workers today have little pride in their work. I see it many times throughout my day and in my travels. Maybe this is because they have no real goal to get ahead or rise above the average workers around them. Maybe they have no long-term goals, no intense, burning desire with regard to the work they are involved in. Or maybe they dislike their line of work, just tolerating it in exchange for a paycheck.
I observe many people that are being well paid to work all day, yet I see them loafing. It’s as if they are impatiently waiting to go home. They are cheating their employer, themselves, their families, and, above all, their God. Just another wasted day, being unproductive.
Martin Luther King said it best: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of Heaven and earth will pause to say here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Make every minute of your life count. Make believe that tomorrow you will cease to be productive any longer, but rather will ponder your life. Will you be proud or disappointed? You have the ability to drastically change that picture. Remember: This is the first day of the rest of your new and exciting life. Embrace, cherish, and celebrate the special gift of that one day.
A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.
—James Allen (1864-1912), British author
It is amazing to me how many people just naturally take to following other people. It is as if it is easier to follow along than to travel their own road. This morning this “following the follower” came to mind when I saw a flock of birds.
Nature has a way of preserving animals, birds, and other forms of life. We see elephants, seals, penguins, birds, and the ape family. There is the leader who makes choices as to where to seek water, food, and shelter. The leader also moves the flock or herd to safer territory or different climates.
This morning I studied a large flock of blackbirds flying in precision formation as they swooped from one lawn to another. They were eating either some of the grass seed or some bugs on the ground. But what was amazing was that, as soon as the leader decided to fly away from a particular lawn, the entire flock followed rapidly, wherever the leader flew.
I find that many people are like that. Maybe it is bred into us from nature or instinct alone, but many of us would like to merely follow rather than lead the way.
Of course, there are those special people who are called “born leaders.” What is a born leader anyway? Inventors could be considered born leaders because they travel down roads that were never traveled before. Inventors work on the nearly impossible. They are fearless leaders. Inventors don’t get thrown by all the negative criticism they receive. The inventor merely trudges along after each failure, knowing in their hearts that success will surely present itself in a future experiment.
So, why can’t most of us lead rather than follow? I guess it is too easy just to take the road well-traveled rather than cut your own way through the forest and blaze a new trail. We were each created to be born leaders, but somewhere along the way we became weak, and then naturally fell in line behind the braver, tougher, natural leader.
Today, this special day, let us use our imagination. Let us make believe that we are an inventor such as Thomas Edison. And during this experiment let us each do something new, challenging, and almost impossible. Let us become the inventor of our own life. Maybe we can emulate that persevering mindset of the great inventor for an entire week! You will be shocked at how you attack work and life like the inventor you have imagined yourself to be.
In the wild, the strongest ape is the leader. The males routinely fight among themselves to determine the leader. The leader in most species is tested regularly, until one day he becomes too weak to lead.
I believe that we were born to be great leaders, each one of us. But perhaps our upbringing, nurturing, relationships as youngsters, the crowd we hung out with in school, our slowly formed personalities, all contributed to who we evolved into as adults. Some of us take chances without fear of failing because our confidence level is high, while others fear confrontation, fear risks, and are more comfortable taking a sure route that we know we can conquer. Thus, we follow the follower.
Inventors have the key to achieving goals. Successful authors, business owners, and athletes all have the key. They have figured out how to program their minds with this special, never-ending, burning desire to succeed in their dream goal. They may not even be aware of what it is that they have done within themselves to achieve the outcomes they so desperately desired. But they have actually etched deeply into their subconscious minds the burning desire to achieve that special goal.
It may be a youngster who has a huge dream of becoming a Major League Baseball player. He dreams of playing in the Major Leagues, like his baseball idols such as Derek Jeter. He sees Derek Jeter for years playing baseball as one of the best who ever played the game, and the youngster slowly develops the intense desire to emulate Jeter. The desire gets etched deeply into the youngster’s subconscious mind, and just as he unconsciously blinks his eyes and breathes the air he needs to survive, the intense desire to succeed keeps radiating like a flashing sign, all on its own, pushing the youngster to the ultimate dream of success.
We each have had smaller goals that were intensely driven desires upon which we acted until they were fulfilled. Let’s look at such a goal. Perhaps in our youth we watched with great enjoyment the television program ER. As we watched show after show, we slowly developed a consuming goal to become a great doctor like the ones we so admired on the show. We became obsessed with becoming that doctor, or that nurse. Or maybe we were influenced by another show to become a great lawyer. Because of the intense desire now deeply etched into our subconscious mind, we are motivated to seek higher education and a degree in order to fulfill this all-consuming dream. Will we be millionaires, insanely rich? Perhaps. In Og Mandino’s fabulous self-help book The Greatest Salesman in the World, he talks about changing the way we think by feeding certain statements into our minds. He talks about controlling emotions when he says:
I will be master of my emotions. If I feel depressed, I will sing. If I feel sad, I will laugh. If I feel ill, I will double my labor. If I feel fear, I will plunge ahead. If I feel inferior, I will wear new garments. If I feel uncertain, I will raise my voice. If I feel poverty, I will think of wealth to come. If I feel incompetent, I will remember past success. If I feel insignificant, I will remember my goals. Today I will be the master of my emotions.
The mind is so powerful that if we could harness its immense capabilities, we could run an entire state’s computer system. Our mind, if programmed properly, will bring forth to its owner an abundance of wealth, fame, love, success, and anything that is truly desired. The key is that the desire should be so strong that nothing in the world will stop that person from attaining the goal or dream that has so driven her to the desired end.
I believe with all my heart that if we could somehow program a person’s brain on a systematic basis—that is, a formal program that would feed that person’s brain a set of thoughts, almost like hypnosis—then we could control the outcome of that person’s life and actions. The key is that the programming must be done consistently. We would have to take that person in each week and reprogram those same thoughts. Could it work? Yes, I believe it could work.
So, let us study successful outcomes. If I develop not only my own dreams and goals but, more important, a tremendous, never-ending, all-consuming, burning desire, that is the outcome that will be achieved. At that moment, there will be a newfound glow all about me; my face, my demeanor, my stride will even be different. And guess what? My pain is almost gone!
You see what I mean? Our subconscious mind can be rewired and programmed with new and positive thought impulses that can overtake any negatives that may have been affecting us for some time.
If you can understand that the mind controls not only the body but most of your actions, and will be responsible ultimately for the outcomes in your life, you will try to control what is being put into that amazing computer of a mind that we don’t even fully understand.
The opposite, negative impulse is also true. The phone rings and you learn that your mother suddenly had a massive stroke, or fell and broke a hip and will have to have major hip replacement surgery as soon as possible. Feel the sudden impulses? Or what if you suddenly receive a call and find that you just landed a great new job after more than a year of being unemployed? What are the impulses now? How long will they last? Notice how our minds can suddenly be turned three hundred sixty degrees from positive to negative and then from negative to positive again.
What about a cancer diagnosis? Doctor Bernie Siegel has his own thoughts on attitudinal thinking. Doctor Siegel is a clinical professor of surgery at Yale Medical School. He has said:
I have collected fifty-seven extremely well-documented so-called cancer miracles. A cancer miracle is when a person didn’t die when he absolutely, positively was supposed to. At a certain particular moment in time, he decided that the anger and the depression were probably not the best way to go, since he had such a little bit of time left, and so he went from that state to being loving, caring, no longer angry, no longer depressed, and able to talk to the people he loved. These fifty-seven people had the same pattern. They gave up totally their anger, and they gave up totally their depression by specifically making a decision to do so. And at that point the tumors started to shrink.
Does the mind really control the body? You bet it does. When the will to live dies, the person usually dies a short time later. How many spouses die within a couple of months or years of losing their spouse? The human body will obey the commands given by the all-powerful mind. So watch what you feed your mind. Put it all in perspective: There are people with no money, but others with money but no life left to live—perhaps only days. There are those who have to walk with a cane, but there are those who are wheelchair-bound for life. Then there are people who are deaf, but there are also those who have been blind since birth. Perspective is very important.
In 1954, Roger Banister proved everyone wrong when he ran a one-mile distance in under four minutes. No one up to that point had ever done it. Banister trained hard and long to achieve this. But here’s an important point: Within one year, thirty-seven other runners broke the four-minute mile. And after that, three hundred others did it, too.
You see, once others were convinced that the four-minute mile could, in fact, be broken, they worked harder, knowing that they, too, could do it because it had finally been demonstrated that it was humanly possible.
Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations, plus or minus, it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical science and technology
—Norman Cousins (1915-1990), Author, professor
Remember the story of the man who felt bad because he had no shoes, until he came across a man who had no feet? We need to take a full accounting each and every day. We need to thank God that we have been blessed with another day to experience life on earth. Be thankful for what you do have, but really add it all up, item by item, sense by sense. Then you will really appreciate all you have going for you.