human mindset

Minus and Plus

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minus and plus signs

When you start anything new you are usually drawn to it (+). That’s because you’re looking at the great possibilities for all the goodness that you envision. It’s all part of the packaging of the new and different.

But then, after a while, the difficulties and problems start to arise as you try to grasp the newness and gain control of it. If it’s a new business you’re starting for example, it can be really fun in the beginning until customers start demanding better service and supplier’s want their accounts paid up.

It can get so bad that you might want to run away (-) and hide.

I know what it’s like.  I’ve started many small businesses that failed miserably. But I couldn’t run away (-) from the worst one because it was in farming and there were livestock involved who had to be milked every day. I had to ride that one right till the day they came in trucks and picked up all of our goats and sent them to the processor. That was a big (-) I can tell you.

Existence is filled with these things (-). Few and far between are the (+) it seems. Especially these days.

But I found a way to change that and it helped a lot of people with the (-) in their lives. But I had to stay with the process of learning about the newness I called H.E.R.O. well enough to be able to articulate its story.

Glad I did too. So will you because there could be a pile of (-) heading your way and this can make you strong enough to turn a lot of the (-) into (+).

And that, my friend, is  going to keep you from moving away from things that might be good for you to moving closer to them.

More power to you.

David

Book Review: DRIVE by Dan Pink

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image of hand holding an iPod and the book DRIVE

I like to listen to books. That’s right I said listen.

You see, I have a subscription to Audible.com and every month I’ve got my choice of some of the best new books available all recorded by their original authors or professional speakers.

Today, I’m going to review the book I’ve currently got loaded in my ipod: “Drive– The surprising truth about what motivates us” By Dan Pink.

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Belief in you

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“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” – Henry Ford

Belief is a powerful thing. It can define a life in either direction be it good or bad.

But belief is established two ways: via argument or hard evidence.

A really good argument could be made about the finding that fire burns. All sorts of facts could be brought to bear to reinforce the argument that if you put your finger near a lit match you’ll be burned by its heat.

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Failure: Like the lemon tree.

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Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

Lemon Tree – Lyrics by Peter, Paul, and Mary (Popular folk-singing group of the 1960’s)

Lemon tree with fruit

If you lived, like I did in the era of the 60’s, you would quickly recognize these lyrics as belonging to the popular folk-singing group Peter, Paul, and Mary.

I came across this song on YouTube recently and I thought how relevant it is – in a reverse sort of way – to failure.

We all know only too well that unlike the lemon tree failure is not so pretty.

In fact it really sucks.

It hurts our heads and ruins our day and yet… and yet, I’ve come to understand that its “fruit” is so masterfully designed as a portal to higher learning that it’s now become, and in reality has always been, essential if any of us are to reach any success in our lives at all.

Mickey Rooney, the acclaimed actor whose career spans over 75 years, said: “You always pass failure on the way to success”.

I feel like I’ve passed a lot of failure in my life. So perhaps I, like a lot of folks, have a love/hate relationship with failure. I’ve come to know it well. Thirty years of trying and falling short in my efforts to bring my radical theories about human motivation and empowerment to you and have left me with no choice but to press on every day and learn to do it better.

It’s a matter of mindset.

Hasn’t your life been like this? Hasn’t it been like this for almost everyone you know?

Take a close look at it. You’ve had successes. But every one of them has undoubtedly been preceded by a failure. Some big some small but a foundation of failure is what lies beneath all achievement.

Like the roots of a fruit tree.

More power to you all.

Marketing the Impossible

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What kind of a mindset do you think it requires to market the impossible?

If you need help with finding the answer you could just search on the net for the name Rufus Harley.

Rufus knew a thing or two about what’s possible and what’s not. You see, he spent a good part of his life branding himself as “the world’s first jazz bagpiper”.

Did a great job of it too despite some… ugh “difficulties”. Rufus, you see, is not the typical bagpiper you might visualize standing in a Scottish Highland. Rufus was an African-American.

Picture it: A black adult 6-foot-2 man dressed in a bright red kilt, sometimes in a dashiki and a Nigerian kufi, playing jazz with all the passion you’d expect of a great jazz performer and you’d be looking at Rufus Harley.

Starting in November of 1963 when he watched the funeral procession of John F. Kennedy on television, with the mournful wail of the sound of the Black Watch Pipe Band resonating within his soul, he was hooked. He found his first set of bagpipes in a pawn store and couldn’t even get a sound out of them at first but after many months of practice he was ready.  He then went on to perform with some of the greats like saxophonists like Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and Sonny Stitt, with the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and with the flutist Herbie Mann.

He even went on to travel the world as the unofficial goodwill ambassador of his home town of Philadelphia.  He billed himself overseas as a “messenger of peace” who liked to hand out miniature copies of the Liberty Bell to heads of state when ever he got the opportunity.

Talk about getting into and being your message.

He even ended up on top TV shows like ” Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” and Bill Cosby’s “Cosby Show.”

Rufus died at age 70 on August 1, 2006 in Philadelphia, his hometown.

I play bass drum in a pipe band. The link is a remote one but that’s the closest I think I’ll ever come to the likes of Rufus. He reminds us that some things may look impossible but if you’re willing to become your passion quitting is not even on the table.

It’s just not what a mindset like that is made of.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeAsSgPBmO0[/youtube]