success

A Mindset Paradox

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According to Dictionary.com a paradox is:

“a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.”

One day over 50 years ago a group of physicists were talking over lunch at the Los Alamos National Laboratory located out in the New Mexico desert.  The conversation got around to the strong possibility that extra-terrestrial civilizations exist in the universe.

universe-picture

One of the scientists Enrico Fermi wondered aloud: if indeed the conditions were favorable for the existence of extra-terrestrials why have they not been identified or, at the very least, their radio transmissions detected?

This one penetrating question sparked a debate that is still going on today, in and outside of scientific circles.

It’s a great question but it’s not got a lot to do with the subject of mindset has it?

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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]

Why Real Achievers Don’t Practice Positive Thinking.

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Charcter is talking positive but does this change things?

Positive thinking is what this character likes to doAre you trying to change your life by thinking positive?

If you are you could be in for a big downer. In a post on his website the very successful entrepreneur Michael Masterson cites a new book by Julie Norem entitled “The Power of  Negative Thinking”. He comments that his long held belief about the in-effectiveness of positive thinking is yet again confirmed. “My belief that, though positive thinking may work for people who already have an optimistic way of looking at their abilities, it doesn’t work for people who are pessimists”.

The book has a reference to a study that was done where researchers divided their subjects (all identified as pessimists) into two groups. They told one group that, based on their past performance, they were going to do well on a standardized test they were about to be given. All these subjects indicated on a pretest survey that they did, indeed, feel optimistic about their results. The second group was not given any encouragement. The results? The first group, the temporarily optimistic pessimists, actually performed worse on the test.

I agree with Mr. Masterson.

For the past thirty years I have been telling anyone who would listen that the practice of positive thinking is a bit of a ball and chain. One shackle that already optimistic and successful people refuse to wear. Here’s the danger. If you get yourself on a big high about something that hasn’t happened yet you could be setting yourself up for serious disappointment.  Creating a mindset bolstered only by the practice of positive thinking is like a high rise built on quicksand. It’s unauthentic and downright deadly to your success in the long term.

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