Skip to main content

The Magnificent Obsession - Creating A Compelling Future....

TURNING THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE

Look around yourself right now. What do you see? Are you sitting on a sofa, surrounded by fine art or watching a big screen television employing the latest technology of laser disc? Or are you seated at a desk that holds a telephone, computer, and fax  machine? All of these objects were once just ideas in someone's mind. If I had told you 100 years ago that invisible waves from around the world could be pulled from the air and fed into a box to generate sounds and pictures, wouldn't you have considered me crazy? Yet today just about every home in America has at least one television set (the average is two). Someone had to create them, and in order for that to happen someone had to envision them with clarity. 

Is this true only of material objects? No, it also applies to all kinds of activities and processes: the reason a car works is that some enterprising individuals figured out how to harness the process of internal combustion. The answer to our current energy challenges will lie in the imagination and resourcefulness of today's physicists and engineers. And the resolution to our social crises, like the alarming spread of racial hate groups, homelessness, and hunger, can only be addressed with the inventiveness and compassion of dedicated individuals like you and me.


WHY  DOESN'T  EVERYONE  SET  GOALS?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"This, too, shall pass,"

Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania did an intensive research on what creates learned helplessness. In his book Learned Optimism he reports on three specific patterns of beliefs that cause us to feel helpless and can destroy virtually every aspect of our lives. He calls these three categories permanence, pervasiveness, and personal. Many of our country's greatest achievers have succeeded in spite of running into huge problems and barriers. The difference between them and those who give up revolves around their beliefs about the permanence, or lack thereof, of their problems.  Achievers rarely, if ever, see a  problem as permanent, while those who fail, see even the smallest problems as permanent. Once you adopt the belief that there's nothing you can do to change something, simply because nothing you've  done up until now has changed it, you start to take a pernicious poison into your system. No matter what happens in your life, you've got ...

Problem Solving Questions ...............Continued

Every morning when we wake up, we ask ourselves questions. When the alarm goes off, what question do you ask yourself? Is it, How come I have to get up right now?," "Why aren't there more hours in the day?, "What if I hit the snooze alarm just one more time?" And as you get in the shower, what are you asking yourself? "Why do I have to go to work?," "How bad is the traffic going to be  today?," "What kind of stuff is going to be dumped on my desk today?" What if every day you consciously started asking a pattern of questions that would put you in the right frame of mind and that caused you to remember how grateful, happy, and excited you are? What kind of day do you think you'd have, with those positive emotional states as your filter?  Obviously it would affect how you feel about virtually everything. Realizing this, I decided I needed a "success ritual" and I created a series of questions that I ask myself ever...

The Magnificent Obsession - Creating A Compelling Future....

GIANT GOALS PRODUCE GIANT MOTIVATION So often, people ask me, "Where do I get my energy? With all that intensity, no wonder you're so successful. I just don't have your drive; I guess  I'm not motivated. I guess I'm lazy." My usual response is, "You're not lazy! You just have impotent goals!" Frequently I get a confused look to this response, at which point I explain that my level of excitement and drive comes from my goals. Every morning when I wake up, even if I feel physically exhausted from a lack of sleep, I'll still find the drive I need because my goals are so exciting to me. They get me up early, keep me up late, and inspire me to marshal my resources and use everything I can possibly find within the sphere of my influence to bring them to fruition. The same energy and sense of mission is available to you now, but it will never be awakened  by puny goals. The first step is to develop bigger, more inspiring, more challenging ...