Magic Words
In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca recording company. The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said, "We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out." The group was called The Beatles.
In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married." Norma Jean went on to become Marilyn Monroe.
In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired a singer after one performance. He told, him, "You ain't goin' nowhere...son. You ought to go back to drivin' a truck." That singer went on to become the most popular singer in America named Elvis Presley.
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, it did not ring off the hook with calls from potential backers. After making a demonstration call, President Rutherford Hayes said, "That's an amazing invention, but who would ever want to use one of them?"
When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2,000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process."
In the 1940's, another young inventor named Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country. They all turned him down. In 1947 --- after seven long years of rejections, he finally got a tiny company in Rochester, New York, called the Haloid Company, to purchase the rights to his invention, an electrostatic paper-copying process. Haloid became Xerox Corportation.
Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was four years old, she contracted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a paralyzed left leg. At age nine, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed a rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last. Everyone told her to quit but she kept on running. One day she actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face.
You must do the thing you cannot do. And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace. A lump of coal only becomes a diamond under lots of pressure.
A champion is not one who never fails, but one who never quits.
"You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky
The uncertainty principle.
Two sailors ran into each other in a pub. Over a few beers, one of the men told the other about his last voyage:
"After a month at sea," he said, "we discovered our masts had been eaten through by termites! Almost nothing left of them."
"That's terrible," said the second sailor.
"That's what I thought at first too," the first sailor said, "but it turned out to be good luck. As soon as we took the sails down to fix the masts, we were hit by a squall so suddenly and so hard, it would surely have blown us over if our sails were up at the time."
"How lucky!"
"That's exactly what I thought at the time, too. But because our sails were down, we couldn't steer
ourselves, and because of the wind, we were blown onto a reef. The hole in the hull was too big to fix.
We were stranded."
"That is bad luck indeed."
"That's what I thought, too, when it first happened. But we all made it to the beach alive and had plenty to eat. But now here's the real kicker: While we were on the island whining about our terrible fate, we discovered a buried treasure!"
As this story illustrates, you don't know if an event is "good" or "bad" except maybe in retrospect, and even then you don't really know because life keeps going. The story's not over yet. Just because something hasn't turned out to be an advantage yet doesn't mean it is not ever going to.
Therefore, you can simply assume whatever happens is "good." I know that sounds awfully airy-fairy, but it's very practical. If you think an event is good, it's easy to maintain a positive attitude. And your attitude affects your health, it affects the way people treat you and how you treat others, and it affects your energy level. And those can help pave the way for things to turn out well. A good attitude is a good thing. And a bad attitude does you no good at all.
So get in the habit of saying "That's good!" Since you don't know for sure whether something will eventually work to your advantage or not, you might as well assume it will. It is counterproductive to assume otherwise. Think about it. If someone ahead of you in line at a store is slowing everything down, say to yourself, "That's good!" They may have saved you from getting into an accident when you get back in your car. Or maybe, because you slowed down, you might meet a friend you would have missed. You never know. The truth is, life is uncertain. And even that can work to your advantage.
- Adam Khan
