Feb
Nothing is Impossible
Whether you’re a football fan or not, the “impossible” really happened! The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl!
I lived in New Orleans and shared its ups and downs for fifteen years. One of the significant “downs” was to watch the Saints football team lose week after week. During my tenure, the Saints were to worst team in the league. It became a fixed mindset that they were expected to lose. When they did win an occasional game it was a rare cause for hope.
Then, along came Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans changed. It was as though it was given a second chance. I feel a kinship with the Saints because I, too, was “forced” into change. Like the Saints, my wife and I had an opportunity to begin again. We prospered by this change and, somehow, I felt “my” Saints would also prosper with change.
I am an enthusiastic collector of motivational and inspirational slogans and quotations. They work for me in keeping my mind’s focus on good positive stuff. I’ve got a hunch the Saints benefited from the same mindset. What they have accomplished validates the impact of these and similar statements:
• To win you’ve got to stay in the game.
• Act boldly and unseen forces will come to your aid.
• Life is never more fun than when you’re the underdog and competing against the giants.
• Where you’ve been is not half as important as where you’re going.
• If you can’t learn from your mistakes, there’s no use making them.
• Luck is when opportunity knocks and you answer.
• When you get to the end of your rope, hang on.
• When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
• Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
• Get even with everyone who has helped you.
• Don’t do stupid stuff.
• Whatever you do, do it better.
• The first and most important step toward success is the feeling that you can succeed.
• The road to easy street always seems to go through the sewer.
• If you can do one thing well, you’re needed by someone.
• If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.
• Whatever you think you can or cannot do, you’re right.
Often one is aware of a shift in the momentum of a game. What is this “momentum?” It’s simply the coordinated, collective mindset of every team member’s mental focus. It is often initiated by some well-executed play or circumstance and everyone’s enthusiasm takes a giant leap forward. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true: discouragement can have a negative impact on the team’s over all ability to function as a coordinated unit.
The Saint’s collective mindset, motivated by the trauma of a devastating hurricane, is what makes the difference: it forced a new focus and opened the way to gain a new perspective, the right players, the right coaching, and the means by which they could all function as a productive unit.
With the Saint’s collective mindset, motivation commitment to excellence, positive results were inevitable and predictable.
The same motivation works for us. We can learn this lesson from the Saints in our own individual personal or professional life because underlying this phenomenon are natural laws and principles that, by definition, are “the creative and controlling forces of the universe” and every thing in it… including you!
Read more about this in my book, “The Science of LIVING BETTER FOREVER.” It is available in print form from Amazon or, as an expanded e-book version, it can be downloaded from my website.
Go Saints!!
