HOW MANY FAILURES DOES IT TAKE TO BE A SUCCESS?

You may have read or heard some of these before, but like good green vegetables, you probably can’t get too many of them in your mental diet. I find them refreshing and encouraging, inspiring and amusing. They help me breathe a sigh of relief, and they lighten my load. They free me up when I start wanting to feel sorry for myself. They help put life in perspective. They help prevent whining.    

Henry Ford had five businesses that failed before he started a successful car business.

RH Macy had seven failed businesses before he opened Macy’s department store.

Soichiro Honda applied for a job as an engineer with Toyota, was rejected, and was unemployed for months before starting Honda Motor Company.

Akio Morita, founder of Sony, designed a rice cooker as his first product. It burned rice and was a total flop.

Colonel Sanders had his chicken recipe rejected hundreds of times before he opened Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of imagination.

Lucille Ball was considered very unpromising by her drama teachers and was advised to look for another line of work. Early in her career she was considered a B actress, at best.

Most of Emily Dickenson’s poems remained in her desk drawer during her lifetime. 

Helen Keller, well, you know about her.

John Lennon was dyslexic (dyslexia: has a hard time with words. Ha!).

Einstein was considered slow as a child.

He didn’t speak till he was four.

He couldn’t get a job at any university at the time he wrote four of the most important physics papers ever written by anyone, anywhere, at any time. 

Darwin’s father was very unimpressed with his young son’s intellectual abilities. (Way to go, dad!)

Isaac Newton failed at running the family farm before his uncle sent him to Cambridge.

In his day, Socrates was labeled an immoral corruptor of youth.

Edison failed at least a 1000, if not 10,000 times, designing a damned light bulb that would work.

The Wright Brothers suffered numerous failed attempts at making a plane that would fly, which only made their depression worse.

Mark Victor Hansen went bankrupt and wanted to kill himself before starting The Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books with Jack Canfield that sold over 100 million copies.

Lincoln suffered from depression and failed throughout his life, until he didn’t. 

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He went walking the black dog, his code words for depression, quite often.  

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a television reporter, since she was unfit for t.v.

Harry Truman went bankrupt before becoming president.

Jerry Seinfeld froze during his first performance and was booed off stage.

Fred Astaire: “Can’t act, can’t sing, can dance a little,” comments from his first audition.

Hollywood studios initially rejected Charlie Chaplin as too nonsensical.

After his first film, executives told Harrison Ford he didn’t have what it takes to be a star.

Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime, to a friend, for not much money.

Beethoven’s teachers thought he was hopeless.

A crowd ran the composer Igor Stravinsky out of town after his debut performance.

Mozart was dismissed from his position as a court musician.

Jack London’s first story was rejected over 500 times.

During his lifetime, Claude Monet was mocked as an artist.

Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times, so he threw it in the trash.

Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC film school.

Charles Schultz was turned down for a job by Walt Disney. Schultz later created Peanuts.

27 Publishers turned down Dr. Seuss’s first book.

“The colossus of independence”, John Adams, second president of the United States, “who was learned beyond all but a few,” suffered from self-doubt.

 Elvis Presley was told to go back to truck driving.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

And so on.

The lesson I walk away with from these examples is that most of us are not failing enough. We’re playing it safe. We’re picking up our toys and sulking off to our rooms before we’ve even given the game our best shot, and then our next, and our next, and our next until we break through to the place where we are gifting the world with what we have to offer.

            Another word for a failure is a mistake. A mistake is a mis-take, a shot that didn’t take, a shot that didn’t quite make it into the basket. So take a shot, and then another, and then another. Learn something each time, like Edison did, like Lucille Ball did. Miss as many shots as it takes until you start sinking them, because that’s what it takes, even if you’re Michael Jordan, Lucille Ball, or Abraham Lincoln.

            So go out there and fall on your face. Get it over with. Do it again and again.
            If you really want to live, you’ve got to fail. If you really want to learn how to shot, you’ve got to go out there and miss a few shots—or a few thousand shots.   
            There’s no other way.
            But there is a way.
            So get on the court and keep playing.
            And enjoy the game.

For coaching or SE sessions please contact me at 805/680-5572 or drjohnluca@gmail.com

A LIFE LESSON FROM PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING

I just watched a TED video (see link below) of the physicist Stephen Hawking. Carl Sagan said, “In the spring of 1974…Stephen Hawking was a legend even then.” 

          Many of you know that Stephen Hawking is one of the world’s foremost living physicists, author of A Brief History of Time, and A Briefer History of Time. He was until recently the Lucasian Professor of Physics at Cambridge University, England, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton.

Steven Hawking also has Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Amotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which has left him confined to a wheelchair for many years. The pronounced muscular degeneration caused by the disease has left him barely able to move and unable to speak. He must now use a computer setup that tracks his eye movements and allows him to pick out words from a screen by blinking to compose his thoughts. When he is finished, a computerized voice speaks for him.

For the TED video, Dr Hawking had prepared a speech that was spoken through his computer. The computer does not amplify his voice. Steven Hawking can no longer speak at all. He can barely move.

When the talk was over, Chris Anderson, the host of TED, asked Dr. Hawking the following question.

“Dr. Hawking, based on your current understanding, do you think we are alone in the Milky Way Galaxy as a civilization of our intelligence or higher?”

     “I

      think

      it

      quite

      likely

      that

      we

      are

      the

      only

      civilization

      within

      several

      hundred

      light years,

      otherwise we would have heard radio waves. The alternative is that civilizations don’t last very long or destroy themselves.”

It took Steven Hawking, one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet, SEVEN MINUTES to give a thirty-five-word answer to a question he already knew the answer to.

That’s an average of five words per minute.

That’s one word every 12 seconds.

Take one minute, just one, to see what that feels like.

Look at your watch.

Take a full minute, 12 seconds per word, and say,

“I

am

alive.

Thank

you.”

That's what Steven Hawking, staggering intellect, world-reknowned theoretical physicist, and possibly the longest living survivor of amotrophic lateral sclerosis has to do

with

every

single

word

he

speaks

or

writes.

            
            By the way, a light year is about six trillion miles.
            That's 6,000,000,000,000 miles.
            A few hundred light years is a very long way to have to go to find someone in the galaxy who is as smart and as gifted as you are.       
            It might be good to remember that now and then.
            And rave on.
            Stephen does.   
           
           You can hear Stephen Hawking by going to:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjBIsp8mS-c

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572. Namaste.

JOHN LENNON REMEMBERED

If you were alive and old enough in December of 1980, you probably remember where you were when you heard the news.

“John Lennon was shot and killed tonight outside his home on the Upper West Side of New York City.” 

At least it was a madman who did it, killed John Lennon, of all people.

When I was eleven, a few years after my father’s death, I’m a Loser, the Beatles hit written by John Lennon, became one of my most cherished songs.

Alone in our apartment, I would sing along at the top of my lungs as tears trickled down my cheek, “I’m a loser. And I lost someone who’s near to me…”

           

John Lennon was born October 9^th, 1940 while a World War II bombing raid was in progress.

His mother couldn’t handle raising him. He was raised by his aunt Mimi.

He was expelled from school for misbehaving when he was five years old.

I’m a Loser, Nowhere Man, and Help are biographical songs based on John Lennon’s personal  experience.

He saw his father for the first time in 17 years in 1964.

“All art is pain expressing itself,” he once said.

He kept a light on while he slept because he didn’t like the dark.

Without glasses he was legally blind.

            Supposedly he was dyslexic.

“Part of me suspects that I am a loser, and the other part thinks I am God Almighty.”

He may have been a petty thief, enjoying a bit of shoplifting now and again, when he was a teenager.

             He ate very little after a reporter labeled him the ‘fat Beatle’.

He didn’t like his voice and often asked his producers to change how he sounded on recordings.

“My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.”

In 1970 John and Yoko checked into a hospital for wealthy addicts.

“Temperatures rising, fever is high, can’t see no future…can’t see no sky,” is a lyric from his song Cold Turkey.

             John Lennon signed his autograph for Mark Chapman six hours before Chapman shot and killed him on December 8^th, 1980 at around 10:50 p.m.

“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”

John Lennon wrote Imagine, which is now the official song of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

Along with Paul McCartney, John Lennon is considered one of the most influential songwriters of the 20^th century.

             “I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.”

           The Beatles have sold an estimated 1,000,000,000 plus records worldwide. Sales continue to go strong. 

           “And we all shine on, like the moon, the stars, and the sun…”

           Remember John. Do what you have to do, though it’s not always easy. And shine on.

           Namaste.
           I can be reached for coaching at drjohnfluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.