I was watching a video of a young man, approximately 12 or 13 years old, the other day, and I was just amazed at the way he expressed himself with so much confidence. He was young, he was black, and well groomed, but was he ever confident. He described how he was going to graduate from high school with honors, go on to an ivy league college and then graduate from law school. Than he was going to practice law in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan and eventually become the mayor. As mayor, he felt he could clean up the crime and rebuild the city since most of the manufacturing jobs had left with the Auto industry. He planned to bring jobs back to the city. He never blinked once all the while he was saying exactly what he was going to do. While listening to him, this is what was going through my mind; that is exactly what that young man is going to do. “Life is not having and getting, but of being and becoming.” (Matthew Arnold). It was stated a little differently by George Bernard Shaw who said, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Even as a young man he has it right, he literally reeked of confidence and self-determination. Can’t is not a word in his vocabulary. I was proud of him without even knowing him or having ever seen him before. He never mentioned what was driving him, such as goodly parents who encouraged him or a grandmother who wanted him to succeed, it sounded like he was totally self motivated. He was a young man creating himself. In my mind I thought there must be someone behind a young man like that to give him that kind of drive and motivation. Others, rather than being self-motivating, with confident talk, place mental restrictions on themselves. Some young people are limited in their drive for success by their friends or parents. They hear over and over, “Don’t do that you will hurt yourself, You can’t do that you are not strong enough, etc. After a while they begin to believe that they can’t do anything that is challenging to them. There is a story about how fleas were trained to think they can only jump so high: Flea trainers have observed a predictable and strange habit of fleas while training them. Fleas are trained by putting them in a cardboard box with a top on it. The fleas will jump up and hit the top of the cardboard box over and over and over again. As you watch them jump and hit the lid, something very interesting becomes obvious. The fleas continue to jump, but they are no longer jumping high enough to hit the top. Apparently, Excedrin headache 1738 forces them to limit the height of their jump. When you take off the lid, the fleas continue to jump, but they will not jump out of the box. They won’t jump out because they can’t jump out. Why? The reason is simple. They have conditioned themselves to jump just so high. Once they have conditioned themselves to jump just so high, that’s as high as they can jump!
Many times, people do the same thing. They restrict themselves and never reach their potential. Just like the fleas, they fail to jump higher, thinking they are doing all they can do.
Conditioning, whether by others or by self-analysis has the same effect. A person’s skills, accomplishments, physical development should be encouraged by family, never discouraged. “Atta Boys” should be a common expression around a home. Not only for physical accomplishments, but for mental accomplishments as well. Expectation is a big part of human development. Like the young man who will one day be the mayor of Detroit whether it is drive from within or without it is what will make him a success one day.
I believe that we have to become specific in our goals and desires in order to be energized to achieve, unlike the prayer of this young girl; A grandfather was walking past his young granddaughters room one night, when he saw her kneeling beside her bed, her head bowed and hands folded, repeating the alphabet. What are you doing he asked? She explained, “I’m saying my prayers, but I couldn’t think of just what I wanted to say. So I’m just saying all the letters of the alphabet, God can put them together however he thinks best” That is hardly a prayer of gratitude nor is it a prayer seeking strength and courage to succeed.