Control this for success.
Attitude
A little boy was overheard talking to himself as he strutted through the backyard, wearing his baseball cap and toting a ball and bat. "I'm the greatest hitter in the world," he announced. Then he tossed the ball into the air, swung at it, and missed. "Strike One!" he yelled. Undaunted, he picked up the ball and said again, "I'm the greatest hitter in the world!" He tossed the ball into the air. When it came down he swung again and missed. "Strike Two!" he cried.
The boy then paused a moment to examine his bat and ball carefully. He spit on his hands and rubbed them together. He straightened his cap and said once more, "I'm the greatest hitter in the world!" Again he tossed the ball up in the air and swung at it. He missed. "Strike Three! Wow!" he exclaimed. "I'm the greatest pitcher in the world!"
Your attitude determines how circumstances impact your life. The little boy's circumstances hadn't changed, but his optimistic attitude prompted him to give an encouraging meaning to what had happened.
What difficult time are you going through right now? Can you do something to change it? If you can, don't wait another day, make the needed changes. If you can't change the circumstance, however, change your attitude, you'll discover that circumstances won't have the last word.
A burning passion is behind success.
From the book "Happy This Year!"
The year was 1948, and the man's name was Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish immigrant to the United States. Although he had NEVER RECEIVED ANY FORMAL ART TRAINING, he was embarking on the creation of the largest and most ambitious sculpture in human history. Whereas everyone else saw only the craggy Black Hills, Korczak saw a monument to the spirit of one of the most legendary figures in US history.
He had come to the mountain alone to undertake this mammoth and historic task. A task many considered to be impossible. He was 40 years old the day he climbed that mountain near the Badlands of South Dakota, hammer and chisel in hand. He would spend the rest of his life on that mountain, braving both the summer heat and the vicious South Dakota winters, until he died at age 74.
Orphaned at age 1, Korczak had bounced around various foster homes. In his teens, he was apprenticed to a shipbuilder as a wood-carver. By 20, he had become an accomplished furniture maker. At 31, Korczak served briefly as assistant to Gutzon Borglum in the sculpting of Mount Rushmore.
Korczak's breathtakingly lifelife sculpture of the Polish composer and political leader Ignacy Jan Paderewski earned him fame when it won first prize at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Korczak might have opted for a life of ease sculpting the rich and famous, but he made a very different choice instead.
Henry Standing Bear, chief of the Ponca Tribe contacted Korczak on behalf of several Native American elders asking if he would carve a memorial to the Sioux chief Crazy Horse out of one of the peaks in South Dakota's Black Hills.
Prior to beginning work, Korczak spent seven years studying Native American history. He arrived in South Dakota with only $174 in his pocket. He lived in a tent and bought land nearby upon which he built a log home.
Having created reasonable shelter for himself, Korczak cut down trees to build a stairway towering 741 steps up the side of Thunderhead Mountain. Every day, he trudged up the steps, carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment.
When finished the memorial would be a massive 563 feet high and 641 feet wide.
To fully comprehend how big the Crazy Horse Memorial really is, you need to know that the entirety of the Mount Rushmore sculpture would fit easily inside the carving of just Crazy Horse's head. Crazy Horse's memorial would ultimately display not only his head but also the great chief's upper torso, arms, and even the front third of his horse.
The Crazy Horse Memorial was designed by Korczak to be in the round. It would depict the great chief from all sides: a 360-degree view.
The hours were long and the work physically demanding. Very early on, Korczak fell and injured himself. He later broke both his wrist and this thumb. One day he slipped while working and tore his Achilles tendon. And yet he worked on.
From the crushing weight of the tools he carried up and down the mountain each day, Korczak had to have two major back surgeries that removed a total of three spinal disks. He once had an accident wherein he lost control of an earthmover and drove it over the side of the mountain; he fell dozens of feet. Korczak was back at work with a cast on his leg driving the same earthmover the very next day. He suffered two heart attacks, one of them severe, and yet he never stopped. His vision was a tidal wave that pulled him along and swept up tens of thousands of others in its wake.
Korczak was a man engrossed in a life's work that filled him with a daily sense of purpose --- even though he knew that what he had begun would never be completed during his lifetime. In 1998, fifty years to the day after the mountain was dedicated and sixteen years after Korczak's death, the carved face of Crazy Horse was publicly unveiled for the first time.
As word of the memorial spread and donations began to pour in, Korczak could have easily justified paying himself a generous salary as designer, foreman, and chief worker on the project. But Korczak never once accepted payment for his work on the Crazy Horse Memorial. The more money the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation had, the more machinery and supplies could be purchased, and Korczak did not want to siphon resources away from this important endeavor.
Even though there were times when money was sorely needed, Korczak twice turned down offers of $10 million from the US government. He felt that he could not with integrity accept money from the goverment that had nearly driven Native Americans to the brink of extinction.
IDEALS OF SUCCESS - PASSION, VISION, INTEGRITY, CHARACTER, NOT GIVING UP IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
God's Coffee
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.
Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.
Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you began eyeing each other's cups.
Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.
Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."
God brews the coffee, not the cups..........
Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.
