To boldly go where no man has gone before.
The words of Captain Kirk at the start of every episode of the original Star Trek.
His and his crew’s boldly would be to undertake a five year mission into the deepest uncharted areas of space to discover new worlds. A trek that had not been achieved before. While that is just a TV series, achieving the previously unachievable truly is mind over matter. Or anti-matter if you are on the Starship Enterprise.
Mount Everest stands 8,849 metres high. The highest mountain in the world. To date 7269 climbers have summited at the top of the world on the mountain. But, it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the first time it was conquered there had been some 14 expeditions that had attempted to reach the top but all failed. It was considered too difficult, too dangerous, and unachievable.
Then along came Edmund Hilary. He was having none of it. On May 1953 he achieved the unachievable and became the first person to successfully climb the highest peak above sea level on Earth.
People were amazed. He was asked many times not just how he did it but most of all, why. His immortal reply, ‘Because it was there’. The comment was in honour of British climber George Mallory who tried to mount Everest in 1924 but was never seen again. He had been asked the same question back then and gave the same and original response.
Why aim to achieve the unachievable in anything? Because it’s a personal belief that a) it is possible and b) that they are the person to do it.
Shoot for the Moon.
There is another famous belief quote from Norman Vincent Peale which goes, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars’, In short, have huge thinking and belief in it and yourself.
That was something flowing through a young student at Purdue University in Indiana, USA in the last 1940’s. A teacher had begun asking students gathered in class what they aimed to have as their career when they completed their studies. The usual replies (for the time) centred around becoming a bank manager, setting up a restaurant, opening a haulage business and other accepted ‘good living’ roles for the future such as lawyer or real estate agent.
Finally the question arrived at the young student. His reply…..
‘I’m going to land on the Moon’.
The class broke out into heaps of laughter. The other students ridiculed the young man and the teacher rounded it all off with the words….
‘Neil Armstrong, you have to learn that if you want to have any sensible future at all, you will need to come back down to Earth pretty quickly’.
Imagine hearing that. To most people this public humiliation would have ended their goal then and there. But not Neil Armstrong. In his mind that unachievable feat was very achievable. Just because 1940’s contemporary minds and technological know-how had felt it beyond human capabilities, Armstrong strongly believed it was only a matter of time in the years that followed that the answers would be found. And he was going to be right there involved so he could lead the way.
That school laughter turned to worldwide cheers and admiration when he touched down and walked on the Moon surface twenty years later. All that his mind felt true HAD come true. The unachievable to everyone, had been achieved as he said it would. As the old adage goes, ‘If you can believe it, you can achieve it’.
So, maybe it’s time you climbed your own metaphorical mountain in life. Or reached for your own moon.
Because that IS what achieve-meant!
PS; The story about Neil Armstrong was actually told to me AT Purdue University on one of my two visits.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Violence.
Humankind isn’t always kind. In fact, we have a history of violence, murder, war, and more as far back as time goes. It was once a reason to survive. Then it became a way to grab power. It developed into an instrument of despots seeking domination. And today we sit at home and watch it on TV every night as entertainment. Yes, we are fascinated by violence. So, let’s take a SuperMind Saturday look at the subject.
- The world is a violent place. It seems we still need violence even though we live in a far more civilised and developed world than ever before. Why, then, do we continue to need and use violence so much?
- Lyrics by music legend Bob Dylan – ‘Democracy don’t rule the world. You better get that in your head. This world is ruled by violence’. These lyrics from the song Union Sundown were written in 1983 but are as real and true as ever. How can we stop violence in all forms (especially everyday people against each other) ruling the world?
- Violence is the default and quick response in the modern world before any other action. You see this day in day out everywhere on the planet. Why is violence our first go-to reaction in our lives?
- Thought – violence has become an unquestioned element in our lives in 21st Century life. It rarely shocks us as it used to. From news to entertainment and even on the sporting field, there it is. It’s become part of who we are. This is not a good thing.
- Since the start of this century violence in all forms has increased across the world. In my opinion this is because of social media which has made it easier to see and to spread. What has caused the huge growth in violence and can we stop this?
That’s a wrap for this week SuperMind Thinker friends. Keep up the super thinking on all of the subjects I’ve covered on SuperMind Saturday. And don’t forget to carry on elevating your own thoughts and beliefs every day. We need the SuperThinkers of the world. Like…….badly!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
When answers are needed to a situation you often hear the advice to join or connect the dots.
The thinking is that if you take a good look you will see clues that relate that can put together the puzzle you face. Random occurrences are then pieced into one bigger picture to make sense. You often see this in crime detection or academic studies on specialist subjects.
It effectively says, ‘this has been what’s going on the in the background of X that resulted in Y’.
It appears a well thought of argument and system.
Well, not for some who took a 360 degree approach.
Step forwards Steve Jobs. The co-founder of Apple and pioneer of the personal and home computer revolution.
And he was also revolutionary in his thinking, Thinking that chose not to connect the dots, but connect the people. Why? Because he knew that we can’t connect the dots looking forwards. You can only connect looking back which means you’ve made mistakes, got stuck, gone in the wrong direction, or plain misunderstood something. But what you can do, and he did in a big way, is connect the people.
When designing the layout for the Pixar HQ (the company he bought from George Lucas in 1986), he built in only one set of toilets in the atrium (the large open aired front of a building). This required all employees to have to walk from all floors and areas across the building to use the facility. This seemed time consuming and thus would effective output. It didn’t. Jobs knew most workers remained in set smaller sized offices in their teams and departments which resulted in restrictive creativity, a ceiling on inspiration, and a block on outside ideas. By making everyone travel about the building they would begin to talk to others in various roles more often, share what projects they were engaged in, and fuse new relationships and cross creative suggestions. Of course, it worked.
The dots joined themselves after, they were connected in the people to begin with. Success could be assembled at the outset rather than from the ruins of failure later.
Cracking the code.
During World War 2 connecting the dots was apparently badly needed.
The Germans used an encryption device to share secret messages and manoeuvres which changed each day with special code books operators used to reconfigure the words and numbers into fresh message keys. The Enigma Machine. Despite the best efforts the Allies could not crack it. Connecting the dots was yielding blanks.
The British needed to break it or face losing the war. They asked mathematician and early computer scientist Alan Turing to help. He knew that one brain, no matter how specialist, could not break the code. Connecting the dots on the mass information available was too vast a task and would not work. He chose to connect a team instead to act as one bigger mind.
And that team was not simply more Alan Turing’s. He needed variety of thought and an ability to look at it from other angles. Therefore into the famous Hut 8 at Bletchley Park came crossword solvers, linguistics, translators, a chess champion, an Army Intelligence Officer, a historian, and a papyrology expert (study of ancient manuscripts and texts).
He connected the people into a team with one critical task – decoding Enigma. Each brought a skill and ideas and insights and shared them with their colleagues so that all minds had a collaborative expansion of what they knew and therefore could consider, focus on, and of course solve. Which they famously did in January 1940. It’s true to say that without it the Germans would have won WW2 in the end.
Connecting minds.
That is the power of people connection. Minds coming together in unison to float questions, points, problems, ideas, creativity, stories, discoveries, and concepts into one major result. A result that started BEFORE it was too late, not after. It picks at their individual mentality rather than picking up the pieces at the end when it’s all fallen apart.
A team or network of different and diverse minds acting as one mind is a massive creative force. It CREATES the dots themselves. Whether by the water cooler next to the company toilets or in a cold barren hut in wartime.
Next time you need to build something memorable or beat something blocking the way, connect the people so you can connect yourself to amazing outcomes.
References: Steve Job – ‘Rebel Ideas’ by Matthew Syed.
Enigma machine – widely available online. See www.bletchleypark.org.uk.
