“Each of us has the ability to do the seemingly impossible”

“Each of us has the ability to do the seemingly impossible”

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail”.

—Charles F. Kettering 1876-1958, Inventor of the electric starter

“You don’t have to be brilliant to have brilliant ideas and outcomes.

At the age of nineteen, a Russian, Igor Sikorsky, almost had a

working model of the first helicopter. By the age of forty-nine in 1940,

Sikorsky’s successful VS-300 became a model that others based theirs

on, and Sikorsky was considered the father of the helicopter.

At the age of thirty-seven, Mary Anderson had the first patent for

a windshield wiper. Her goal was to clean snow, rain, and dirt off car

windshields years before Henry Ford’s Model T automobiles were in

production. On a visit to New York City in 1902, Anderson got the

windshield-wiper idea while on a trolley car whose front window could

not be kept closed because sleet made it impossible to see through it.

In 1829, at the age of thirty-seven, William Austin Burt invented

the typographer, the predecessor to the typewriter. He worked at that

time in the Michigan territorial legislature and later became a county

Circuit Court Judge.

A fifteen-year-old grammar-school dropout from Maine invented

an important and useful item. In 1873, while he was ice-skating with a

new pair of skates, Chester Greenwood’s ears were very cold. He went

home and asked his grandmother to sew some fur onto wire shaped

in the form of ears and attached to a metal band. Thus, the first set of

earmuffs! The rest is history. Greenwood would ultimately establish a

factory and produce earmuffs of a style still in use today.

Was Chester the most book-smart child of his day? No. But Chester

was driven to greatness by dissatisfaction. He was dissatisfied by his

present situation and was motivated to the action of changing it for

the better. Initially, Chester probably had no intention of becoming an

inventor whom the world would notice and recognize for something

quite useful. Chester merely wanted to keep his ears from freezing.

Many other people before 1873 had freezing ears, but they did not have

the foresight and drive to work at the problem without stopping until

they fixed it.

We each have the ability to excel. We can be great, and we

can each be driven to fix a problem, right a wrong, or invent the

seemingly impossible invention. Our mind can handle anything that

is requested of it. But do we want something so badly that we will

not stop until its completion? Will we be driven so intensely that we

think about it endlessly?

Let’s each learn to develop that powerful drive, that positive mental

attitude needed to succeed. Do you want it badly enough? Because, you

know, you have wanted something badly enough in your past that you

refused to give in until you achieved success. It’s all in the programming

of that inner mind, that subconscious mind, that works magic whenever

it is impressed strongly enough by the importance of a special goal.

Andrew Carnegie

"One great success story is the story of Napoleon Hill, who was born
in 1883. His mother died when he was nine years old. Hill's father
remarried, and Hill's new stepmother was a tremendous motivating
force behind this young man. Hill grew up poor, raised in a two-room
cabin, but he had a great imagination. Martha, his stepmother, instilled
in the young boy that he could become a great writer. At age fifteen,
Napoleon Hill started writing as a reporter for a small local newspaper
in Wiss County, Virginia. In 1908, an amazing thing happened: Hill
was assigned to interview one of the richest and most successful men in
the world, the steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie.
Carnegie was seventy-three at the time, and he asked Napoleon
Hill, only age 25, if he would accept a long-term assignment that
Carnegie would orchestrate. Hill was instructed to interview over
five hundred successful and wealthy men and women. He was asked
to formulate the principles that led to the success of these great
individuals. Carnegie told Hill that he would not compensate him
except for reimbursement of expenses, but agreed to introduce Hill to
each of the very successful individuals.
Of course, Napoleon Hill accepted the assignment. He was free to
accomplish it on his own time-in the end, it took a full twenty years.
He called his findings The Philosophy of Achievement, and the rest is
history. Hill went on to become one of the most prolific self-help writers
of all time. Penning many books, he was recognized early on for the
book Think and Grow Rich. Most of his books are still available today,
including Success through a Positive Mental Attitude, which changed my
life when I first read it at age twenty-one.
Hill's interviewees included Edison, Bell, Eastman, Ford, Woolworth,
and Theodore Roosevelt. The following are two of Hill's quotes:
"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your
soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements."
"Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish,
but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything."

How fantastic is it that words written on a page can change
someone's life forever! Words can turn a failure into a tremendous
success. I wonder how many people have been as positively touched as I
have been by Napoleon Hill's books and his powerful words.

Andrew Carnegie was once asked, in the early 1900s, how it was
possible that he had so many millionaires (forty-three at one point)
working for him. He answered: "Dealing with people is a lot like digging
for gold: When you go digging for an ounce of gold, you have to move
tons of dirt. But when you go digging, you don't go looking for the dirt;
you go looking for the gold." C-John Carinci

“All Consuming Desire To Succeed”

“All Consuming Desire To Succeed”

John Ratzenberger, the know-it-all mailman named

Cliff on the hit TV series Cheers, landed the acting job on

the show only after failing to land a part at an audition.

Up that point in his career, he’d never made it big. He was

unknown and just a couple of years earlier was struggling to

scrape together enough for a meal. After failing his audition

for a part on the Cheers series, he said to himself, “I failed

already; what do I have to lose at this point?”

He asked the Cheers executives at the audition, “Do you

have a know-it-all at the bar yet?” The Cheers people said,

“What?” He replied, “You know, a know-it-all; every bar

has a know-it-all at their bar!” At that point, he proceeded

to improvise, using office furniture as props and showing

the show’s executives the kind of character he was talking

about. The Cheers executives laughed at the character and

a few days later told John that they were interested in his

character, but for only a few shows.

The rest is history. The show aired for more than ten

years and John Ratzenberger, a struggling, balding actor,

wound up on the show for the full duration. He turned out to

be a very accomplished actor who found wealth and prestige

all because he went the extra mile. He put aside his fear of

rejection and presented the executives with something they

didn’t even know they needed.

John used a form of inspirational dissatisfaction. He did

not give up on the first try. His belief in himself and what he

had to offer led to the once-in-a-lifetime role.

Do you have the nerve and the confidence not to give

up? After failing in one audition, he came up with an

impromptu performance and a new idea for the executives.

A failure is never the end. It simply means you have to

reprogram yourself to do more creative, positive thinking

in order to find the right way to do something successfully.

If you give up too soon, you are likely giving in to those

childhood voices that keep telling you, “Don’t do that” and

“No, no, no!”

Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning is not a sometime

thing. It is an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while,

you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right

all the time. There is no room for second place...”

C-2005 John Paul Carinci

Bad Things Happen to Winners, Too

Bad Things Happen to Winners, Too

"Of course, very successful people have setbacks, too. It is not all a

rosy road for them. Highly successful people find ways to get back up

from the mat of defeat and claw their way back to the top of the ladder.

It’s as if they know in their hearts that they will be back on top again.

Let’s look at some baseball superstars. Cy Young won 511 games

as a pitcher. Most career hits ever: Pete Rose, 4,256. Most career stolen

bases: Rickey Henderson, 1,406. Highest batting average: Ty Cobb,

366, which means out of every thousand at-bats, Ty Cobb got 366 hits

and did it throughout his entire career. If anyone today can hit just three

hundred out of every one thousand at-bats over his Major League career,

he is guaranteed a spot in the immortal Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,

New York.

One such great success, who met an untimely career end and,

ultimately, death, was the great baseball hero Lou Gehrig. Lou came

onto the scene in the Major Leagues in 1923 at the age of twenty. He

spent the next sixteen years as a New York Yankee. Gehrig was given

the nickname “The Iron Horse” because he would go on to play 2,130

consecutive games without sitting any of them out. This was some feat,

especially in the days when a pitcher would pitch all nine innings, rest

two or three days, and do it all over again. Players were tough back

then—no babying any of them. He played a total of 2,164 Major

League games.

Gehrig had seventeen seasons with the Yankees and would have kept

going another five years or so. But something unheard of then happened

to him. He became suddenly sick with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

(ALS), what is now known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” No disease was

supposed to attack “The Iron Horse,” not at the strong and powerful

age of thirty-six. But, yes, this amazing player suddenly couldn’t play

very well, and he couldn’t understand why his hitting and fielding was

sub-par.

This “iron horse” of a man, who had played 2,130 consecutive games,

finally took himself out of the lineup. He broke his own consecutive

streak, not realizing that he had a debilitating and ultimately crippling

disease that would take his life approximately two years after his last

game. Yet, in a farewell speech to his adoring fans at Yankee Stadium, he

proclaimed himself the “luckiest man alive.”

The luckiest man alive? Gehrig had an irreversible death sentence.

But here is part of his speech:"

“For the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got.

Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have

been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but

kindness and encouragement from you fans.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve

got an awful lot to live for. Thank you”

Count Your Blessings!!

 C-John Paul Carinci (from the book An All-Consuming Desire To Succeed)

We Must Never Forget Where We Came From!

"We are each a direct, reinvented reflection of all those great
people who have preceded us and who so positively inspired us to
be great." John Paul Carinci
Mother Teresa once said:
... "I see God in every human
being. When I wash the leper’s wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord
himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?” & "Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it."
(taken from my books)
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Being-Different-success-ebook/dp/B002C75GY4/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297365248&sr=1-1

What Will You Be Remembered For?

What Will You Be Remembered For?

“I am doing a great deal of research for what will become my eighth

book. This new endeavor came about by sheer accident. Lately, I like

a good challenge when writing a new book. Maybe I like to write

outside my comfort zone every so often. Well, this is what is currently

challenging me. I actually put the book I  was writing on hold for the

sake of the new, more challenging one.

It all started quite innocently while surfing eBay for what I call

treasure gems, be they autographs, old magazines, historical finds, or

whatever. Well, this particular time, I came across a diary from 1923 in

Hagerstown, Maryland. I was intrigued by the year, and by the fact that

a girl or woman had written the diary, which covered the entire year of

1923. Almost three hundred sixty pages were written out by hand in

pencil, and fairly neatly, too.

Well, I won the auction for the diary, and as I began reading all

about this unknown girl and became more intrigued, I decided to base

a novel loosely on her and her times, revolving around a good mystery,

of course.

What really caught my eye while reading the diary was how many of

her family members passed away or became sick, and how many times

she herself was very sick, during that year. Her father and a few relatives

died between the ages of 46 and 68. I researched some children of that

period who died at age ten or younger.

When I tried to research her last name, “Bloom,” to find out her

true identity, I realized that many people are forgotten far too quickly

after their passing. It took four hundred hours of research to find the

dairy writer’s first name; the fact that she was twenty-one at the time;

the names of her father, mother, brother, husband, and son. I was able

to secure obituaries for all of them except her. I became consumed with

finding out who this woman had been and who she became later in life,

as her words in the diary intrigued me.

What I took away from my research was this:

• Every day should be lived as if it is your last on earth.

• Family and friends should be ultra-important in your life and

should be seen regularly.

• We should reflect often on our lives and thank God every day

for all the blessings we have.

• And last, we should strive to improve the state of humankind,

if only in some small way, and look to be remembered for many

years after we pass on.

In 1923, there were no televisions—only radios and Victrolas. Movies

at a theater were a huge treat. Dancing was very big and enjoyable for

this twenty-one-year-old and her friends. Much enjoyment was derived

from canoeing, taking a ride in a 1920 Ford that would often break

down, and sitting with a boyfriend on a two-seated swing in the yard.

Miss Bloom’s days were filled with visiting and entertaining many

relatives and friends, and cooking and baking pies and cakes for them

was routine. You see, Miss Bloom led a very busy life in those days, as

I realized that many people in that time period did. Life was so very

unpredictable in 1923, that it was as if they were chasing after as much

as possible before it could slip away.”

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another

person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have

lighted the flame within us”.

—Albert Schweitzer

“There is a great lesson in this story. It shows how fortunate we are

to be alive in the current period of time. You see, when Miss Bloom got

sick, as she did several times that year, the doctor had to make many

house calls over the course of the ten days it took her to recuperate.

Routine sicknesses that don’t set us back at all today robbed many of

their lives in those days. I was happy to see that Miss Bloom did live to

get married in her early twenties and had a son and a grandson, who

were very prominent attorneys and who, in turn, made huge impacts on

the world around them.

Miss Bloom quotes a great poet, James Russell Lowell: “Be noble,

and the nobleness in others will rise in majesty to meet thine own.”

And she intrigued me further with another quote: “Boast not thyself of

tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”

“My message echoes hers: Pack as much as you can into this life with

which you have been blessed!”

C-2011 JOHN PAUL CARINCI

Using All Your Talents to the Fullest

Using All Your Talents to the Fullest

“Dennis Waitley wrote the following story in Insight:”

“The Scriptures tell of a story of a master of a wealthy estate

who gave some of his fortune to three of his servants. To the

first servant he gave five talents; to the second, three talents;

to the third servant he gave one talent. A talent in those

days was a measure of money. He told the three servants to

‘cherish and utilize to the fullest what had been given.’ And

after one year he would check with them to see what they

had done.

“The first servant invested his money in different

businesses. The second servant bought materials and made

things to sell. The third servant took his talent and hid it

and saved it. After one year the master saw that the first

servant, through his investing, had now 25 talents. The

second servant had built his up to 15 talents, which made

the master happy. So he asked the third servant what had

become of his one talent. The servant exclaimed, ‘I was

afraid to misuse the talent, so I carefully hid it. Here it is!

I am now giving it back to you in the same condition as

when you gave it to me!’ The master was very mad. ‘Thou

wicked and slothful servant. How dare you not use the gift

that I gave you?’”

“Here is an encouraging estimate: people in America

can often live to be 85 or 90. Today’s newborn will have the

benefits of medical science that will enable them to live to

be 100 to 110.

We are very fortunate today to be able to live long,

healthy, and productive lives. Our forbearers often died

from fever, pneumonia, and even childbirth, which killed

many women and children. Imagine living centuries ago

when a good life meant living only into your thirties.

Imagine ending your opportunities by age thirty.

The person who is 70 today is often healthier than a

person 60 years old who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Today, it’s not unheard of for a 75-year-old to run New York

City’s 26-mile marathon and to finish. Though you always

have dangers around you that can cut your life short, the

statistics are in your favor to live a healthy and active life

into old age.

Can you appreciate the fact that you will probably have

more time on this great earth than your ancestors? Or do

you waste and undervalue your life? Do you wish for more

free time? Most of us do, but what would you do in your

free time to find greater success?

While growing up, I can remember my father working

three jobs to support our family. I don’t remember him ever

relaxing or hanging around the house. He worked hard. I

learned of his hard work when I used to go with him after

school to clean oil burners. Believe me, he earned every

cent he was paid.

In many ways, most of us have it so much better than

our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. Life is considered

more comfortable. In some instances, people have more

free time and all of us have more options as to what we may

want to do in our free time. How will you choose to use this

extra time you have?”

C-2005 John Paul Carinci 9from the book: The Power Of Being Different)

What Will We Be Remembered For?

"We have no idea what age we will live to. But one thing is for sure,

we have the best chance at living a long and healthy life today, rather

than a hundred years ago. But the real question I ask is:

What will we be remembered for?"

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in

a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid broadside, thoroughly

used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: WOW, what a ride!"

—Author unknown

"The oldest practicing lawyer in Massachusetts was a man named,

 Reuben Landau.  Reuben was practicing law every day with his son Bill.

At age 103, Reuben refused to retire. He worked until he became ill,

three weeks before he passed away. The elder Landau was sharp right until

he passed on.

Maybe working every day kept him young. Maybe his refusal to

rust away like some old car from 1904 kept him alive. Imagine that—a

car from the year of Reuben Landau’s birth would have to be from

1904! That puts into perspective how old he was in 2007. Age really is

a state of mind. Attitude is so important. The attitude of “Why not?!”

is so important. The question may come up, “Are you sure you want to

continue working at your age?” And the answer that comes from the

heart and mind of the centenarian is, “Why not?!”

You see, they know in their minds that they are over 100, but they

immediately discount it, staying sharp, staying current with the times,

and growing rather than dwindling away."

"Edna Parker was born in 1893 and died in 2008. She lived to

the ripe old age of 115 years and 220 days. For some time Edna was

considered the oldest person in the world. She attended college, became

a teacher, lived on a farm, had two sons. She loved to read; she enjoyed

poetry and recited poetry to her visitors.

 

As of September 2009, there were twenty-three people who were

validated to have lived to the age of 115. Amazing! There are certain

genes that contribute to longevity, no doubt. But there are also thought

patterns that, I believe, shave many a year off someone’s life. Imagine if

we could only perfect the “special formula”!

To live to age 115, someone would have to live over 42,000 days.

Amazing! Can you imagine that? The number of people over age 100 in

the U.S. today is more than 84,000. By the year 2040 it is estimated that

number will grow to 580,000. My suggestion: Watch what you allow to

seep into that computer-mind that so skillfully runs the manufacturing

plant we call our bodies.

Sarah Knauss lived to be 119 years and 97 days old. She lived her

entire life in Pennsylvania. She was a homemaker, worked in an insurance

office, and was healthy most of her life. Her daughter explained her

mother’s longevity this way: “She’s a very tranquil person, and nothing

fazes her. That’s why she’s living this long.” Her daughter lived to the age

of 101 herself.”

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that

we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most

frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,

fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your

playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about

shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all

meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of

God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we

let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do

the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically

liberates others."

—Marianne Williamson 

SO: What Will We Be Remembered For?
C-2011 John Paul Carinci