How is your imagination working today? Is it concentrating on pro- blems and fears? What a waste of precious time! What does it accomplish? Here is an apt quotation from Brendan Francis, "Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day" How true.
Just think about that for a little while and you will see that fear stiffles every positive thought that ever crosses your mind. You get a brilliant idea, but before you know it, fear stealthily creeps in and sure enough your brilliant idea is dead. Why? Because you become afraid that you will fail and you will be the laughing stock of your friends and community.
How much better off you would be to allow your imagination to take you into the clouds of possibilities. To dream big dreams and make them come true. You can do it! If you will only put your mind to it and discover the means to accomplish your dreams.
I'm just full of quotes today. Henry Ford once said, "I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say defnitely what is and what is not possible." And Henry Ford went on to develop the first low cost auto- mobile. He didn't let his mind rest on the impossible, but rather on the probable. And he succeeded in what he set out to do. He had failures, but he also had his share of successes. Ford was active in several other fields besides those of automobile and airplane manufacturing. In 1915 he chartered a peace ship, which carried him and a number of like-minded individuals to Europe, where they attempted without success to persuade the belligerent governments to end World War I.
All of us are grateful that Henry Ford didn't allow fear from stopping him in his tracks. Instead he forged ahead with his imaginative ideas and had more successes than failures. You can too, if only you allow your dreams to take you to solutions that will make your dreams come to pass.
And now for another quotation. "The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility." Charles F. Kettering made that statement. After graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in engineering Kettering began work at the National Cash Register Company, in Dayton, Ohio, where he helped develop the first electronic cash register. In 1909 Kettering left the National Cash Register Company and started a company called Dayton Engineering Companies (Delco) with businessman Edward Deeds. At Delco in 1911, Kettering built the first successful self-starter for automobiles. Before Kettering constructed his device, automobile engines had to be cranked by hand. Hand-cranking was difficult and sometimes dangerous, so the self-starter made it easier and safer for anyone to drive a car. At about the same time that Kettering developed the self-starter, he improved automobile lighting and made additional improvements to automobile ignition systems. So you see Charles F. Kettering didn't sit back on his laurels, he kept his imagination working and was able to give society the benefit of his dreams.
There is still another man who had big dreams. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Had a dream". King and other black leaders organized the 1963 March on Washington, a massive protest in Washington, D.C., for jobs and civil rights. On August 28, 1963, King delivered a stirring address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. His "I Have a Dream" speech expressed the hopes of the civil rights movement in oratory as moving as any in American history: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
That speech and the march built on the Birmingham demonstrations to create the political momentum that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations, as well as discrimination in education and employment. As a result of King's effectiveness as a leader of the American civil rights movement and his highly visible moral stance he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for peace.
I repeat, "How is your imagination working today?" Is it frustrated by fear? Are you afraid to let it run wild? I challenge you to let it go on long enough to find wheels to make it run.
That's my Thought for Today!
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