Attain the best possible by seeking the impossible. In this episode, I'm going to address the power
of possibility thinking. Get ready because this has helped many many people attempt things that
otherwise they would never attempt and they would not have achieved what they did achieve.
Hi, my name's Doug Andrew and I've actually enjoyed a wonderful career for more than 47
and a half years helping people optimize not just their financial assets but helping them balance
their life and I've helped many many people whether they're business owners or my wife and I
mentor troubled youth, I'm on a board of directors for teenage suicide prevention and so no matter
what stage in life you are, successful or maybe you're depressed or feeling down, I love teaching
the concept of being a possibility thinker. In fact, my wife and I are parents of 6 children
and 20 grandchildren we have right now and our favorite event every year is our annual Grandpa's
Camp. This is where our grandchildren come. First of all the 12 year old's and older come for the
first 4 days and we talk teenage talk and we teach them how to be possibility
thinkers. This was our theme just 2 years ago and how to be responsible and accountable,
then the 8 year old's come and join them and they hang out with grandpa and we teach additional
lessons and also the 4, 5, 6, 7 year old's come and join grandma, we combine them all together,
it's the most incredible week. Finally the parents are allowed to come on the 7th day and we all
stay at grandpa's camp, there's over 30 of us there, it's one of the most incredible weeks of the year
and I love it because our grandkids look forward to it every single year. Our theme was "Be A
Possibility Thinker" 2 years ago and I'm going to share with you some of the things that I taught
our grandchildren which are the same lessons and concepts that I've taught troubled youth
in suicide centers and also entrepreneurs who are in charge of multi-million dollar corporations.
So, let me start out by sharing a quote from Dr. Robert Schuler. I'll never forget the day when I
heard Dr. Schuler share this in a positive mental attitude rally that I attended years ago. He said
"what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" Now, he may have been quoting somebody
else but I attribute the quote to him because it inspired me. Golly! If I knew that I could not
fail, I would attempt to do lots of things but fear of failure often is what prevents people from even
starting out on some venture. And so, there's a lot of stories that we can share about people
who have been possibility thinkers. One of my favorite motivational speakers for years, he's
now passed away, Zig Ziglar, okay? Now, I knew Zig personally, his first name was not Zig.
When I first asked him, "Is your first name really Zig?" because all of his books were Zig Ziglar
and he pulled down his glasses, his bifocals, and he goes, "My good mama named me Marion." Now, if your name
was Marion, when I was a kid, would you go by Zig or Marion? Yeah, I went by Zig. I'll never forget that.
Zig Ziglar would talk about the difference between a big shot and a little shot and he would say
"The only difference between a big shot and a little shot is a big shot is just a little shot
that kept shooting," okay? And so, he would talk about the little bit of difference and he would use the
metaphor of a million dollar racehorse versus a $10,000 racehorse at the time and he
would use the example of the Arlington futurity, a race which is 1 and 1/8 miles long, that's
72,000 inches and he would say, "You know the million-dollar racehorse crosses the finish
line sometimes one head length ahead of the 4th place horse that used to only get a check for 25
bucks. Why is the million dollar racehorse worth a 100 times more? It's not a 100 times faster.
How much faster is it than the 4th place horse? One head length, okay, one 3,000's faster."
Sometimes it's one nose length, the winning horse versus the 2nd place horse. 172
thousands faster. It's the little bit of difference that makes the million dollar racehorse worth a
100 times more, that's very true of possibility thinkers. So, not only Zig Zigler, but there's people
like Gene Krantz who was with Apollo 13 was it that when they got into trouble. He basically
said failure is not an option. See, when you begin to realize that failure is not an option, you begin
to get creative with your thinking, you become a possibility thinker. You look at your resources,
duct tape and mylar and everything else they did to get home safely when they were in trouble out
there in space. So, again, what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail or you began to
realize that failure is not an option? I love to talk about Thomas Edison with my kids and
grandkids, here's why. Now, before I share with you why I love the story of Thomas Edison,
if this is intriguing you, be sure and share this video. Click like, post a comment, subscribe. Do that,
it's free on 3-dimensional wealth, this channel. I post videos like this almost on a daily basis.
Be sure and click the little bell because then you'll be notified whenever I post a new video,
and at the end I want to gift you a free copy of my most recent best-selling book, "The 10 Keys
Transformation," where I talk about concepts like this. So, Thomas Edison, now most people realize that
he is most famous for inventing what? The incandescent light, okay? Now, do you know
that he had attempted over 10,000 times to invent the electric
light bulb. And he had a young reporter that came up to him at that time and said, "Mr. Edison,
how does that feel? Having failed 10,000 times?" Do you know what Edison said to the reporter?
He goes, "You know, you're young, you haven't learned this yet but I haven't failed 10,000 times.
I've successfully found 10,000 ways that don't work." It's all on how you look at it. Do you
know he made 6,000 more attempts before he finally was successful in inventing the incandescent light?
Now, he didn't do it all by himself, it took a team, okay, but that's what he's famous for and
look at what happened with electricity? Now we have led lights. But he was able to try, try, try.
He kept getting up and trying again. I don't think it's the greatest invention frankly. He actually
figured out how to communicate 2,700 miles from San Francisco to New York in less than 7 seconds,
when to buy, when to sell using 2 symbols: a dot or a dash. The Morse code, the telegraph,
but when you think about it, it was more than just dots and dashes. That was the precursor to
digital technology. Is it on or is it off, okay? LED's, TV's, scoreboards when I was in high school or my
first calculators. They had what? They had 7 LED lights, okay, and then the 8-bit, these are 8
bits make up 1 byte of information, a letter or a number whether this bar was on, this light was
on it was a one if these two were on. Now, it's a 7, now it's a 9, now it's an 8. They're
all lit up. But it's all simply down to is that on or off? How does it come across to the human eye?
This is digital technology. What does this mean? The difference in being a possibility thinker
is simply how you look at things. Are you on are you off? Do you brighten a room when you enter it
or when you leave it? In a group of people are you a fountain, okay, are you a drain that sucks
energy out of the room because you're always talking about what's going wrong in your life?
Do you look at the possibilities or do you make up excuses or criticize, "Oh, that'll never work," because
if that's your attitude, you will never be a possibility thinker. Are you on board or off board?
Is there a higher power up there that you could draw from that is looking down saying, "Come on! I'm
trying to inspire you. Are you with me or against me? You've got to have some faith," but faith without
works is dead, okay? We read about this in the Bible. So, when we connect all the dots here, it's talking
about being a possibility thinker, what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail
but you attain the best possible by seeking the impossible. So, here's how many times I help these
suicidal teenagers feel like they can accomplish what they think is impossible. You ready?
So, many times when I share a few stories like this, I will give these young teens, or I do this with
adults, okay, business owners, a little Ziploc baggie and inside that Ziploc bag, I have a block of wood
with a little hole in the center and I have 16 penny nails in there, okay? 16 nails
and they take out 1 of those nails and they put it upright in the block of wood and I challenge
them, "I want you to take the other 15 nails and balance them all on top of that 1 single nail.
They can't touch anything else, they must reside all on top of 1 nail. You can't use rubber bands,
you can't tip it over. It's very possible." In fact, I tell them I can do it in less than 30 seconds.
Now, if they trust me, they know that I'm telling the truth. But they look at this pile of nails
like this image that I'm going to put up right now. So, here they have these nails, they have this one
sticking up in a block of wood and they sit there and they study it. They start to pick up the nails
and try to get 1 or 2 to balance and they just sometimes they just give up. They go,
"That's impossible. It's impossible!" You can't believe how many times I've heard them say
that's impossible. Well, yeah. If you think it's impossible, it isn't impossible, okay? Whether
you think you can or can't, you're right but it is very possible. So, I let them struggle sometimes for
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 minutes and as they do this, I'll do this in restaurants with adults
and they'll fiddle around, sometimes people have tried this but they forgot how to do it.
So, I'll give them a hint. I'll put my hands up like this and they go, "That's a hint?" and then I'll say,
"Together we're better. Together we're better," and they think about it and they think about it
and then they start to play with the nails and start to have the nails work together,
so that in harmony one with another, they can hold one another up and balance.
Now, it takes usually another 10 or 15 minutes before they figure it out but sometimes they
want to give up and then they'll watch me because they go, "You said you could do this in 30 seconds?"
So, then look at this next image, I lay the 1 nail on the table and I alternate the nails with
the heads over that nail and I go takes me about 8 to 12 seconds to do that
and I have 1 nail left, okay, the 16th nail and I put it across the top, the other direction and
it holds those nails together so that with the heads they cannot fall through.
I simply slide it off the end of the table, pick it up and all the nails come down
like a little roof, all together like this and I set it on top of the center nail
and it balances and they go, "Oh my heavens." Now, if they figured it out, I give them a high five.
If they didn't but they saw me do it like this image that I'm going to show you right now, then
they go, "This is possible." They saw me do it in 30 seconds and then they all want to try it and do it.
These teenagers who thought they could not achieve anything, they jump up and down, they go, "I did it!"
I give them a high five. You cannot believe the staff, their counselors in the suicide center, say,
"We've been trying for 3 weeks to get them to have some self-esteem, that they can do something
you accomplished it in less than 30 minutes with some nails and a block of wood?" Yep. See,
when you show people that you can attain the best possible by seeking what looks like is impossible,
you empower them. You start with the simple. When we do this at grandpa's camp, my grandkids were
thrilled and now every time we have a project or an issue, they all go, "Grandpa, we're gonna
figure out how we can actually achieve this. It is possible," and they know they can do whatever
they set their mind to do with persistence. This is one of my favorite lessons that we teach.
So, let me show you how you can learn about this and other concepts in a book I want to gift you.
So, my most recent best-selling book, I was just released about a week ago from the recording
of this episode and it's actually addressed to business owners, entrepreneurs but we're all
involved in the busyness of life whether you're a father, mother, a husband or wife or a business
owner, you have customers, you have clients. If you're a parent, those are your children
and grandchildren. And so, this is called "The 10 Keys Transformation," how to exponentially elevate
your career profits and customer engagement. When you're a parent, who are your customers? Your kids
and grandkids. You want them to come to you instead of their peers for the real important questions in
life. Are you getting it? And you can simplify your life and do this in less than 60 months.
So, if you go to free10keysbook.com, you contribute a nominal amount towards the processing
and I'll send out this full color digital book and there's also options there to get the audio
book. It's in my voice and you can listen and learn, there's even a 10 keys master class where I do a
deep dive on every one of the 10 keys for an average of 90 minutes and it has helped
many, many people take their thinking to a whole new level and they have become
possibility thinkers. So, go to 10keysbook.com, claim your free copy here's to your brighter future.