The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Edison’

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Flinch by Julien Smith, Wisdom of Life: Hannah Arendt, Philosopher, Writer and Refugee from Adolph Hitler, and Director, intercultures, Stefan Meister.

Adventures in Learning

The Invisible Mentor blog is an educational one, so with that in mind, I’m inviting my readers on an adventure in learning, which is taking place all of 2012. You do not have to read 200 books – I read a lot for my consulting business – but I would like you to read one book a week, so at the end of 2012, you would have read 52 books. It’s a couple of weeks into the new year, so you have to play a little bit of catch-up.

Adventures in Learning: Books to Read in 2012 

Booked for Mentoring

The Flinch is a great book for mentoring because it teaches us to step outside our comfort zone, and it assures us that we are not our mistakes. Because we have failed before, doesn’t mean we will not succeed. Failure is feedback, inventor Thomas Edison said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

Booked for Mentoring: Review of The Flinch by Julien Smith 

Wisdom of Life Profile

A political theorist, Hannah Arendt’s most important and influential work was The Origins of Totalitarianism. In this seminal work, the first of its kind, Arendt emphasized the parallels between Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. In 1975, Arendt became the first woman, and the first U.S. citizen, to be awarded Denmark’s Sonning Prizefor contributions to European civilization.

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Wisdom of Life: Hannah Arendt, Philosopher, Writer and Refugee from Adolph Hitler 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures. One of the biggest messages that Meister gave us is to always remain curious, open, excited, authentic and modest. Here are Part One and Part Two of Stefan Meister’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related articles

• Wisdom of Life: Hannah Arendt, Philosopher, Writer and Refugee from Adolph Hitler (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures, Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures (theinvisiblementor.com)

The Flinch is a great book for mentoring because it teaches us to step outside our comfort zone, and it assures us that we are not our mistakes. Because we have failed before, doesn’t mean we will not succeed. Failure is feedback, inventor Thomas Edison said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

The Flinch by Julien Smith is one of the books in Seth Godin’s Domino Project, and is distributed for free to spread the message. I read it on my computer (I have the Kindle apps) and it takes under an hour to read. Smith includes homework assignments for the reader to do.

According to Smith, “This is a book about being a champion, and what it takes to get there. It’s about decisions, and how to know when you’re making the right ones. It’s about you: the current, present you; the potential, future you; and the one, single difference between them. It’s about an instinct – the flinch – and why mastering it is vital.”

The content of the book isn’t new, but it is presented in a different way, and it is easy to consume. This shouldn’t prevent you from reading The Flinch, because we often have to hear a message about nine times before it sticks. As I was reading the book, I was reminded of Martin Luther King’s quote, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase,” and Susan Jeffers’ awesome book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

There are many times in our life, when we flinch, and do not do the things that we know will make a major difference for us, and to make ourselves feel better, we work hard at justifying our actions, yet we wonder why we never have major breakthroughs in life. The Flinch is not about feeling no fear, it is about having the courage to move forward despite the fear. We avoid the perceived pain and flinch, instead of dealing with it.

I have heard that 92 percent of the times, what we worry about never occurs, yet we waste time worrying and not take action because of what we think may happen. But the funny thing is that most of the time what we worry about never occurs, and if it does, it seldom is as bad as we imagined. The author encourages us to take back our life, to take control and stop flinching.

If we stop flinching and just do the work, our future self will thank us. When you see children playing in a park, they are fearless, and when they fall down, they get up, dust themselves off and continue like nothing happened. The Flinch is about going back to that time, when we brushed ourselves off when we got knocked down. The formula for success in life is really about trial and error, experimenting until we find what works, and it helps us to understand the environment that we exist in.

In The Flinch, Julien Smith says, “…The lessons you learn best are the ones you get burned by. Without the scar, there is no evidence or strong memory…Firsthand knowledge, however, is visceral, painful, and necessary. It uses the conscious and the unconscious to process the lesson, and it uses all your senses. You fall down, your whole motor system is involved…”

A research report by The William Glasser Institute about how we learn backs up what Smith says, we learn:

• 10 percent of what we Read
• 20 percent of what we Hear
• 30 percent of what we See
• 50 percent of what we See and Hear
• 70 percent of what we Discuss with Others
• 80 percent of what we Experience Personally
• 95 percent of what we Teach to Others

 If you experience something, you are 80 percent likely to learn from it. Nothing beats trying and testing your limits besides teaching what your learned from the experience to another person. You constantly have to test yourself to see how far you can go.

Smith recommends that you do the opposite of your habits to build your tolerance to the flinch, and the power it holds over you. In a Seinfeld episode, George Louis Costanza discovered that when he did the opposite of what he usually did, he had great success. We are socialized to respond a certain way, which is seldom the way to blaze a new trail.

The Flinch by Julien Smith is a great reminder of how important it is to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zone. And the best part is he demonstrates how to do so in the book. Give The Flinch a read, all it will cost is an hour of your time. Even though the content isn’t new, we need a reminder. Download The Flinch today.

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Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson is an essay in the First Series that he wrote in 1841. His essays are freely available on the internet. When printed, the essay Self-Reliance is about 19 pages, size 14 font, but it is packed with a lot of wisdom. Even though this work is very short, to fully savour and digest what’s being said, require time for reflection. I took the time to read Self-Reliance three times to fully get what Emerson is saying.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a transcendental philosopher from the 19^th century. In this philosophical essay, Emerson shares some big ideas, and from what I have read, self-reliance is really about being your best self.

10 Great Ideas

1. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty: How many times have you had an amazing idea that you failed to act on then later discovered that someone else did? We’ve all been there, take action today.
2. Inmost in due time becomes the outmost: What do you spend your time focusing on? Do you focus on the things that will yield the greatest benefits in your life? What you spend your time on becomes your reality.
3. Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide…The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs: We live in a me-too culture where most conform. What would happen if you took the road less traveled and showed up as yourself? What would occur if you allowed yourself to be your extraordinary, authentic self? What would have happened if the pioneers and innovative thinkers of yesteryear, imitated each other, and suppressed their pioneering ways?
4. Trust thyself: You know what you need to do, so take action. It may be the wrong action, but you are not standing still. And if you didn’t take the correct action, that’s feedback, so try something else. Trust yourself to do the right thing. Thomas Edison found 10,000 ways that the light bulb didn’t work, but he trusted himself that sooner or later he would get it right.
5. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady….What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think…It is harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it: Do not be overly concerned about what other people think about you, trying to impress them. Live your life, and do things because they feed your soul. Live your life to the fullest.
6. A foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do…Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus and Luther… To be great is to be misunderstood: It’s okay to change your mind. As we grow and evolve, we think differently and become different people.
7. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Perfection doesn’t exist. We’ll make a lot of mistakes and take wrong turns along our journey. That’s okay, all we have to do is course correct and eventually we’ll reach our destination. As Lao-tzu says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”
8. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions…. in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet… He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already: To me, this means to be flexible. If something is not working try something else and do not worry about what others may think about you. Never put your life on hold, waiting for the perfect opportunity.
9. Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: People often regret the things they didn’t do. Take risks and live your life to the fullest.
10. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation… Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon? Every great man is a unique…. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much: Each of us has a purpose in this life, that one thing we were born to do, so live your purpose with enthusiasm. Do not try to live another’s life.

These are some of the great ideas in Emerson’s Self-Reliance. I highly recommend this essay, and set aside an hour and a half so that you can think about what you’re reading. Gene Waddell in “Using Rare Books to Inspire Learning Part 2: Drama – Travel” recommends that we also read History, (First Series – 1841) and Nature (Second Series – 1844) by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Emerson Essays

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Interviewee Name: Nadja Piatka

Company Name: Nadja Foods, Owner

Website: http://nadjafoods.com, http://www.ultimategirlsgetaway.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Nadja Piatka: I’m a food entrepreneur. My company is called Nadja Foods and I also do the women’s event called Ultimate Girls Getaway where I raise funds for women survivors of war. That’s what I call my hobby business but it keeps me a lot busier than a hobby should. I also do consulting for women who are starting or trying to get into the food business, or growing their food business from kitchen to retail and I also do motivational speaking. So that’s it in a nutshell.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Nadja Piatka:  When you have your own business or businesses, if you are not doing it you are thinking about it. And I do try to have some “me” time, but I also like to talk to my husband about my business though we sort of have a casual conversation about it. I do try to turn it off and do other things that take me away from it. But I’m very lucky because my husband is very supportive of my business so when I do have to vent, or I have a question here and there, he is willing to share in it, so there is an integration, especially when your business is such an important part of what you do.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Nadja Piatka:

1. I wish I had visited my parents more often. When I moved away, my parents lived in another city. A life lesson is that you get very busy and do not stop to visit your parents, and I would have liked to have visited them more.
2. As much as I love to take time for myself, I try to do more if I can. I am not very good at trying to get off the treadmill, and that’s something I’m trying very hard to do.
3. Forgiveness – because the alternative takes too much energy.
4. Aging, it’s inevitable so try and do it gracefully.
5. Don’t love anything that can’t love you back. I learned this when I lost my beautiful home and Mercedes Benz.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Nadja Piatka:  My favourite way is to cook because you cannot cook and worry at the same time.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Nadja Piatka:  I find that I get the best ideas when I’m exercising. If I’m on a treadmill or I’m walking or on the stair-master, my mind kind of zones out and those are the times I end up with some good ideas, or ideas that I’m going to use.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Nadja Piatka:  My favourite quote is by Thomas Edison and I love this quote. He said, “If you did all the things in life that you were truly capable of ,you would literally astound yourself.” And I really believe in that because sometimes people just don’t do everything they’re capable of. I think we have so much potential and there is so much that we are capable of. There is so much talent and there are so many people who have not realized their potential yet, and sometimes adversity brings that out. I think that for me that’s how I learned more about my potential was through adversity.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Nadja Piatka:  Freedom!

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Nadja Piatka:  One of my favourite philosophers is Goethe, and he has great clarity about success. “Just make that decision to go with your idea, define clearly what it is you’re going to do and the universe will follow through,” and it’s such an interesting thing that when you have this unshakeable belief, and you’re going to do what it is you have planned or destined to do. When you make that decision, this sense of urgency that you’re going to follow through on it, it’s almost like the universe falls into place. People come into your life, opportunities present themselves, that otherwise would not have been possible, and I really think that is truly the formula for success.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Nadja Piatka:  Because I didn’t have the resources to go the easier route, the first step was to start small in my kitchen. I would get up in the morning 4 o’clock and start baking and I would sell to little coffee shops in the city I lived in.

After I was on the Oprah show people contacted me because they had this product, this idea, and they would give it to friends and family for free and everybody loved it. But when you are giving things away for free you don’t have a neutral or unbiased focus group. You have to test the market with your product, and have people who are willing to buy it, and buying it more than once then you have a product that the market will sustain.

If you’re just depending on friends and family, if they like it, it really isn’t a true sense of what the market will do in this very competitive business that we’re in. And every business has to have the ability to rise above everyone else’s, so what I did was tested it in the field with smaller shops, and then grew from there. That is one of the ways that I would recommend to people is to find out if the market will sustain their products.

A lot of people have an idea, they have a product that they want to get out to the market and they spend an awful amount of money on the packaging. By the time you have something that you haven’t even sold, I see people have put hundreds of thousand of dollars into a product before they have even sold one dollar of it. There are ways to do that without such a huge investment with your product and I try to advise people that there are ways to do that. There are many steps to be successful in your field and one of the biggest steps is controlling and having a handle on how much money you’re spending. I’ve seen people run out of money before they made one sale.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Nadja Piatka:  Test out your products in the marketplace and don’t just rely on friends and family.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Nadja Piatka:

1. I would love to meet the Pope. I think it would be amazing to talk to him.
2. In the entertainment world, I wanted to meet Oprah Winfrey and I have met her so I’m very privileged to have done that. It was a great experience.
3. I would love to meet my grandparents. I have heard wonderful stories about them, so they are people who I’d love to meet.
4. I would also love to meet Maya Angelou, Warren Buffet, and Matt Lauer.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Nadja Piatka:  The book that really impacted my life was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That’s a book that was written decades ago, an old, old book. The theories, the stories, the philosophies, the lessons in there work today just as they did many years ago. It’s not a very big book, but it was a great book to read, and it is one of favourites.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

Nadja Piatka:

1. The Bible.
2. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra.
3. The Book of Poems by Taras Shevchenko.
4. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.
5. The Great Gatsby by Scott F Fitzgerald.

Avil Beckford: What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Nadja Piatka: The movie would be a comedy, okay. If I’m going to be on a deserted island by myself I would like to laugh, and it would probably be a Lucille Ball movie because I think she was hysterical, especially the one where she is eating chocolate in the chocolate factory. It’s food related, she is on an assembly line making chocolate and she ends up having to eat most of them. For the music CD, It would be any romantic CD, by Steve Tyrell, a romantic singer, great voice and since it’s a romantic CD I hope that my husband would be with me on this deserted island, but since I’m stranded I would have to be thinking about him I guess.

I Love Lucy – The Candy Wrapping Job

If you cannot view I Love Lucy – The Candy Wrapping Job YouTube video, please click here.

If you cannot view Steve Tyrell’s YouTube video, please click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Nadja Piatka: There are so many things that it is so hard to put my finger on any one thing. And I thought about this and it was funny it was almost like a flood of thoughts. What excites me is the possibility of being a grandparent. I can’t wait for that to happen. I don’t thing it’s going to happen soon. What excites me is we adopted a rescue kitten from the SPCA at Christmas, and I love animals, and the thought of having one purring in my lap now is such a comfort that I would hate to miss out on having that privilege. What excites me is a good meal and a bottle of wine. What excites me is a beautiful, sunny day where I can be outside. So there are just so many things. I think after being diagnosed with leukemia and thinking about our mortality, it gave me such an appreciation that I get excited easily about everything.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Nadja Piatka:  Prayer.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Nadja Piatka:  I would hate to waste it on one wish. And this is going to be one of those conventional, traditional answer, but it would be I would wish for good health for myself and my family.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Nadja Piatka:  I’m happy when my kids are happy!

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Think and Grow Rich

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

A New Earth

The Great Gatsby

Here are the tweets that I think Thomas Edison would blog about on Twitter:

@Edison I improved on a 50-year old idea to produce a light bulb that worked. What can u improve upon today?

@Edison I had very little formal education, so lack of formal education is no excuse for failure. Persistence pay

@Edison Held 1,093 patents for different inventions, many of which influenced your life

@Edison Don’t be mesmerized with the idea of success. I’ve had some whopping failures, but I’d like 2 think I failed forward 2 success

@Edison As a child I consumed books: The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, History of The World, and  The Anatomy of Melancholy

@Edison I’ve been partially deaf since childhood, but I didn’t let that stop me from contributing to the world

@Edison Home schooled by my mom after being kicked out of school. She used 2 b a teacher, & her belief in me, made me believe in myself

@Edison Mentors r key. As a teenager, an inventor allowed me 2 work w/ him in his basement. Started my work in electrical telegraphy there

@Edison Inventors & innovators often build on the work of others. Look at what’s been done b4 and try to perfect it

@Edison I was married twice and had six children

Below is a 22-minute Google video on Edison

Source:

The Inventions of Thomas Edison

The Biography of Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison Biography

Thomas Edison   Biography / Autobiography / Memoir Resources

Photo Credit: Public Domain via Wikipedia (Edison as a youth)