Читать книгу Living Big - Пэм Гроут - Страница 14

NEVER DOUBT THAT A SMALL GROUP OF COMMITTED CITIZENS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. INDEED, IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT EVER HAS.

—Margaret Mead

People who want to paint study Picasso. People who want to play piano study Mozart. Those of us who want to live big, well, we're going to study PLBs (People Who Live Big).

Throughout history, there have been thousands of people who have summoned the courage to follow a personal vision. People like Mary Colter, a revolutionary architect who began her career in 1902, eighteen years before women had even received the right to vote. People like Osseola McCarty, a Mississippi washerwoman, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for scholarships for African American kids who might otherwise not have gone to college. People like Jimmie Davis, who in his short 101 years, was governor of Louisiana and a successful country and western songwriter. People like C. J. Walker, who became the country's first female millionaire by making and selling hair products.

To live big is to join a powerful brotherhood. It's to come face to face with Joan of Arc, Michael Jordan, Eric Clapton. It's to take on the cloak of Shakespeare, Rumi, and Oprah Winfrey, who said, “I always knew I was a hit record just waiting to happen.” It's to join a proud circle with many members from all places and times.

The PLBs you'll find in this book are all living today. They're people I've run across in my work as a journalist. Some of them I know personally. Some of them I've profiled for magazines. Some of them I've just followed because they inspire me to “make my life extraordinary.”

All of them are excellent models of what is possible. Scientists know the importance of role models in learning and behavior. A semanticist named Alfred Korzybski called this unique ability to learn from others “time-binding.” The knowledge gained by others binds us all together; if one person can do it, the rest of us can, too.

You've probably heard of the Hundredth Monkey Theory. It seems that monkeys on a remote island mastered a new method of getting bananas down from trees. Before long, monkeys on other islands began retrieving bananas the same way, even though they'd had no physical contact with the monkeys who'd first mastered the technique. The theory is that if enough members of a group (in this instance, a hundred monkeys) acquire a new piece of knowledge or a new skill, it will pass into the collective unconscious and all members will acquire it.

When one of us turns up the voltage, all of us see more clearly.

Those who can tap quickly into the knowledge of others and who can acquire new skills, attitudes, and behaviors have a critical advantage in life. Martin Luther King, Jr., studied the life of Gandhi. Gandhi took many of his great ideas from Tolstoy. Robert E. Lee patterned himself after George Washington. The Wright Brothers received their inspiration while reading about a French inventor. John Wooden, former basketball coach for UCLA, says Ward “Piggy” Lambert of Purdue University taught him everything he knew. Einstein learned from Newton, and Newton learned from Galileo. It goes on and on.

We are all connected. Maybe your decision to live big will be the one decision that tips the scales. Maybe you're the hundredth monkey.