The-Slight-Edge

82 The Slight Edge
me about these “dimmers.” She said, “Jeffrey, here is how I see it. There is one
born every minute, and the sad thing is most of them live.”
What Carol gave me was a philosophy, an attitude, and she basically said,
you’re not going to change how some people are. Some people are just cuckoo, and
there is just no getting around it. But here is what you need to ask yourself. Am I
going to let these people frame how I feel about myself? Because I’ll tell you what
folks, the “cuckoos” are not going away. And they are going to do everything in
their power to make you join them in their craziness. Don’t listen to them.
How to Inoculate Yourself from the Cuckoos
One of my all-time favorite books is Think and Grow Rich, the timeless classic
written by Napoleon Hill. He was commissioned to write the book by Andrew
Carnegie, the wealthy steel magnate and one of the most famous philanthropists
of all time. Hill traveled the globe to interview the world’s 500 most important
people of his era. His task was to break down the characteristics they have most
in common and write a book about it.
One of the traits they had in common was they believed you needed to
create a mastermind group of like-minded people who see things the way you
do in order to inoculate yourself from the cuckoos (the original text doesn’t say
“cuckoos,” but I’m pretty sure Hill would have agreed with the name).
Now what does this finding tell us? Remember, these were some of the
smartest people in the world at the time yet they built a system to inoculate
themselves from the masses of negativity. My opinion is if you do the opposite
of what the majority does, nine times out of ten you’re going to be right. That’s
why Arthur Schopenhauer, the great German philosopher and businessman,
hundreds of years ago said “Every truth passes through three stages before it
is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third
it is regarded as self-evident.” To put it simply, just because you encounter
opposition from “dimmers” and are ridiculed for stepping out of your comfort
zone by putting out positive ideas and solutions, you cannot allow these people
to frame what you know to be true.
It takes a lot of guts, faith, perseverance and a healthy dose of positive
attitude to go through the public ridicule and opposition of people telling you
your ideas are worthless.
Embrace the Funk
It’s hard to stay positive with so much negativity out there in the world
today. And no matter how you try to inoculate yourself from the “cuckoos,” no