Positivity from Rush Limbaugh

Some of the transcript from Rush Limbaugh's radio show today:

As I say, you know, pessimism and doom and gloom and negativism, defeatism are easy. We can all do it.  It doesn't take any effort.  Most people are inclined to pessimism. Most people are inclined to say they can't do something.  That's why we all need somebody. We all need a mentor. We all need somebody to show us or to inspire us or do something to tell us that we're all better than we think we are. 

It's just the same old saw, folks.  Why is it that people who write persuasive books on positive thinking are millionaires, and you can't find a book in the library on how to fail? It's because everybody knows how to do that.  But positive thinking and success, these are things that people think take an applied effort, and they'll go out and buy a book to learn how to do it, because it's perceived to be uncommon. 

One of my quests here is to say, "No, it's not that uncommon.  You have it in you! You have it in you to be better than you think you are.  You have it in you to accomplish more than you think you can.  You have it in you to be better than you think you are.  You have it in you to do more than you think you can do."  It's sometimes just that people don't have the ability to tap into that themselves and need somebody else to show them.

By pushing them, pushing them beyond their comfort level or their self-imposed limits.  Remember the story about Merrill Lynch?  I knew a guy that used to be work at Merrill Lynch.  This is back in the 1980s, and he told me that when they were interviewing for job openings, one of the questions they would ask every applicant was the amount of money they hoped to make many. 

If the applicant gave a number, they were very close to being disqualified, even if the number was $10 million. "Well, yeah, someday I want to earn $5 million." No matter what the number, if they gave a number, the likelihood is that they were going to be passed over and the reason why is because they had discovered human nature studies that when that number was reached, the comfort level had arrived and that's when people stopped working. 

So people that knew this about Merrill Lynch were advising future applicants, "Do not ever answer, 'How much money do you hope to earn here?'  Don't answer it.  Just say as much as you can.  Just say, 'The sky's the limit.'  If you give 'em a number, they're gonna think when you reach that number you'll stop working because you've reached your comfort level."

Well, we all have a comfort level, and no matter what it is, how hard we want to work, how hard we want to play, how many hours a day we want to work, we all have a comfort level, and the idea is to be pushed beyond that.  That's what good teachers do.  But we've gotten to the point now where teachers coddle rather than push, because we think that young kids can't handle being pushed.

"No, no, no, no! Don't be too hard on them." It's wrong. It's back ass-wards.  People, everybody needs to be pushed. Everybody needs to be pushed beyond what they think they can do -- physically, mentally, what have you. It's how you learn how good you are.