Essentials: JobHunt Lesson 6: Bees Can't Fly and You Can't Work?

Lesson 6: Bees Can't Fly, You Can't Work and Other Lies

Yup, for years there was a theory that the little bug, bees, could not possibly fly. Scientists and other really-smart-people said that these round, tubby creatures with itty-bitty wings can't physically or aerodynamically fly.  

They do, the story goes, because nobody told them they can't.  If somehow we would get word to the bees that they cannot possibly fly and that they should just stop trying, then millions of bees would suddenly fall out of the sky never to fly again. 

What Bees teach you in your job hunt...

In the 1990’s, scientists used really...slow...motion...film to show that bees actually had adapted a way of beating their wings that was unique – not up and down but in a circular motion that made what had been thought impossible to be possible. 

Let us Talk about YOU: 

Do you ever hear that there are things you can't do because you are too short, fat, old, dumb, bald, poor or just too (fill-in-the-blank)??  Others say the same sad things over & over to you or worse yet, maybe you are saying them to yourself.  

Repeating these lies about who you are and what you are capable of can limit you so that you may never “fly” to where you are capable of. 

Back to my original point – if bees didn’t fly, 

think of the flowers that would never get pollinated, 

the honey that would never be made – 

we are all better off because bees do not worry about 

what they “cannot” do and they have adapted a new way 

because they thought they CAN. 

How about you?  The world would be a sadder place if you do not take the steps to be more than ‘they’ (or you) may think you can become.  

Speaking Frankly:

My high school friend Frank had a problem.  He wanted a career, but his guidance counselor kept saying no.  

Frank just had to aim lower.  Don't aim high, his counselor said  - it would only frustrate him to get rejected.  Avoid the frustration he was told and just aim lower. Frank told me he had one thing in his heart, but the counselor must know something he didn’t know, the counselor was the expert for crying out loud.  

But Frank followed his dream instead.

It had been years since I had seen Frank when we met last year.  He was the same affable guy I knew growing up and he was home on leave from the Navy.  You see his title is now Admiral Frank.  He got there by listening to the one expert about Frank who would always be with him, 

Frank himself.   

Making it Work:

1. What are 3 stories you know of where “everyone” thought something would happen and it did not?  It does not matter where the story comes from – politics, sports, weather.   Now write them down.  

2. What are three stories you have heard about other people (like family members, Babe Ruth, others?) who were told they had limits but they went on to success anyway.  Write them down, too. 

3. What are three things you have heard about your limits?  

Write down 3 supposed limits – and take a long look at them.  List ways you can prove them wrong through hard work or, like the bees adapting to get things done another way.  

Through the Tool Kit Series together we will have fun proving them wrong.  

Please remember something I tell others at the groups I run:  

“Every great idea, every dream that ever was started with 

someone dreaming it and a thousand other people saying 

‘Are you crazy?’”  

Prove them wrong and Keep On Dreaming.

Other Lessons: 

Lessons from the Babe:  Lesson 2.

Essential: Where do you put YOUR but?  Lesson 3