We Can Do It!

So, it took me most of the morning getting ready and humming this one for me to realize that it was stuck in my head. I've never actually seen The Producers, but the music for it pops up on my Pandora station dedicated to Broadway and Glee cast recordings (don't hate). This morning, "We Can Do It" was on repeat in my internal CD player.
As best I understand it, unscrupulous Max is trying to convince doubting Leo to join him in his plan to rip off investors and run off to Rio with a fortune. The positions that the two take are really interesting to me. Max sings:

What did Lewis say to Clark
When everything looked bleak?
What did Sir Edmund say to Tenzing
As they struggled toward Everest's peak?
What did Washington say to his troops
As they crossed the Delaware
I'm sure you're well aware...

We can do it, we can do it
We can do it, me and you
We can do it, we can do it
We can make our dreams come true
Everything you've ever wanted
Is just waiting to be had


To me, it is such a beautifully simple philosophy. In the instances that Max lists, the challenges which faced the characters were great- Lewis and Clark were exploring the West in a manner which had never before been done without a sure knowledge that they would make it back. Tenzing and Edmund were the first two to reach the top of Mount Everest (talk about blazing a trail!) and Washington was leading a rag-tag group in what he really hoped was a surprise attack. Also, of note is the fact that none of them accomplished these great feats alone. Each of them had to motivate at least one traveling companion, if not more. Because of that ability to motivate (We can do it!) truly great things were accomplished.

As Henry Ford is quoted as saying, "Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."
That segues nicely into Leo's response:

What do I say, what do I say
Here's what I say to you, sir...
I can't do it, I can't do it
I can't do it, that's not me
I'm a loser, I'm a coward
I'm a chicken, don't you see?

Poor Leo, completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, uttered the self-fulfilling prognosis "I'm a loser, I'm a coward, I'm a chicken." I don't want it to seem like I'm condoning extortion or fraud, but the truth of the matter is, confidence sells, and cowardice smells. The fact that Max approached the idea with success already in mind made his chances to succeed infinitely better than Leo, who defeated himself before he ever began.
There is already so much negativity in the world (it seems like the default setting is often set to pessimist- see Amanda's post for some thoughts on that) that it would seem all to easy to simply give up and give in to the voices telling you

GIVE UP! YOU CAN'T!

That's where I'm here to tell you, "yes, you can!" At work, someone wrote a quote up on the board by Lord Kelvin (Dude is pretty cool- he pretty much laid the groundwork for most of Chemical Engineering, and he was super opinionated. Check out some of his quotes). Basically, someone described to him the fancy new way that people had come up with that made it so that you could see through solid objects. After hearing them out, Kelvin is reported to have said "X-rays will prove to be a hoax".
This was a legitimate scientist, the first EVER to have been elevated to the House of Lords based on his science, and he was shooting down an idea. Let me just say, when I was 8 and fell and cracked one of the bones in my leg, I was grateful that x-rays weren't shelved and forgotten a hundred years ago.

So is the message to exude confidence in everything all the time?


Nope.

Another story:
When I was younger, I was the go-to sibling for answers. My brothers and sisters would generally come to me if they had a question about how volcanoes work or what a certain composer had done, etc. I was a nerdy kid (who am I kidding, I still am!) and so I did have a lot of the answers (most of the time thanks to Ms. Frizzle and Bill Nye). I definitely let that go to my head, and eventually it got to the point that I had an answer for everything. Even when I didn't know the actual answer, I figured I could make my best guess, and that would work. My siblings couldn't tell the difference between me actually knowing an answer and making it up, so it all worked out...
Until one day the deception failed. Sarah asked me a question, and I gave an answer. She asked a follow-up question, and I realized I was dead wrong. I changed my answer, hoping she wouldn't notice. Not only did she notice, but she put two and two together and realized I'd been doing that for a while. Worse than no longer being a "fount of knowledge", I felt awful that I'd lost her trust. I've still got a little (ok, a lot) of know-it-all confidence in me, but I try to remain conscious of the fact that I, in fact, don't know it all.

How do you balance a winning, motivating attitude with the ability to stay down to earth and real?

That struggle for balance? Yeah, that's why I love life :)
Moral of the story, "With great power comes great responsibility."