Principle 26: The Forest Gump Principle
Most of us have seen the Movie Forest Gump, staring Tom Hanks. The interesting thing about Forest was that even though he was retarded he succeeded in everything he set his mind to do. He was much more successful than many who we consider to be near genius level.
This idea is not fiction for I have seen this at play in real life many times. I have worked for some time as a salesman calling on business in 20 different states. I have called upon many thousands of business owners and before I understood the Forest Gump Principle I was mystified over the fact that many successful business people didn’t seem very bright. On the other hand, many who did seem intelligent were not very successful.
Now many who were successful were intelligent, but this did not seem to be the reason for their success. I’m sure it helped, but intelligence did not explain the success of the many successful Forest Gumps that I met in my work.
The answer to the riddle is revealed in studying Forest himself. You’ll notice in the movie that when he set his mind to do something he directed all his energy and thought in one direction. Like a magnifying glass he focused what he had into one small endeavor that caused it to succeed.
Many more intelligent people let their intelligence get in the way. How is this? Because they get so many ideas that their focus is diverted in many directions. This means that the simple Forest Gump idea gets more energy than any single idea of the intelligent dreamer.
If you are a dreamer, such as I, then learn the Forest Gump principle and cease destroying your dreams through the shotgun approach. Pick one thing and apply yourself like Forest Gump.
Principle 27: As A Man Thinketh In His Heart, So Is He.
This quotation, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” from the Bible represents a true principle that encapsulates five previous principles.
- Judgment and/or Discernment: One must make a judgment as to the type of person he wants to be.
- The Two Paths: He must be willing to take the path least traveled by.
- Energy Follows Thought: He must put a lot of thought into who he is becoming.
- The Satellite Principle: After he builds character the correct choices become easy.
- The Forest Gump Principle: Don’t try to be all things to all people. One must recognize his limitations and do what he can, one step at a time to progress.
The question the seeker must ask to fully understand this principle is, what is the difference between thinking in your brain and in your heart? Do we really think in our hearts or is this merely symbolic wording?
The answer is it is not just a symbolic meaning but there is a difference between brain thought and thinking from the heart. A thought from the brain comes from just one part of your being, but if it is from the heart the whole thinking and feeling makeup is involved.
Let me give an example. A student sits in a boring history class and learns about tyrannies of the past. He thinks enough about the data with his mind to be able to get through the class and pass his tests. The human suffering, the slavery and lack of freedom mean little to him as he does not think about them with understanding from the heart.
Let’s take another person, a Russian named Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He grew up with a desire to be able to write and speak anything he pleased but the Soviet system put an end to that and threw him in prison merely for the contents of a letter he wrote to a friend. For many years he suffered abuses in his freedom through the Soviet tyranny including an attempt on his life by the KGB by poisoning that left him deathly ill for a time. When he wrote the book “The Gulag Archipelago” he expressed more than theoretical data from his thinking mind but wrote with his whole soul in the hope that readers would understand that a loss of freedom could happen to any society that does not value free expression with all their hearts.
People who are successful are those who not only set a goal as a good idea, but one that can be embraced by the whole being and pursued with passion because understanding is involved.
Understanding is the key word here. When one thinks with the heart he understands the implications of that which is contemplated.
“If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we’d be too simple to understand it.”
— Emerson Pugh
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