I Can't Do It! Yet.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.” –Stephen R. Covey
In her article “I can’t do it. Yet.”, Kathryn Britton starts out by giving examples of using the word “yet” to place a positive spin on an otherwise very negative sentence: I can’t do it! Based on her article, it seems as though she is a firm believer of a quote I mention in The Prosperous Leader, “Genetics make up about 50% of who we are; the rest is determined by various factors like culture, education (nurture), and our choices”.
Most of the things we feel like we “can’t do” in life are simply things we have yet to learn – they are part of the “nurture” category – and our learning them depends on our choices. I explain further in Chapter 2, Nature vs. Nuture vs. Choice:
Viktor Frankl, best known for his great book Man’s Search for Meaning … explained that we all have the ability and freedom to choose how to act and how to react to whatever happens to us, and that we’re not just victims of circumstance.
“Research shows that mindsets are highly malleable”, says Britton. This tells me that we are not only able to manipulate our own circumstances, but we can also help shape the future generation. For more information, see Chapter 23 of The Prosperous Leader, Mentoring the Next Generation.
