FSS Spotlight: It’s Right Underneath Your Fingers

When comedian and actor Jamie Foxx first met with Ray Charles, Jamie was sitting on a piano bench alongside his childhood hero, preparing for his role in the movie "Ray." It would earn him an Academy Award. They were playing the blues, Ray laying down a riff, Jamie answering with one of his own. Then the music legend started to play something much more difficult, and Jamie froze. Ray Charles broke the silence by saying, "It's right underneath your fingers, baby. That's all you have to understand, everything is right underneath your fingers."

That's now the metaphor Jamie uses for his life. He knows he has all the tools he needs "right underneath his fingers."

It's a natural reaction to be timid about trying new things for fear of making a fool of yourself. We're afraid of exposing our weaknesses for all to see. I'm here today to tell you, you would be a bigger fool not to try.

A psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania proved that optimists are more successful than equally talented pessimists in business, education, sports and politics. Based on his research, Metropolitan Life, the insurance and financial services corporation, developed a test to distinguish between the optimists and pessimists when hiring sales people. The results of that experiment were phenomenal! The optimists outsold the pessimists by 20 percent the first year. During the second year, the difference jumped to 50 percent. Find me a sales person - or company - that wouldn't beg for those numbers. I know we would find office space for those optimists at Mackay Envelope Company!

The right attitude coupled with the courage to reach for opportunity is the defining factor for success. For example, Patrick O'Malley started as a truck driver, but ended his career as chairman of the Canteen Company. His philosophy: "I think it is absolutely essential that you have PMA (positive mental attitude) in every aspect of life and that you start early."

I would add this to Mr. O'Malley's advice: It's never too late to start early. Don't get discouraged just because you haven't practiced what he's preaching until now. If you are still breathing air and taking nourishment, now is a fine time to improve your attitude and look for - or create - opportunities.

Life is a series of opportunities. The often-neglected fact of life is that opportunities multiply as you take advantage of them. They shrivel up and die if you ignore them. I don't have much of a green thumb, but I do know that a rosebush that you nourish and encourage will provide bouquets. Neglect it and all you have left is thorns. Which do you want underneath your fingers?

If finding opportunities sounds like hard work, let me reassure you: it is. Someone once told me life is hard. I say, compared to what?

We live in a time when everything, quite literally, is underneath our fingers. The internet presents opportunities like no other generation has had. The explosion of internet businesses, which can expand our customer base to the entire globe, is unparalleled in the history of business development. Online classes have redefined learning. Google is a common verb now, putting information on every imaginable topic underneath our fingers. I am continually amazed at the preponderance of facts and figures that just a few years ago took a team of researchers days or weeks to uncover. If you are still afraid to tap this amazing resource, take a class or find a teenager to coach you.

I am an eternal optimist. I firmly believe that there is virtually nothing that we can't do if we set our minds to it. It helps to be realistic - I know I am never going to pitch in the World Series, but I can be a player/manager of a top-notch company. I took a big gamble getting my company off the ground, but I've never looked back.

Ray Charles started his life dirt poor and lost his eyesight as a child. If he could adopt the attitude that everything is "right underneath your fingers," there is really no excuse for the rest of us. We who have so few challenges to overcome should not be any less optimistic.

John Gardner, who helped engineer Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," summed it up well: "We need to believe in ourselves, but not to believe that life is easy."

By Harvey Mackay

Mackay's Moral: Every accomplishment begins with the decision to try.