What is initiative? Writer
Cameron C. Taylor, illustrates it brilliantly - “It is doing the right thing
without being told. But next to doing the thing without being told is to do it
when you are told once.. but their pay is not always in proportion. Next there
are people who never do a thing until they are told twice; such get no honors
and small pay. Next, there are those who do the right thing only when necessity
kicks them from behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a
pittance for pay… Then still lower down in the scale than this, we have the
fellow who will not do the right thing even when someone goes along to show him
how and stays to see that he does it; he is always out of a job. To which class
do you belong?”
Look around, seek the achievers,
hear their stories, you will always find them replete with instances of
initiatives. The lives of the Wright brothers provide many wonderful examples
of taking the initiative. William J. Tate, a man who helped the Wright brothers
in assembling the Wright’s first glider in North Carolina, wrote of the early
flights, “the mental attitude of the natives toward the Wrights was that they were
a simple pair of harmless cranks that were wasting their time at a fool attempt
to do something that was impossible. The chief argument against their success
could be heard at the stores and post office, and ran something like this: “God
didn’t intend man to fly. If He did, He would have given him a set of wings on
his shoulders.” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/unlikely-inventors.html)
In 1899, they began their flight
experiments. At this time the Wright brothers were running a bicycle repair and
sales shop. The revenues from this company supported their living expenses and
funded the development of the airplane. During the next four years, the Wright
brothers performed thousands of tests and experiments, and flights. In 1901,
they created the world’s first wind tunnel and tested more than 200 different
wing shapes, and just in the months of September and October of 1902 they made
over 700 glides. On December 17, 1903, Orville, Age 32, and Wilber, age 36,
achieved their dream of a controlled powered flight. The flight covered a distance
of 120 feet in 12 seconds – about half the length of a 747 jumbo jet. This
flight was the beginning of modern aviation.
Just think about this, none of
this would have been possible if these two young men stayed afraid of the ghosts
of the mind, didn’t break free from fear of rejection and failure and ridicule.
Running a cycle repair shop and thinking of inventing the airplane, can there
be more audacious thinking?
God did not give men wings upon
their shoulders, but He did give them minds and hands to create. It took faith,
study, courage, work, and persistence to achieve the miracle of flight. Two men
with a dream to fly created wings for us all – the wings God intended for man.
An implemented average idea is
thousand times better than an unimplemented great idea. Just knowing the way won’t
take you there, you got to come out of your bed, put on your shoes and walk, the
action, the will to break free from the status quo, to destroy the inertia
holding you from taking initiative, differentiates between an achiever and a
loser. You don’t need to leap or jump long distance, even small steps would do,
but then steps there should be. Come on, hold on to your dream and goal, take
out the map, tie your shoes and walk.
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