Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition (28 page)

I took an empty seat in the back of the room and watched. All

the students were working on a task, filling a sheet of notebook paper with thoughts and ideas. The 10-year-old student closest to me was filling her page with “I Can’ts.”

“I can’t kick the soccer ball past second base.”

“I can’t do long division with more than three numerals.”

“I can’t get Debbie to like me.”

Her page was half full and she showed no signs of letting up. She worked on with determination and persistence.

I walked down the row glancing at students’ papers. Everyone was writing sentences, describing things they couldn’t do.

“I can’t do 10 push-ups.”

“I can’t hit one over the left-field fence.”

“I can’t eat only one cookie.”

By this time, the activity engaged my curiosity, so I decided to check with the teacher to see what was going on. As I approached her, I noticed that she too was busy writing. I felt it best not to interrupt.

“I can’t get John’s mother to come in for a teacher conference.”

“I can’t get my daughter to put gas in the car.”

“I can’t get Alan to use words instead of fists.”

Thwarted in my efforts to determine why students and teacher were dwelling on the negative instead of writing the more positive “I Can” statements, I returned to my seat and continued my observations. Students wrote for another 10 minutes. Most filled their page. Some started another.

“Finish the one you’re on and don’t start a new one,” were the instructions Donna used to signal the end of the activity. Students were then instructed to fold their papers in half and bring them to the front. When students reached the teacher’s desk, they placed their “I Can’t” statements into an empty shoebox.

When all of the student papers were collected, Donna added hers. She put the lid on the box, tucked it under her arm and headed out the door and down the hall. Students followed the teacher. I followed the students.

Halfway down the hall the procession stopped. Donna entered the custodian’s room, rummaged around and came out with a shovel.

Shovel in one hand, shoebox in the other, Donna marched the students out of the school to the farthest corner of the playground. There they began to dig.

They were going to bury their “I Can’ts”! The digging took over 10 minutes because most of the fourth-graders wanted a turn. When the hole approached three-feet deep, the digging ended. The box of “I Can’ts” was placed in position at the bottom of the hole and quickly covered with dirt.

Thirty-one 10-and 11-year-olds stood around the freshly dug gravesite. Each had at least one page full of “I Can’ts” in the shoebox, four feet under. So did their teacher.

At this point Donna announced, “Boys and girls, please join hands and bow your heads.” The students complied. They quickly formed a circle around the grave, creating a bond with their hands. They lowered their heads and waited. Donna delivered the eulogy.

“Friends, we gather today to honor the memory of ‘I Can’t.’ While he was with us on earth, he touched the lives of everyone, some more than others. His name, unfortunately, has been spoken in every public building — schools, city halls, state capitols and yes, even The White House.

“We have provided ‘I Can’t’ with a final resting place and a headstone that contains his epitaph. He is survived by his brothers and sister, ‘I Can’, ‘I Will’ and ‘I’m Going to Right Away.’ They are not as well known as their famous relative and are certainly not as strong and powerful yet.

“Perhaps some day, with your help, they will make an even bigger mark on the world.

“May ‘I Can’t’ rest in peace and may everyone present pick up their lives and move forward in his absence. Amen.” As I listened to the eulogy I realized that these students would never forget this day. The activity was symbolic, a metaphor for life. It was a right-brain experience that would stick in the unconscious and conscious mind forever. Writing “I Can’ts,” burying them and hearing the eulogy. That was a major effort on the part of this teacher. And she wasn’t done yet. At the conclusion of the eulogy she turned the students around, marched them back into the classroom and held a wake.

They celebrated the passing of “I Can’t” with cookies, popcorn and fruit juices. As part of the celebration, Donna cut out a large tombstone from butcher paper. She wrote the words “I Can’t” at the top and put RIP in the middle. The date was added at the bottom.

The paper tombstone hung in Donna’s classroom for the remainder of the year. On those rare occasions when a student forgot and said, “I Can’t,” Donna simply pointed to the RIP sign. The student then remembered that “I Can’t” was dead and chose to rephrase the statement.

I wasn’t one of Donna’s students. She was one of mine. Yet that day I learned an enduring lesson from her.

Now, years later, whenever I hear the phrase, “I Can’t,” I see images of that fourth-grade funeral. Like the students, I remember that “I Can’t” is dead.

~Chick Moorman

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

~Norman Vincent Peale

I
was doing a weekend seminar at the Deerhurst Lodge, north of Toronto. On Friday night a tornado swept through a town north of us called Barrie, killing several people and doing millions of dollars worth of damage. Sunday night, as I was coming home, I stopped the car when I got to Barrie. I got out on the side of the highway and looked around. It was a mess. Everywhere I looked there were smashed houses and cars turned upside down.

That same night Bob Templeton was driving down the same highway. He stopped to look at the disaster just as I had, only his thoughts were different than my own. Bob was the vice president of Telemedia Communications, which owns a string of radio stations in Ontario and Quebec. He thought there must be something he could do for those people with the radio stations his company had.

The following night I was doing another seminar in Toronto. Bob Templeton and Bob Johnson, another vice president from Telemedia, came in and stood in the back of the room. They shared their conviction that there had to be something they could do for the people in Barrie. After the seminar we went back to Bob’s office. He was now committed to the idea of helping the people who had been caught in the tornado.

The following Friday he called all the executives at Telemedia

into his office. At the top of a flip chart he wrote three 3s. He said to his executives “How would you like to raise 3 million dollars 3 days from now in just 3 hours and give the money to the people in Barrie?” There was nothing but silence in the room.

Finally someone said, “Templeton, you’re crazy. There is no way we could do that.”

Bob said, “Wait a minute. I didn’t ask you if we
could
or even if we
should.
I just asked you if you’d
like
to.”

They all said, “Sure, we’d like to.” He then drew a large T underneath the 333. On one side he wrote, “Why we can’t.” On the other side he wrote, “How we can.”

“I’m going to put a big X on the ‘Why we can’t side.’ We’re not going to spend any time on the ideas of why we can’t. That’s of no value. On the other side we’re going to write down every idea that we can come up with on how we can. We’re not going to leave the room until we figure it out.” There was silence again.

Finally, someone said, “We could do a radio show across Canada.”

Bob said, “That’s a great idea,” and wrote it down.

Before he had it written, someone said, “You can’t do a radio show across Canada. We don’t have radio stations across Canada.” That was a pretty valid objection. They only had stations in Ontario and Quebec.

Templeton replied, “That’s why we can. That stays.” But this was a really strong objection because radio stations are very competitive. They usually don’t work together and to get them to do so would be virtually impossible according to the standard way of thinking.

All of a sudden someone suggested, “You could get Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson, the biggest names in Canadian broadcasting, to anchor the show.” (That would be like getting Tom Brokaw and Sam Donaldson to anchor the show. They are anchors on national TV. They are not going to go on radio.) At that point it was absolutely amazing how fast and furious the creative ideas began to flow.

That was on a Friday. The following Tuesday they had a radiothon. They had 50 radio stations all across the country that agreed to broadcast it. It didn’t matter who got the credit as long as the people in Barrie got the money. Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson anchored the show and they succeeded in raising 3 million dollars in 3 hours within 3 business days!

You see you can do anything if you put your focus on how to do it rather than on why you can’t.

~Bob Proctor

No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.

~H.E. Luccock

I
remember one Thanksgiving when our family had no money and no food, and someone came knocking on our door. A man was standing there with a huge box of food, a giant turkey and even some pans to cook it in. I couldn’t believe it. My dad demanded, “Who are you? Where are you from?”