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Less than two weeks before the last day of school, John Melbourne stopped by Duncan Elementary in the evening after the children had gone home. He found Jessie in the halls, and they walked into Jessie's little janitor's "office", closing the door behind them.
"In two weeks," John said, "the single most important part of Jennifer's life ends, perhaps forever. It's going to be rough for her, especially with the added pressure of this trial."
"I know," Jessie said. "I feel so rotten about all this. How do you think she's going to be?"
"I don't know. Teaching was everything to her."
"Do you ever think about just getting away from all this -- just you and her?" Jessie asked.
"I may not have much of a choice."
"What do you mean, John?"
"We'll have to see what happens in the trial. I'm just an alien, you know. If I'm convicted of a felony, they'll take away my green card."
Neither Jessie nor Angie ever thought about that. Jessie was quiet and sad.
"That's why I'm looking toward you and Angie to be there for her if I'm not. I know you will be; I just wanted you to know I'm not a citizen. I don't know what could happen. I haven't told Jenny yet; she's just got too much to think about, so I probably won't say anything. I can't change my status now."
"I understand," Jessie said, sadly. He stood up and shook John's hand. "If you get through this trial OK, I hope we get to know each other a lot more."
"We will, Jessie," John said, putting his free hand on Jessie's shoulder.
*
The school days were counting down. The days were warm and long. The beginning of Summer was a beautiful time of year in upstate New York. Just four days to go, and Miss Annabelle took her class on an all-day picnic/hiking/fishing expedition in the country. Many years later, this outing would still be a lasting memory in all twelve students and in Miss Annabelle herself, not because of any one outstanding event that day, but because of the overall quality of feelings these 13 people shared. This happy feeling together is how life should always be, yet they inherently sensed the preciousness of that one day.
The children still liked to fill in their Life Charts, and they had come to realize that life was not permanent. Their lives were but their string of experiences. And the overall quality of those experiences, in the end, would rate the quality of their lives. The children sensed that this day was one of those special experiences that raised the overall quality of their lives.
They told serious and funny stories during their picnic, they reminisced, played games, hiked, learned about the land, admired their final printed Breakthrough News, and fished. Although the school's observer was present, she happened to be the same decent lady who never saw anything to report. Miss Annabelle and the kids laughed like they had never laughed before. An onlooker would have said their laughter sounded like an ensemble of happiness.
During these past two months, it seemed whenever these twelve students and their teacher got together, especially during the discussion period, they were always on the verge of some breakthrough. The atmosphere seemed full of creativity at the picnic. The kids were all sitting or lying on the picnic blankets after a long day out in the country when Mr. Melbourne showed up by surprise at 4:00. He lay down on a blanket next to Miss Annabelle and listened to the 3rd graders.
After hearing some of their creative talk, Mr. Melbourne raised his eyebrows and nodded. He said something he'd been storing up for weeks: "You kids are going to be more successful than any group of children I've ever faced. I know that, and I've been planning to tell you that for some time now." He looked around at the little geniuses and thought, I've never felt such camaraderie with anyone as I do with these children and their teacher.
He smiled at their potential and continued, "The cause of success and happiness comes from something very deep within. Some people just seem to be born with it, but that special something can be identified and developed. You kids are developing that special something. Everyone can. In fact, people around you -- maybe your brothers and sisters or parents -- might sort of `catch' that special something from you.
"That elusive, something special that super successful people have is a deep-rooted motivational drive. That deep-rooted motivational drive that appears to be inborn keeps pushing them forward for all their lives. As a result, they steadily rise above the multitudes around them who do not have that rare, seemingly inborn drive.
"The key here, once we've identified the most fundamental cause of success, is to understand what causes that cause of success, that deep-rooted motivational drive. Once we do that, then we realize the deep motivational drive to success and happiness is not something we are either luckily born with or not. Then, we realize we can acquire it and control it. We can turn it on! In other words, we -- anyone -- can control his or her life and make it successful and happy!"
Unable to stand the suspense, Teddy said, "What causes that deep motivational drive?"
"Oh, I think you know, Teddy," Mr. Melbourne said, smiling.
Teddy just looked at him, blinking without a clue.
"Okay, tell me how you felt when you put together the division of essence, which took your business to the next level?"
"Wow, I felt excited. I almost couldn't get to sleep because I was so excited. Man, I was..."
"Motivated?" Mr. Melbourne queried.
A smile broke open on Teddy's face. "Yeah," he said. "I got really motivated."
The other kids broke into the same contagious smile.
"Your excitement over your accomplishment fired up your deep motivation, which in turn drove you into further accomplishments, which in turn fueled your motivation...and so on like a cylinder driving the engine. That excitement, by the way, is the same thrill for life that toddlers experience. Toddlers are also in that upward spiral of happiness as they get extremely excited over their accomplishments in learning to talk and becoming conscious, for example. That's why they learn to talk and become conscious beings so rapidly, in about a year, from two to three. But around six or seven years old, their geometric learning curves slow way down to gradual learning curves. Their aggressive upward spiral is increasingly broken by the so-called `normal' world around them. You children know what I mean -- the `normal' world around you cannot relate to what you're like. A quick read through your awesome Breakthrough News demonstrates that!"
The children looked around at each other with huge smiles. They were very, very proud of their booklet.
"Now, you do feel different than other nine-year-olds, right?" Mr. Melbourne asked.
"Right...yes." the kids echoed back.
"I said your deep motivational drives work sort of like a cylinder engine. Now, the world's most important question is: how do people start their engines? If they only knew how to start their engines, they could drive themselves into success and happiness."
Ian, insatiable for knowledge, jumped in and said, "What is it? What's the secret?"
"You started your engine," Mr. Melbourne replied. "Now, think back to the beginning of the year. Were you different then, different than now?"
Ian paused. He was recalling how he used to be; a look of shock came over his face. "I used to be what we're calling `normal'. I mean, I had no drive at all and never thought about things like I do now."
"So, tell us how you started your engine. What happened?" Mr. Melbourne asked him.
Ian thought about it for awhile. Then he smiled slowly and said, "It was when I started putting together thoughts about the Universe. I started sensing that maybe I was seeing something not seen before..."
"Stop right there," Mr. Melbourne said, putting up his hand in the stop position. "To get to that point where you started seeing a puzzle picture never seen before, you had to start snapping together the puzzle pieces. You started integrating together facts and concepts as you learned them...until a new puzzle picture started forming."
"Yes!" Ian confirmed. "That's exactly what happened."
"Mr. Melbourne," Teddy said with a distant look on his face as if he were recalling a different place and time, "I think that's what happened to me, too. I was learning every day, just a little bit at a time, it seemed. Then one day, it all just seemed to come together into this division of essence."
Mr. Melbourne looked around at the twelve attentive nine-year-olds and said, "Toddlers naturally enjoy the thrill for life and its deep motivational drive. All others have to get it back. And as Ian and Teddy demonstrated, people get it back when they discover integrated thinking."
"Why?" Ian asked.
"Because," Mr. Melbourne answered, "the human mind was designed for dynamic integrated thinking, not static routine thinking. People get in routine ruts because their integrated thinking and motivational drives -- their upward spirals -- got disintegrated by the world around them dominated with resignation and routine or specialized thinking. It all goes back to our mind of the past that was a follower and not a self-leader like our mind of the future, which I explain in my book. The reason integrated thinking brings back your motivational drive is that it opens up your future and removes stagnation -- the way human beings are supposed to live their lives. Through integrated thinking and only through integrated thinking, the puzzle pieces of knowledge start coming together to build a puzzle picture, which, as Teddy and Ian learned, is when the motivation kicks in."
"How do my parents get into this positive spiral to success?" Bobby asked.
"They need to start their engines of motivation by learning how to do integrated thinking like you have done. They need to start small at work or on a goal. Here's exactly what they need to do: they must start integrating percepts into concepts at work. By doing this, they'll make little breakthroughs that'll be potent contributions to the company. This is how the engine of motivation always starts in adults...this is how anyone can get back the drive to success."
"What's percepts and concepts?" Reggie asked.
"Percepts are what your five senses perceive -- what you see, hear, feel, taste, or smell. You hear thunder; you look up and see lightning and dark clouds in the Eastern sky; you feel a gust of wind against your face followed by a steady wind coming from the direction as those dark clouds. Pulling together those three percepts -- sound, sight, feel -- you can jump to the concept that a storm is coming. Of course, that is the most simple example of forming a concept. But all concepts come from percepts, and that's where adults need to start, and a good place to start is at work. They must observe recurring problems, for example, and then through their perceptual observations, jump to concepts that will solve those problems."
"I think I know what you're saying," Teddy said. "I saw my numbers drop way down with my sellers; I could hear the lack of enthusiasm in their voices; I could really feel my frustration with them...and from pulling together those percepts letting me know I had a problem and from really thinking hard about it, I jumped to the whole new concept of setting up my sellers as their own entrepreneurs on performance pay, like little companies within my company."
"There's an example of observing percepts to discover a powerful concept that solved a serious problem," Mr. Melbourne said as Teddy nodded. "That's integrated thinking, Teddy. ...Now, you're taking your concepts and snapping them together into a puzzle. This is where adults will advance to soon enough: snapping together concepts into growing success puzzles. Eventually, never-before-seen puzzle pictures will form like Teddy's division of essence and Ian's God-Man Universe."
"That's right," Teddy said, "I did snap together several big concepts like my mini-companies instead of routine-rut jobs, mini-days instead of traditional schedules, power-thinking instead of no thinking, replicating instead of delegating, tracking reports instead of letting go of details, essence meetings to cover my every expectation from my entrepreneurial employees. By snapping together those concepts one by one, I built my success puzzle piece by piece. Then the new puzzle picture emerged -- the division of essence company structure, obsoleting the traditional division of labor structure."
"Yeah," Ian said, "I kind of went through a similar step-by-step, concept-by-concept process to build my picture of the eternal universe controlled by immortal conscious minds."
"Both of you have major breakthroughs, one in business and one in physics," Mr. Melbourne said. "Those are what Miss Annabelle and I call Neothink breakthroughs that take your fields of knowledge to the next level. Neothink happened by snapping together your success puzzles to reveal your new pictures of future business and physics. But it all started with pulling together percepts to jump to concepts. That is what adults must do first. That restarts their engines of deep motivational drive. In time, they too will snap together concepts into success puzzles and eventually go to the next level through Neothink."
Miss Annabelle sat up and put her arm around Mr. Melbourne and said lovingly, "You've just described the process for tens of millions of adults to break out of their stagnation-traps to live the lives they've always dreamed of." She admired her lover and expressed that she wished she had brought the tape recorder to have captured this immense value.
"Don't worry about that," he said. "It's all in my book, and more."
The evening shadows grew longer and the temperature dropped a few degrees. This group of people reluctantly made their way back to the small school bus. They really loved their world together, but now they had to make their way back into the `normal' world around them.
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