This week's Pep Talk Blog: "Solve the Unsolvable"

I had just settled into my seat for a “Get Motivated” seminar when the arena loudspeakers reverberated with: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome America’s best inspirational speaker, Dr. Robert Schuller!”

Now in his 80’s, the man who invented the world “televangelist” slowly walked toward the stage. He spoke just a short while, his words centered on a chance meeting years ago, on a flight from the East Coast to California. The man sitting next to Schuller was quite chatty. At first, it was an annoyance to the minister who was looking forward to napping on the long flight home.

The chatty man, head of mathematics at a West Coast university, was returning from a speaking engagement himself. The story he told Schuller was a powerful reminder of what the Comeback Coach talks about when confronting change, challenge or adversity: “Be limited only by imagination, not fear, in creating productive choices to the challenges we face.”

Here’s the story: While in college during the Great Depression, this young math enthusiast faced a final exam where the students knew the highest score guaranteed a job as an assistant professor – a great opportunity during such desperate economic times.

The exam had eight problems. The professor also wrote two more problems on the board. “Extra credit” is what the student-turned-storyteller sitting next to Schuller remembers hearing about those two problems on the chalkboard. After completing the eight problems, the student approached the professor and asked for more time to solve the extra credit problems. “No problem,” the professor said. “You have the weekend.”

The student worked day and night and finally solved – or thought he had solved – one of the two. Frustrated, he turned in the work, knowing in his heart surely someone else had solved each. The chance for that treasured job had surely been missed.

The next morning the student was awakened by a knock at the door. It’s his professor congratulating him on earning the job. “What, I can’t believe this!” said the startled student. The professor continued, “You’re the only one who even tried to solve the extra credit problems. I had told the class they were unsolvable, but you apparently didn’t hear that and tried, and succeeded, on one of them. The job is yours.”

Schuller then drove home the point to the silenced crowd. “Eliminate the word ‘impossible’ from your dictionary. Believe within you – despite what might appear to be true at the moment – that you can solve the unsolvable.”

This week, wherever it might be necessary, let that be your truth, okay?