Death and taxes. These are the only certain things in life. So Says Benjamin Franklin in 1789. In 2024, our own Brett Semenetz has another certain truth for us in Elevate. “If you can touch it, Brett can brand it.” It’s Fact. Things we can see, things we can touch are real, right?
Take a notebook and piece of paper. The notebook is heavy. The paper is light. It’s not a magic trick. If you drop them at the same time, the notebook falls faster. But what if that’s not always true.
In 1604, more than 400 years ago, Galileo showed with his ramp experiment that gravity is not dependent on mass. If air resistance is removed, objects fall at the same rate. In a vacuum chamber without air, a bowling ball and a feather reach the ground at the same time. It really is incredible to see. It defies the logic of our everyday lives. Even a popular perspective, what we think is absolute, could be wrong. – Or incomplete.
More is possible if we remove the resistance. There are unlimited possibilities, really. If a bowling ball and a feather can fall at the same rate, surely there’s more that a framework of limited thinking can be wrong about.
For example, Coco Gauff, the tennis star, compares business to athletics in a recent Forbes interview. She says to be delusional about the goals we set.
Believing it’s possible. makes it possible.
She saw the Williams sisters play, and that gave her a possible image that she also, as a black woman, could play tennis. Then one day she finds herself getting to play against Venus. She was thinking, “well, let me just see how many games i can get.”
Then, something changed her thinking. Mary Jo Fernández took her aside and said, “you have to go in believing you can win.” Coco shifted her mindset, went in believing she could beat Venus Williams, and she did!
Anything is possible. If a bowling ball and a feather can fall at the same rate, surely there’s a way to build bigger dreams. Bigger business goals. Be delusional. What’s the biggest goal you can think of? Now Believe it’s possible.
Sure, we don’t live in a vacuum, but we can remove barriers to success, for ourselves and our businesses, our communities and the whole world. Think unlimited.
