Seldom do you find a successful person who lacks passion in what it is they do.
Listen to motivational speaker Tony Robbins and you will come to recognize a shared characteristic between all successful people. Forget what is said, or what you may measure success by, you only need to listen to the inflection of his voice. It’s similar in trait to how an 8-year old boy talks about his favorite toy, or how he shares his dreams of being a Power Ranger. “It would be so cool to be the Black Ranger,” he would say. The words play out like a song. A dramatic cadence and a prolonged cool in the middle, wraps you into the dream and conjures a smile on your face, regardless of how impossible the dream may be.
Most of us are surrounded by negativity and lack the confidence to see something through, whether it be a project at work, a career change, or a much needed vacation. For one reason or another, there is a downward, driving force that keeps people from seeing success and obtaining it.
Successful people have the same way of thinking like an 8-year old. Listen to the late-Steve Jobs talk about the projects he had planned for Apple back in the 1970s or the 1980s. In retrospect, the information he shared with people sounded like science fiction. Who would think “personal” would be a practical pronoun to place in front of an office machine like a computer? Yet, he had the same inflection in his voice that was able to persuade Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates to build the hardware and software for the first Apple computers. Computers with a graphic interface, word processing with a catalog of fonts and spreadsheet processing capabilities, wowed people from all walks of life, and it happened because one person was able to make people believe he could be the next Black Ranger.
Speaking with Albany Symphony Orchestra Music Director David Alan Miller, you hear that inflection again. Miller has been the Maestro of our city’s orchestra for nearly a quarter century, and he’s had the ASO walking a different path from its peers. Last year, the small city orchestra dared to win a Grammy. They did so performing contemporary American music, and not the old stand-bys of Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. The musical troop spends twice as much as other orchestras playing modern, domestic music, and stands above the tall shoulders of orchestras from New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Miller does this with a passion that is infectious, and drives people around him to catch up with him.
Last year, it was surprising to see the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s name among the nominees for a Grammy Award. Today, there is no mystery as to why our orchestra receives the accolades bestowed upon it. Passionate people like Miller should be role models to the many of us who sit at our miserable day jobs and wish time away. Find your inner 8-year old and have a talk as to why you’re not the Black Ranger yet.
