Expand Your Mind: Amazing People
by Miki Saxon
There are many inspiring stories about people who went above and beyond or whose actions changed the world—or just their own little piece of it.
Here are four people you’ve probably never heard of, but we can all learn from.
Why would 16 year old Holland Reynolds force herself to crawl across a finish line in a championship race? Winning? Yes, but not for herself, for her coach.
“It’s because of his honesty that when you receive a compliment from him, you know you’ve done really well, and it makes all the runners want to strive to please him.”
Much is made of people who go from poverty to success, but some are more unique than others. Meet Bimola Devi worked decades before starting her company a few years ago. As a result she has enabled 500 other poor women to support their families. She trained and employs more than 70 artisans and revenues of more than one million Rs. in 2010. But she doesn’t seem impressed with what she has done.
“It is not a kind of work that I can do alone. I have to take the support of my friends, family and students. I can now make many products from my embroidery work.”
Did you know that the man most feared by despots around the world is 83 year old Gene Sharp? He can’t use the Internet, but a long time ago he wrote a book…
But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably From Dictatorship to Democracy (link to PDF), a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt.
There is much talk about technology that changed the world, the printing press, locomotive, automobile, Internet/World Wide Web, but today Wally Bock introduced me to Malcolm McLean. It took 20 years, but McLean changed our world as much as any of the things I mentioned; his innovation directly affects sixty percent of world trade by value.
To the end of his life, Malcolm McLean would remember the specific day that he got his big idea. The year was 1937. The place was Hoboken, New Jersey.
