Ep 42: How a Weird Piece of Historical Trivia Can Help You Uplevel Your Business
This weekend we are spending some time in the Hudson Valley and went by the Visitor Center at West Point.
There we discovered an interesting piece of historical trivia (West Point’s Class of 1915 was nicknamed “The Class the Stars Fell on”) that sparked my thought for this episode…
Get this: 164 graduates that year and 59 of them became generals in their career and one American president (Eisenhower)!
You could say it was a graduating class that literally changed the course of history.
Not to disparage any of the great leaders that came up at that time, but a thought crossed my mind that I couldn’t quite escape…
“Was is the unique individuals in this class that made it so famous or was it their unique time in history that allowed them to step into their capacity and help shape nations?”
This class graduated 25 years before the US entered WW2 which is about the timeframe one could expect to become a general…
Did their time in history call out their greatness? The capacity they already had inside that was waiting to be called upon?
I’ve been toying with this thought for the last couple of days and sat down to do some more research
Guess what I found…
A class previously had that title “The Class the Stars Fell On” in 1886. Over 30% of that year’s graduates became generals in their career. And this was roughly 30 years before we entered WW1.
Are you seeing a pattern? You could probably place this into the old nature versus nurture conversation, right?
I’m sure other classes whose graduates held careers during peaceful times had just as capable leaders but their influence is just remembered differently
So how does this impact my life and my business today?
Why should I care?
Here’s the nugget I want to share:
We all have unaccessed capacity.
I think we all have MUCH more capacity that’s lying dormant within us because it just hasn’t been called upon or accessed…
To hear more about this interesting bit of historical trivia and to hear my top 2 tips for accessing your own untapped potential, list to the rest of this episode!
Until next time, continue to be up and to the right.
Cheers,
Ginny
