The Curse Of The Flightle Bee

Back in the days when presenters for the UK's national broadcaster, the BBC, had to be very, very careful about the language that they used on air, I'm told that the presenter of a music show was worried about his introduction to a particular piece – The Flight of the Bumble Bee, by Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov.

The title was easy enough, of course, but he couldn't get his tongue round the composer's name. Hard as he practiced, he was convinced that he was going to make a mess of it, and the night before the show he hardly slept.

At last the dreaded moment came, and the presenter took a deep breath and announced, “The next piece is by that popular composer, Rimsky-Korsakov...”

”YES!” he thought triumphantly. “I've done it – I've done it! Nothing can go wrong now.”

Then he gave the title as... “The Bum of the Flightle Bee.”

Now, the word “bum” doesn't mean in Britain what it means in the US. It means the equivalent of “a-s” - the part of your anatomy you sit upon.

It's actually considered a very mild word now, but apparently at that time it was high up on the list of things you couldn't say on air. The mistake the presenter was so scared of making, a simple mispronunciation of a name in a language he was unfamiliar with, would actually have got him into far less trouble with his bosses than the one he did make.

The point of the story is that what you focus on is what you get.

If you keep thinking hard enough, for long enough, that you're going to get something horribly wrong, the intensity of your feelings about it will convince your inner mind that that's the very thing you want to happen... and it will find a way it can achieve it for you.

No matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you try, how talented you are, what great ideas you have, or how much you would love to have Supreme Success... if what you're mainly feeling is a fear of failure, then that's exactly what you're going to get – your inner mind will show you how to sabotage your progress so that it can help you make those pictures in your head come true.

To be successful, see yourself as utterly successful. Feel all the excitement and anticipation of it. Hold that picture as strongly as you can, and thoroughly enjoy it. The more intense your feelings are, the faster it'll happen.

You have to do the work as well, of course – but that feeling will inspire you to do it better, and more easily.

What you focus on is what you get... so make sure you're always focused on success.