Weldon urges chamber crowd to get out of the box

By Curtis Riggs | April 15, 2009

Deciding not to participate in the recession


He said recessions often restore resourcefulness in people, causing them to think creatively.
“Getting out of the box is a creative action,” he said, adding “People need to focus on what they can do, not what they can’t.”

He asked the large chamber crowd, which was feeding off his enthusiasm, to come up with at least one “Ah-ha” idea (the kind where a light bulb goes off above your head) this year, which would enable them to survive the troubling economic times and send their life in a new direction.

Joel WeldonHe used distance runner Roger Bannister, who was the first to break the four-minute mile in the 1950s, as an example of what happens when people think they can do something. “It hadn’t been broken for over 89 years,” Weldon said.

“Forty-six days later it was broken again and in the next 20 months 16 other runners broke the barrier,” Weldon said about the difference between seeing something as impossible as opposed to possible.

He used the recent election of Barack Obama and there now being 17 female U.S. Senators when there were none seven decades ago as examples of what can happen when people start perceiving things differently.

“Arizona had never had a woman governor and now there have been three in a row,” he said about another case of breaking barriers. “Once something happens, you know you can do it.”

“There are 129,000,000 homes in America and only 3,000,000 are in foreclosure,” he said. “While there are 9,000,000 unemployed Americans, 154,000,000 are working.”

Weldon talked about how the Great Depression of the 1930s was the golden age of Hollywood and also a time when people were flocking to ballparks across the country to see their heroes.

“It’s not what’s in front of you, it’s what you see in front of you,” he said about how amazing things happening when people change their perceptions.