PhotoCredit: StretchGoals
I had the most awesome response to my note on the 1927 Solvay Conference. A very dear friend of mine replied that his great grandfather attended that conference. As the story goes, he was uninvited from the group photo due to his radical views on alignment "not being linear." A man after my own non-linear heart.
It gets so much cooler. Apparently he and Einstein "Allie" were drinking buddies. To think of Einstein kicking back with anyone, let alone someone related to someone I know, just makes me happy. I am possibly clutching at vicarious straws here.
As the story was told, Max Plank evidently always teased Marie Curie for the rhyming of her name. I guess that's all Plank had to give her grief about. Of course, Curie didn't take that lying down with the comeback “At least people will easily remember it. Especially when it comes to the Nobel selection committee.” You go girl!
My favorite part of the story, aided by a journal entry, is that just before the group photo was snapped, Plank leaned to Marie Curie and whispered that he thought she thought “too big” and “somewhat bold”. She winked at him and said, “Go big, brave, and bold, or go home.”
While we are all still in the throws of being at home, there is still so much scope for being big, brave and bold. We can still be magnificent, even in our sweats. Stretch goals are a favorite tool of mine to test whether I am pushing myself to my maximum. Goals are often what we know we can achieve. Unreasonable goals supercharge our potential.
Calibrate your ambitions this week. Are you being brave and bold. Are your ambitions outsized? Or are the sweatpants an enabler to play it safe. WWMCD? What would Marie Curie do?