Happy Monday!
I’m reverting to an 80’s movie reference for today’s word-of-the-week …
Ganas
Have you seen the movie Stand And Deliver? I watched it—again—over the weekend. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for inspiration.
Stand And Deliver relates the inspiring true story of Jaime Escalante and a group of students from a deprived section of L.A. who accomplished an impossible goal. I feel a bit of a special connection to the story because Mr. Escalante actually visited my school and spoke to our students and parents in 1989.
This unremarkable teacher in a terrible school told his unmotivated students that they could do it. He called them the “true dreamers” and promised to help them go farther than anyone thought possible.
And in return he asked from them only one thing: ganas.
“Ganas” is a Spanish word meaning “motivation sufficient to act”. Escalante boils it down to a single trait: desire. He tells these disadvantaged kids who’ve already been defeated and discarded by society that they can accomplish their dreams if they have enough desire.
Sounds simple, but it’s not. For these kids, ganas meant arriving early and staying late. It meant summer classes, extra homework, and defying the peer pressure of a culture that expected and even encouraged them to fail.
Dreams are easy. You can dream in your sleep.
Ganas—desire—that’s what’s hard. Ganas fills the gap between “I want to” and “I will.”
What’s your dream as you begin a new week? How will you cultivate the ganas to make it happen?