Imagine That!!

By Ross R. Olney

The time is coming when we will all have the power to order cancer, or any other life-threatening disease, to just "go away," and it will go away. In this book "Ortho" discusses it, and remarks about how backward we, here today, are. We can't even order a bad cold, let alone cancer, to go away. But then his buddy, "Dontist" points out that the cavemen were even worse off, and had to worry about becoming lunch for some hungry creature waiting outside their cave. The Music Man, with one of the most famous and enduring scams, might turn out to be prophetic according to many of today's experts on the subject. "Professor" Harold Hill thought he was using a great con on the gullible folks back in River City, Iowa, but in the mind of brilliant author/composer Meredith Willson, he was just doing what is in our own near future, and should work just fine. Hill's "think system" is now accepted by many imagery experts, and you can use this to better your own life. You can be a winner, all you must do is believe it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329352650

Book preview

Imagine That!!

Imagine That!!

By Ross R. Olney

Think Your Way to the Top

Illustrated with Photographs

Copyright 2015 by Ross R. Olney

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. Requests for permission may be addressed in writing to the author at [e-mail]

First Printing 2015

ISBN 978-1-329-35265-0

Dedication

To every reader, younger and older, who fears taking the next step or making the next move or accepting the next challenge because it will probably result in failure. With the right attitude, in fact, you’ll probably succeed.

Ross R. Olney has written and published more than two hundred books for adults and children on a wide variety of subjects. He has been published by many of the major trade publishers in New York, but has turned to Lulu.com for more complete control over content.

Books by Olney available from Lulu.com include Danik - The True Story of a Holocaust Survivor, Great Prisoner of War Escapes, Slap Shot - Yesterday’s Great Hockey Heroes, Time Dial, Lost Treasure of the Superstitions, They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, Combat He Wrote, and others. All are available in soft and hard cover, and as an EBook, the latter priced very modestly.

Olney, who has been a writer/author most of his life, served in the United States Air Force during the Korean War, flew one hundred combat missions, and was decorated several times.

Olney has taught writing at colleges like USC, UCLA, UCSB, and others, and is always ready to help a younger writer trying to get going.

He can be contacted at www.rossrolney.com or www.rossrolney.net, or email at [e-mail]

Ross R. Olney

Contents

Chapter 1         Professor Harold Hill

Chapter 2         Maybe it was Just Pure Luck

Chapter 3         Nothing Wrong with Daydreaming

Chapter 4          Let’s Get Scientific for a Moment

Chapter 5          Be The Confident One In Town

Chapter 6          The Amazing Confidence Tape

Chapter 7          Don’t Let Them Get You Uptight

Chapter 8          Here’s What Really Happens Inside

Chapter 9          What Do Real Scientists Think?

Chapter 10        Stress and Grown Men

Chapter 11        You Can Be a Sports Hero

Chapter 12         Exercise Your Brain and Body

Chapter 13       Attack Your Weaknesses

Chapter 14       The Inner Peace Technique

Chapter 15        Also, Learn to Concentrate

Chapter 16        Using Imagery Every Day

Chapter 17        The Worst Fear of All

Chapter One

Professor Harold Hill

Professor Harold Hill was a con-man, no doubt about that.

Oh yes, he was a lovable con man to us, but back in his own time in turn-of-the-century River City, Iowa, he was still a crook hated by every other traveling salesman who rode back-water, jerking, bumpy trains between small Midwest towns trying to make a living selling unwanted products to disinterested customers. One of these traveling salesmen even carried a two hundred pound anvil between customers just to show a sample of his wares.

Harold Hill was the main character in composer Meredith Willson’s smash Broadway and motion picture hit The Music Man. Actor Robert Preston, now gone, played the part perfectly, so he will never really be gone. Although by now many years old, The Music Man is a show not to be missed. It is joyful, and fun, and loving, and exciting, and with beautiful old music, and will be around for at least another hundred years or so.

Famous actor Robert Preston as The Music Man.

The Professor’s scam was selling musical instruments to small town parents with the promise of creating, in this case, a River City Boys’ Band. The problem, since Hill talked so fast that it couldn’t be immediately recognized what he was selling (recall the famous Trouble in River City song), was that he had absolutely no musical training at all. There was no possible way he could make good on the promise of teaching youngsters to play the instruments he was selling to their gullible parents.

That didn’t bother Hill, because by the time the final payments on the instruments had been received, he was, at the last wave of the brakeman’s hand on the last freight train out of town, gone, never to be seen again in that town if everything went according to plan.

But then along came Marion the Librarian. That has nothing to do with the subject of this book, except that if she used the techniques in this book on Hill, it worked. The professor fell for Marion, hard.

Meanwhile, Hill’s business became so successful in town after town across the early Midwest, where the difference between a pool hall and a billiard parlor was (according to Hill) night and day, that he had added band uniforms to his product line. This increased his ill-gotten profit substantially.

The Professor cons the gullible citizens of River City.

But how did he con the parents during the period of several weeks of waiting for the instruments and uniforms to arrive on the faithful Wells Fargo Wagon?

Naturally he used his famous Professor Harold Hill Think System that he had developed himself. It was simple. You merely thought about playing the trumpet or clarinet or tuba. Hill wouldn’t even allow his young students to attempt to play their instruments, as much as they wanted to. They were permitted to sit as a group and think about Dresden organist Christian Petzoid’s very familiar Minuet in G. Sometimes they would hum this music thought back then to have been composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, all the time holding their instruments in the correct position. They would hum the Minuet in G over and over and over, at the rehearsal sessions.

A scam? A con? A rip off? Even Hill himself admitted, at least to his friends, that it was one of the best.

But wait a minute. Was it really a con?

Modern science allows, and many experts believe absolutely, that Hill’s think system could work. He would actually be taken seriously by many modern scientists who have studied imagery. Today we know that the simple con of Harold Hill might really work. If Hill had believed in what he was supposed to be teaching, and convinced his young students to believe, the whole idea of the think system might have been possible.

As it was possible in the musical-genius mind of author/composer Meredith Willson, and so his play and movie ends with the young, rag-tag band actually rendering an almost recognizable Minuet in G that causes the townspeople to change their mind about tarring and feathering the Professor. Even the young bandsmen don’t really understand why they are succeeding (nor did an astounded Professor Hill), but they were marvelous in a final, resounding Seventy Six Trombones ending number.

The Music Man is a wonderful story, and shows that what is accepted now, at least in composer Willson’s mind and by many experts today, is that the process of thinking one’s way to success in life is quite possible.

Do you know what many athletes, especially Russian athletes, do for a big part of their workouts?

They sit in the stadium and think about the whole thing. They visualize themselves winning the race, or throwing the javelin a greater distance than any other athlete, or jumping the highest bar. Some of them spend more time thinking about the event than they do practicing for it.

And because they believe so strongly in their thoughts, and that thinking will work, it works.

Former American Olympic ice dancers Michael Seibert and his partner, Judy Blumberg, practice in their minds.

It sounds crazy, she says, but it works.

Past Olympic athlete and current television star Bruce Jenner, now known as Caitlyn Jenner, told the author, I absolutely knew I was going to win the morning of the competition. He, now she, was speaking of the Decathlon event at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. When I arrived at the field. I didn’t have a doubt in my mind.

And he was right. He won the gold medal.

Bruce Jenner winning the Decathlon at the 1976 Olympics.

A Simple Test

Try this simple experiment. Don’t jump ahead, other than to find a private spot to work from, and then conduct the test step by step.

Step One

Find a tree only a few inches in diameter. Next, collect a handful of small stones. Stand back ten or fifteen feet, then toss one half of the stones, one by one, at the