20. March 2009 by BruceSmith.

I recently had the opportunity to present the following talk to a group of young leaders at a local university.  My task for the presentation was to give them a roadmap for “Getting There”, for attaining their goals in life.  Here is a little look at the presentation.  It has been distilled into 13 summary principles for the life you were meant to live.  If you find it helpful, pass it on to as many as you can.  Grace and Peace, and God’s best to you today and on the journey ahead.  Enjoy the read. 

Getting There: 13 keys for living the life you were meant to live

Oh, The places you will go!…but it depends upon the things you will think!  Dr. seuss was right, but get the think before the go.  Must think through the purpose for life before you set out for big things.  Socrates, “ an unexamined life is not worth living.”

The bio…it might look stellar, but really, your tombstone sums up your life.  Aim for a strong motto for your send off rather than a marketing pitch through your resume.

Read and study widely

Don’t get locked into just one stream of study/preparation.  The value of cross pollination is hard to overestimate.  My background is a strong example of this reality.  There are critical points of departure, themes of relevance from many genres, disciplines, which can be applied in any setting.

Be hungry for growth and diversity

Always be looking for a new place to pick up skills, exposure, some new bent on life.  The ability to stay fresh, engaged, and active will keep you from finding a rut/grave.  The difference in a rut and a grave?  Just a little bit of depth!  Stay in a rut long enough and you will be buried there.  New interests, friends, networks, skills, travel, seminars, …all amount to an increasing sense of vibrancy and momentum.  Always be  moving toward something.

Expect the unexpected

You may think you have it all mapped out–you don’t.  And that is o.k.  Few of us, very few, pick a heading and remain there throughout the journey.  The vast majority will encounter winds, detours, storms, interesting diversions, unexpected tours, roadblocks, or some landmark that turns out to be more interesting than that which we had are plan mapped toward.  Its o.k., go with it.

Pay attention to your wiring

We all come into the world with certain things “built in”.  Few of us can completely rework our genetic predispositions.  Are you aware of some of the natural tendencies?  Where are you naturally gifted?  Where are you naturally weak?  People person?  Bookish?  Intense?  So relaxed you are nearly asleep?  We can build upon, and gird up certain of these, but we will be most effective in our sweet spot.  Look for it, take note of it, look along the way where you are at maximum joy, fulfillment, and notice where maximum frustration/disinterest sets in.  These are hints to where you should be playing your hand.

Its not all about the trophies, dollars, and cultural cravings

Newsweek story of suicidal success.  How do a beautiful, successful, young, and cultured couple get to the point of such emptiness and despair and ultimately take their own lives?  The road to contentment is littered with false hopes, dreams, pursuits.  Its more than a bio, a resume.  Our news magazines are overwhelmed with success stories gone bad.  Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes, and contemporary examples abound.  Pundits in the financial world are now suggesting that economic disaster we are now living through will lead to a reorganization of our lives, pursuits, and and cultural ambitions.  People, through great loss, are beginning to realize (it is suggested, only time will tell) that what Jesus said is true, “It does NOT profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul.”  Success, even ridiculous success, does not make people happy, fulfilled or even remotely content.  The quest for “more” is a death walk.  Life must be defined by more than “more”.  At the end of the day, just like in the game of Monopoly, “it all goes back in the box”.  At the end of your life, you go into a big box and none of your stuff goes with you.  

beware the distractions

If you get away from the “call to purpose” which resides in each human heart, you will find yourself adrift on the high seas of emptiness, confusion, and discontent.  A pursuit of pleasure without any boundaries will send you headlong into the dangerous waters of moral decay leaving you open to selfishness, deceit, and a “me” centered existence which will wreck relationships (business, friends, and family), and will leave you alone and unfulfilled.  Bernie Madoff is surely an example of this truth.  The allure of billions of dollars and notoriety among the world elite has put him in prison and made him the scorn of the world.  I don’t think Mr. Madoff’s call was to multi-billion dollar deception, and I seriously doubt he slept well very many nights.  

purpose

Why are you doing what you are doing?  Is it all about you and what you want out of life?  Is there a bigger quest in mind?  Are you contributing something of significance to the world?  Begin each day asking yourself, “If I pursue what I want to pursue today, will my family, friends, community, workplace, world …be just a bit better than when I began?”

Career or impact?  Job or fulfillment?  

Provision

Make provision for you goals.  Get the ongoing education, development, enhancement process in place.  Comes back to growth and education.  Stay with it.  Your purpose is supported and fulfilled only as you do the things needed to reenforce the dream.

As you provide for the purpose think outside the box.  There are opportunities that will come your way which seem as though they are from left field, yet, stand to provide a new skill, flavor, bent to your dream.  Consider them and pursue where appropriate.  Be open, but not distractible.  Stay purpose centered but open to all that life brings.  

Continue the education, daily.  “Leaders are readers”.  The cliche is largely true.  The mind must have provision for further accomplishment.  

RISK MANAGEMENT:  all about the focus …take B.H.A.R. s  Big Hairy Audacious Risks (when it makes sense!) …and occasionally when it does not.  Remember Warren Buffett’s investment success approach: FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS.  Think through your life, ask correct and deep questions, take note of sustainability or the lack of, and ask yourself if your approach really makes sense.  And in moments when you have the chance to make big advancement, take a risk.  Evaluate risk against potential reward.  If the reward far outweighs your risk, then go in big.  Buffet risked a huge 40% of Berkshire’s wealth on Coca Cola early on because he was convinced the potential for a huge win was overwhelming.  That kind of percentage is a death wish in investment terms according to conventional thinking.  Buffett made about a billion dollars on that risk however.  Take a chance, a studied chance. Take a big risk when it looks like the deck is stacked in your favor, and sometimes when it just looks crazy.

its not all about you

Ask not what the world can do for you, but what you can do for the world.  Actually, and intentionally, put into your life, your schedule, your dreaming, places, times, resources, efforts, and goals which are pro bono focused.  That is, develop an intentional focus for giving of yourself with nothing expected.  The results are a better world, a better you, a larger heart for humanity, increased self-esteem, and true fulfillment.  Build intentional places in your life where you are giving for the sake of bettering our world.  Make a concerted effort to put your time, heart, skills, money, and mind into something beyond your little world.  If you build it in, you will lift some of your own burden, impact the world, and life other lives.  There is no monetary success which can compare to the internal sense of well being which comes from such activity.

The American Dream revisited:  stats on the American Quest:  in the last few decades, despite rising technology, more entertainment, more access to mood altering drugs, greater wealth, and more access to education, our culture, statistically speaking, is more indebted, less content, more addicted, working harder, and less fulfilled than ever.  The pursuit, hedonistic pursuit, of more stuff, more entertainment, more counseling, and more medication is not working.  All studies prove this point.  The American Dream, while wonderful in many ways, is not the cure for the soul.  Our need is much deeper.

American icons with a me centered focus…the result?

Its not about “more”.

Embrace the greatness of the American ideal, opportunity, pursuit…but don’t let that morph into something it was never supposed to be.  

A little lesson on Liberty.  I recently, for my business, acquired a Bob Taylor guitar of significant value.  The guitar, crafted by one of the world’s great instrument craftsman, is worth more than $10,000.00.  More importantly, and this is the point, the guitar has an amazing story, and purpose.  The guitar, crafted with wood from the Liberty Trees which were meeting places for the organizing of the original 13 colonies, is a tangible icon of the value of liberty.  The trees, where the founders and leaders of the movement for liberty planned this American experiment, were felled in 1999 by Hurricane Floyd.  Bob Taylor, a history buff and lover of the American ideal, bought some 80,000 pounds of the wood, and set out to craft a special series of guitars with the wood from the Liberty Trees.  Those guitars, of which there are only 50 (one for each state in the union) are captivatingly beautiful.  They are inlaid with 13 pearl stars on the fingerboards (one for each of the original 13 colonies), painted by hand with period accurate banners and flags, and each has the name of the state for which it is emblematic and numbered according to its place of entry into our nation!  Amazing.  But, the true beauty of the instruments is not realized until and unless a master guitarist takes this wonderful specimen in their hands and actually plays.  This is the purpose, the ultimate aim of such craftsmanship.  The instrument comes alive fully only when the musician does his or her thing.  Such is true of our lives.  We may be taken care of, painted up, cosmetically enhanced, and adorned with fantastic clothes, but our true value is derived from the touch of the Master’s hand. 

Life, LIBERTY, and the  pursuit of happiness.  We don’t get there on our own.  We were all created for a purpose bigger than ourselves.  We each have a distinct beauty, giftedness, attractiveness, spark.  That beauty, that purpose, that “music” is heard, appreciated, and fully enjoyed only as we recognize and live in the truth that we are merely instruments.  The beauty is recognizable, but not fully seen until and unless the maker, the great musician, is allowed to do His thing.  

What is more important, your bio or your tombstone?  A question worth pondering.  You bio, your resume, is merely your marketing pitch along the journey, really.  Your tombstone sums up the impact of your life.  

THE OPUS APPROACH  …when all is said in done, its about the lives you touched, the legacy you left.  Whatever you do, whether you attain your dreams and ambitions or not, live well, take in the journey, consider that the purpose of your life is bigger than yourself.  In the Movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, Mr. Holland is presented as a man whose longing, thirst and passion is to craft a great opus and attain untold fame and riches.  Life does not pan out that way for him.  His fame is limited to his teaching in a small town high school for decades.  Thinking he has amounted to little and just being summarily canned when the budget is cut, and late in life, it feels to him as if he has been a failure.  But as the last scene in the movie demonstrates, Mr. Holland was a success.  What he did not recognized until presented with an amazing farewell, is that his impact was vast and his touch significant.  He had touched many lives along the way and set up many for great success and impact, including the Governor of his state.  Go back and watch it again, just that one scene even.  I promise, you won’t stay dry eyed.  The Opus Approach reminds us, again, that our lives are defined by the beauty with which we live wherever we are, and by the liberty we bring into the lives of others.  Our Opus our impact is the daily impact and the lives we touch.  We must live for an Audience of One, looking to touch many, with an eye toward eternity.  That is living.

Bruce Smith, Optimus LIfe Coaching, www.optimuslife.org 

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16. March 2009 by BruceSmith.

A Reflection on Manhood I wish I was that guy, you know the one, I wish I was that guy … who loved more authentically, who pursued that which is true more diligently, who expressed tenderness more consistently, who loved his family more constantly, who lived more fully, who gave more, who lied less.  The Man I should be… is more forgiving, is much more faithful, much more caring, more gentle, more of Love personified.  Is is possible for a Man to be more than he now is?   Can he be… a man who spends his days living for bigger dreams? a man who hungers with each breath to reach for more? a man who is done with the false pursuit of empty pleasure? a man who looks at a woman and admires beauty while desiring more? a man who lusts for that which is pure and noble and good and right? a man who admits his failure and seeks to do better? a man who sees the failures of others and extends grace? a man who loves the ones who have shunned love? a man who in loving one woman loves them all? a man who views character as his chief trophy? a man who longs for justice and mercy? a man who revels in charity? a man who knows his God?  I see glimpses of this man in me from time to time, yet that vision is all too fleeting. I sense the urge to find that man, to be that man, but too infrequently. I can taste, experience, feel, and share in the life of that man, yet too seldom do I live there.  My desire, my aim, my thirst, my quest, my only hope, is to be that man more and more every day.   My prayer, and my sustenance, is to embrace the gift of God, that gift which, alone, grants me the passion to be the Man, the Man, the person, the one, the one God desires me to be.     May God, my God, give me resource to be the man, No, rather, may I take in, fully, the resource Gods extends to me every moment, that I may be the man for all seasons, for all people, for all relationships, for each moment, That I might love her, encourage him, inspire them, and truly worship Him. God, oh my God, make me THAT man. May it be done through The Man, Yes, Jesus, the One who, alone, lived as all men ought to live, and who, alone, makes us, makes me, the man you would love for me to be. Amen.  The Man Bruce Smith optimuslife.org   

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