If you had only two months to live...
14:00
How do you know if you are living the ideal, perfect life?
One way to know is that if your doctor told you that you had only two more months to live, and you decide to keep on living EXACTLY the way you are living now, then you are indeed living the ultimate life!
I don't know if that trick will work for everyone, but it does work often for me. When I look at my life from the point of view of my deathbed, things seems to become MUCH clearer. Priorities naturally emerge, and meaningless details naturally fade away.
Like TV news, for instance. Isn't it funny that they keep sending pictures of soldiers and casualties and wars happening in faraway countries that most people can't even pinpoint on a map?
I suddenly remember a quote I read years ago: "Our grand duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."
The success secret here is to realize that the failure secret of millions of people is to grossly underestimate the power of television. Many things, especially if you are addicted to them, can shorten one's life: cigarette, overeating, etc. However, you can never tell EXACTLY how much life (in months, years) these addictions will take away from you.
In the case of television, however, you know PRECISELY how shorter your life will be, as a result of giving up your daily willpower to the mediocre, tasteless, artless and often offending programs that run on TV (except public television, of course).
I give career management workshops, and I often tell people: You have the choice every day. Either you choose to focus on your talent and develop it, so your life gets richer (and you earn more money too), or you choose to focus on television, in which case the lives of EVERYBODY behind the TV screen (writer, director, producer, etc.) get better while yours stagnates and goes nowhere.
Tom Peters actually wrote a very little colorful book titled "Talent." (Which comes from his mega-book Re-Imagine). I highly recommend it for junior as well as seasoned professionals and managers.
Peters' advice serves to remind people that our lives are short, and we live only once. Why not live a truly WOW life? By following his advice, a person not only ensures her professional success, but she also most likely wouldn't change a thing even if her doctor told her she had only a few months to live.
How do you know if you are living the ideal, perfect life?
One way to know is that if your doctor told you that you had only two more months to live, and you decide to keep on living EXACTLY the way you are living now, then you are indeed living the ultimate life!
I don't know if that trick will work for everyone, but it does work often for me. When I look at my life from the point of view of my deathbed, things seems to become MUCH clearer. Priorities naturally emerge, and meaningless details naturally fade away.
Like TV news, for instance. Isn't it funny that they keep sending pictures of soldiers and casualties and wars happening in faraway countries that most people can't even pinpoint on a map?
I suddenly remember a quote I read years ago: "Our grand duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."
The success secret here is to realize that the failure secret of millions of people is to grossly underestimate the power of television. Many things, especially if you are addicted to them, can shorten one's life: cigarette, overeating, etc. However, you can never tell EXACTLY how much life (in months, years) these addictions will take away from you.
In the case of television, however, you know PRECISELY how shorter your life will be, as a result of giving up your daily willpower to the mediocre, tasteless, artless and often offending programs that run on TV (except public television, of course).
I give career management workshops, and I often tell people: You have the choice every day. Either you choose to focus on your talent and develop it, so your life gets richer (and you earn more money too), or you choose to focus on television, in which case the lives of EVERYBODY behind the TV screen (writer, director, producer, etc.) get better while yours stagnates and goes nowhere.
Tom Peters actually wrote a very little colorful book titled "Talent." (Which comes from his mega-book Re-Imagine). I highly recommend it for junior as well as seasoned professionals and managers.
Peters' advice serves to remind people that our lives are short, and we live only once. Why not live a truly WOW life? By following his advice, a person not only ensures her professional success, but she also most likely wouldn't change a thing even if her doctor told her she had only a few months to live.
posted by Super Peter at 11:14 PM
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