Living The Life You Want

Individuality

Living The Life You Want

Change: The Essence of Life

"Change is the essence of life.  Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become."

-Tony Robbins

Living The Life You Want

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes

Living The Life You Want

A Complete Package

The national chair of the U.S. Travel Association, where I work, is passing the gavel to her successor in early April.  We've collected quotes from her board colleagues as part of a tribute we are planning for her.  Below are some of the words to describe her qualities that have stood out:

• Dedication
• Commitment
• Style
• Grace
• Tireless
• Super smart
• Consensus-builder
• Engaging
• Team player
• Can-do attitude
• Results-driven
• Terrific leader
• Professionalism
• Calm
• Great sense of humor
• Vision
• Integrity
• Credibility
• Perseverance
• Fortitude
• Focus and clarity
• Warmth
• Ease
• Galvanizing

They are qualities everyone can possess, but so few of us do, at least not all of them.  I  share them as a reminder of what we are all capable of becoming.

Living The Life You Want

TED: Bite-Sized Brain Food

As its website indicates, TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out as a conference in 1984 bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.  The conference is still a big focus, but now anyone can go to its website, www.ted.com, for an eclectic series of brief talks about anything and everything.  Next time you're noodling on the Internet, stop in for a visit.  You'll be glad you did.

Living The Life You Want

Rule Number One Investing

Legendary investor Warren Buffett is famous for saying that the Number One rule in investing is, Don't lose money.  Rule Number Two is, Don't forget Rule Number One.

Phil Town has written a book for average people (like me) to understand how to value a solid business and its stock and determine a margin of safety price at which to enter when interested in investing.  It is simply the clearest, most easily understood book on how to determine a realistic valuation of a stock in a sound company I have ever read.  The book, appropriately enough, is called Rule #1.

Town has just released a new book titled Payback Time, which expands on concepts introduced in Rule #1, and provides simple principles to give individuals confidence to invest for themselves and not let mutual fund managers take their money to secure substandard returns.

What do a couple of investment books have to do with living a more meaningful life?

Quite simply, they provide the information and tools for anyone to operate with confidence that their hard-earned money will grow and multiply in reasonable ways.  Ultimately, it leads to a financial future enabling them to live how they wish.

I think that's pretty meaningful.  I encourage everyone to start with Rule #1 and read both books.

Happy The Man

by Horace

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
   He who can call today his own:
   He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite or fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Living The Life You Want

To Thine Own Self Be True

Talk about a meaningful life: it boggles the mind to think of how many things written by Shakespeare are part of our language.  Whether the platitudes are Will's own views or simply expressions of his characters (I embrace that the best have a voice all their own, separate and apart from the writer structuring thoughts on the page), many have stood the test of time.

Among the more notorious is Polonius' counsel to Laertes in Hamlet:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

People pay plenty of money for self-help books and seminars and don't get advice that good.

Living The Life You Want

Creating Quality: An Act of Will

Ira Glass, who launched the popular This American Life on NPR in 1995, talked about making the show in a recent interview.  He was talking about the challenge of producing quality for the show, but he might have been talking about life in general:

"It's hard to make  something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. ... Basically, anything  that anyone makes. ... It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that  anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The  natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It's all tending toward mediocrity  in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse  of the universe. ... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will ... ."

Living The Life You Want

Wait and See

Dr. Steven Marmer, a psychiatrist in the Los Angeles area, recently shared an ancient story that nicely illustrates the importance of keeping perspective on everything that happens:

"A Chinese peasant has just one possession, his horse, and it runs away.  His neighbor says 'Oh, this is the most terrible thing that could ever happen!'  The peasant simply says, 'Wait and see.'

"The next day the horse comes back with a whole flock of wild horses.  The neighbor says, 'This is the greatest thing ever!'  The peasant simply says, 'Wait and see.'

"The next day the son of the peasant gets on a horse and is thrown and breaks a leg.  The neighbor says, 'This is the worst thing ever!'  The peasant says, 'Wait and see.'

"The next day the army comes through recruiting young men, and because the peasant's son has a broken leg he's allowed to remain at home.  The neighbor says, 'This is the greatest!'  And the peasant simply reminds him again: 'Wait and see, wait and see.'"