IF YOU EVER HAD TO WORK AGAIN?

There is a famous question that has helped generations of
people clarify their values and priorities. It usually goes
something like this: "If you never had to work for the rest
of your life, what would you do because you love it so
much?"
This week I've been reading about a man who faced that
exact situation.
I read "Empire," the biography of Howard Hughes, who
inherited his father's business and became a millionaire
before his 20th birthday. What struck me is that he never
had to work a day in his life.
Now, clearly Hughes had a troubled life and he's an easy
person to criticize. He was eccentric and mentally ill. He
did many things I consider immoral. But one thing he didn't
have to do was WORK in any traditional sense.
Yes, he was rich and a playboy, but he constantly set
goals. He shattered records for trans-continental and
around-the-world flights. He spent millions making movies
that stand as innovations and classics even today. He built
the largest airplane ever made, and built it out of
plywood! While his interests were often undisciplined and
misguided, he pursued them with single-minded passion, and
no one can deny that he GOT THINGS DONE.
Clearly, I do not view Hughes as a model for my own life
except in this one area: He knew what he wanted and he went
after it.
In my work I meet incredibly
talented people. I meet people with the resources to change
the world in amazing ways!
And yet many of them actually achieve very little because
they never DECIDE what to do with their lives.
They can have and do so many things that they think they
can have it all.
This week I talked with an amazing woman. She is physically
beautiful, young, healthy, and educated. Her work has been
praised internationally. She leads an incredibly rich, even
exotic life, and yet she is frustrated and her business is
suffering. She wants to be a wife and mother, and a
nationally-acclaimed writer and speaker. She is owns a
complex business, and (of course) she is exhausted.
While I admire her, I declined to be her coach for one
primary reason. Instead of looking for ways to focus her
activities, she wants coaching to help her "get more done."
She will not choose. She does not delegate, and I saw
little chance for real change in her life. Until she makes
some clear, difficult choices, her life will continue to be
ruled by chaos, stress and confusion.
In our own ways, many of us fall into the same trap.
We have our work and our families, our hobbies and our
dreams. We have so many options and choices that we refuse
to choose. Because we refuse to say "no" to things of
secondary importance, we are unable to say a clear,
definitive "YES!" to the most important things in life.
For all of his faults and for all the craziness, Howard
Hughes knew the power of focus. He could say a clear,
resounding YES! to the things that interested him. Even
when it meant ignoring enormous pressures and losing
millions of dollars, he concentrated on a FEW THINGS and
achieved incredible results. He knew his priorities, even
when the rest of the world thought he was crazy.
We can learn from that.