There is a famous question that has helped people clarify their goals
for generations. It usually goes something like this: "If you never had
to work for the rest of your life, what would you do just because you
love it so much?"
This week I've been reading about a man who faced that exact situation.
I read Empire, Barlett and Steele's 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.
Yes, he was a playboy and I doubt that he worked very hard by most people's standards, 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 mis-guided, 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 as a coach and keynote speaker I meet incredibly talented people. I meet people with the resources to change the world in amazing ways! Their raw talent often takes my breath away!
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.
Television, the internet, books and movies bring the world into our homes and offices. We are educated. Opportunity is all around us, and too often we end up confused and over-whelmed.
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 life, and yet she is frustrated and nearly broke. She wants to be a wife and mother, and a nationally-acclaimed writer and speaker. She is owns a dynamic business, and (of course) she is exhausted.
While I admire her enormously, 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, and she does not delegate, and I saw little chance for real change in her life.
In our own ways, many of us fall into the same trap.
We have our work, our families, our hobbies and our dreams. We have options and choices and we refuse to choose. We are unwilling to say "no" to any of it, so we become unable to say a clear, powerful "YES!"
For all of his faults (and there were many of them) and for all the craziness (and there was lots of it), 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.
This week I've been reading about a man who faced that exact situation.
I read Empire, Barlett and Steele's 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.
Yes, he was a playboy and I doubt that he worked very hard by most people's standards, 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 mis-guided, 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 as a coach and keynote speaker I meet incredibly talented people. I meet people with the resources to change the world in amazing ways! Their raw talent often takes my breath away!
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.
Television, the internet, books and movies bring the world into our homes and offices. We are educated. Opportunity is all around us, and too often we end up confused and over-whelmed.
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 life, and yet she is frustrated and nearly broke. She wants to be a wife and mother, and a nationally-acclaimed writer and speaker. She is owns a dynamic business, and (of course) she is exhausted.
While I admire her enormously, 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, and she does not delegate, and I saw little chance for real change in her life.
In our own ways, many of us fall into the same trap.
We have our work, our families, our hobbies and our dreams. We have options and choices and we refuse to choose. We are unwilling to say "no" to any of it, so we become unable to say a clear, powerful "YES!"
For all of his faults (and there were many of them) and for all the craziness (and there was lots of it), 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.
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