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Writing obituaries is hard work, and most people do not enjoy the process. Writing an obituary is like facing death and facing the finiteness of life, also of your own life. In the process of writing you experience a wide range of emotions, ranging from grief over a loss to the warm smiles of fond memories. It also helps us put life back in perspective, let’s us focus on what’s truly important and what might not be.

This is why writing an obituary for yourself is a very powerful exercise to help you focus on those important things. Stephen Covey asks you to do this exercise in his record-selling book “The 7 habits of highly effective people“, and I’ve added a much more detailed version in my ebook “Personal Core Values“. We want you to focus on the important aspects of your life, and facing the end and looking back on your life is a powerful visualization to help you do that.

The results of this exercise may be that you change some aspects of your life, sometimes just a little and sometimes dramatically. Roz Savage is a woman that shows how this exercise can cause dramatic changes for the better. In the TED video below she tells about how she did this exercise and what the results are.

She used a variation to the obituary exercise that I really like. Instead of only writing the obituary of your life as you envision it, she also wrote the obituary of the life she was currently leading. By doing both of them you’ll get a very clear vision of the difference between them. Roz discovered that she was on the wrong path, and she turned her life around and rowed solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

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People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated.

It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development they are central to the strategy of development.

But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work”.

Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

Rules 3 and 4 of Cherie Carter-Scott’s If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules.

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If you travel towards a destination, it’s important to observe the path. The path teaches you the best way to reach your destination, and it enriches you while you travel it. It’s the same with a goal in life. That too, can get better or worse depending on how you choose to travel the path.

Paulo Coelho in The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom

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Times had changed and we had 500 million pound in the bank. But I didn’t believe in leaving it there. At this point I could of course have retired and concentrated my energies on learning how to paint watercolours or how to beat my mum at golf.

People asked me ‘Why don’t you have some fun now?’, but they were missing the point. As far as I was concerned, this was fun. Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I’ve done from the outset.

More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin’s success.

Richard Branson in his autobiography Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way.

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Originals live consciously
Originals think for themselves
Originals live their emotions
Originals make their own decisions

Originals are rooted from within
Originals see the world as they live in it
Originals don’t mind liking what others dislike
Originals take self-willedness as a compliment

Originals write their own story
Originals choose their own music
Originals dance their own dance
Originals live their own legend

Are you an original?

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I just read the book Brida by Paulo Coelho. It’s about the quest and eventual initiation into witchhood of a 21 year old girl with a desire to learn magic. The story has a lot of religious fragments and messages – as do most of Coelho’s books – and they are nicely mixed into the neopagan storyline and combined with lessons from nature and life in general.

In one fragment Brida sits on a mountain together with Magus, one of her teachers, and they watch the sunset. During the last moments of the sunset both of them say a prayer. This is Brida’s prayer:

Lord,
help me understand
that all the good things in life that happen to me
do so because I deserve them.
Help me to understand
that what moves me to seek out Your truth
is the same force that moved the saints,
and the doubts I have
are the same doubts that the saints had,
and my frailties are the same frailties.
Help me to be humble enough
to accept that I am no different from other people.
Amen.

I love the core message of this prayer. The saints are ordinary people, just like you and I. They are not special people, they have the doubts, questions, and weaknesses too. We are the same. There may be a saint in all of us. The only way they have set themselves apart from us is by their actions.

They didn’t give in to their weaknesses or to their doubts. Their questions lead them along the path to new answers, and to new questions accompanying those answers. They had a force driving them (and you and I can find that too!), wanting to find a truth.

It is by their actions that they became special, not by who they were. They were simply ordinary people, just like you and I.

Photo by jayhem

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In his book On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Stephen King describes, in one of his many forewords, his initial reluctance to write that particular book. As a fiction writer he felt the desire to write about writing, but he left the work unfinished for a long time questioning his motivations. He didn’t want to write a book, even a short one, that would leave him feeling like either a literary gasbag or a trancendental asshole.

After a comment from another writer (a band member even) he decided to finish and publish the book. I’m glad he did, because even in the first chapter “CV” he writes a passage that I found to be very well thought through:

“This is not an autobiography. It is, rather, a kind of curriculum vitae — my attempt to show how one writer was formed. Not how one writer was made; I don’t believe writers can be made, either by circumstances or self-will (although I did believe those things once).

The equipment comes with the original package. Yet it is by no means unusual equipment; I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened. If I didn’t believe that, writing a book like this would be a waste of time.

This is how it was for me, that’s all. A disjointed growth process in which ambition, desire, luck and a little talent all played a part. Don’t bother to read between the lines, and don’t look for a through-line. There are no lines — only snapshots, most out of focus.”

This small amount of text holds a lot of experience and tells the tale of a paradigm shift. It also holds promise for everyone seeking to find a suitable profession that they actually enjoy (and there are lots of you seekers out there). It also holds a warning for those that already are on the right path. Read it carefully and you’ll find them.

What appealed to me in this piece was this part in particular:

The equipment comes with the original package. Yet it is by no means unusual equipment; I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened. If I didn’t believe that, writing a book like this would be a waste of time.

Ever since I heard it (I have the audiobook) I’ve been going back to this bit and listen to it again and again. You have to believe that talents and skills can be strengthened and sharpened, it has to be the core belief for everybody with a desire to teach (like I have). That’s important.

But the statement about the equipment and the package is also vital. Everybody has talents, and not everybody has the same talents. Strengthening and sharpening equipment that’s there is useful, but for equipment that’s not included in the package, it’s utterly pointless and a waste of time for both student and teacher (or master and apprentice if you will).

It’s important then to find your equipment (sounds cheeky, but you know what I mean), to discover your talents and strengthen and sharpen them. Don’t bother to fill in the gaps, you were not made to fill those gaps anyway. And when you know what your equipment is, nurture it and exploit it simultaneously and make it work on your life’s work.

Knowing your life’s work is equally important by the way, lots of people are still in the dark on that one too. Your life’s work should be something you find important. The only way to find out is to find your path and starting walking on it. The path will show you which way to go and your talents will help you to decide when the path forks. That’s something I believe.

Stephen King’s passage can easily be rewritten for this blog, my blog about my path. It’s an account of my journey, my thoughts, my lessons learned, my uncertainties. Snapshots at best, most out of focus. But I trust that this path is my path and that it will show me which way to go. In the past I have taken detours (even recently), but my path keeps finding many inspiring ways, mostly through people, to get me back on track. Right now, it lead me to the desire to discover my talents. Haven’t given that much thought before.

This blog is not a self improvement blog. It is, rather, a kind of living memoir — my attempt to show how someone finds his path through life. Not how the path was created; I don’t believe paths can be created, either by circumstance or self-will (allthough I did believe those things once).

The path comes with the original package. Yet it is by no means a clear path; I believe large numbers of people have at least some vision of their path or future, and those visions can be strengthened and sharpened. If I didn’t believe that, writing this blog like this would be a waste of time.

This is how it is for me, that’s all. A disjointed growth process in which ambition, desire, luck and a little talent all play a part. Don’t bother to read between the lines, and don’t look for a through-line. There are no lines — only snapshots, most out of focus.

There it is.
What’s your path?

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Imagine you’re a simple student in the Netherlands. Without making any plans for it, what would you say the chance is that the same afternoon you’d be flying in a private jet with Richard Branson to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama in Washington?

That’s right! Zero. Or at least very very very close to zero. Yet this is exactly what Dutch students Omar Kbiri en Lennard Hulsbos achieved last week.

Their secret? They asked.

Mister Branson, we are 2 broke students, can we join you on the plane to DC?

They simply asked Richard Branson if he had two spare seats in his plane, so they could attend the inauguration. Richard Branson was a speaker at the Big Improvement Day convention in Amsterdam. During this event there was the possibility of asking questions by sending a sms to a big screen (that everybody could see). And they plainly asked. And Richard Branson said yes.

Now there were probably a myriad of reasons not to ask such a ‘ridiculous’ question, but none of those reasons would’ve gotten them quite the same result.

Takeaway

If you want something, why not simply ask for it? Who knows, people might just say yes.

Photo by unknown. Is this your photo?

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