Disney Leadership Keynote Speaker
Five daily blogs about life's 5 big choices on five interconnected sites.
All Mid Life Celebration posts from 2008 – 2014.
“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence.” — Saint Peter
Perhaps hope is elusive to us during a midlife crisis.
Perhaps hope surrounds us during a midlife celebration.
All this time, I’ve been asking you to think about your answer to the simplest, but most important question a young person may ask you.
Are you inspired enough now to come up with your own unique and special answer?
Humble servant.
Profoundly simple.
Easy to remember.
Easy enough for others to remember it.
But not powerful enough to get others motivated to think long enough, and hard enough, to do anything about theirs.
Here’s the 463-word Vision/Mission Statement:
Wait. That’s not it. Sorry.
That 463-word vision/mission statement has been on our refrigerator for over a decade, and now I can’t find it.
In it’s place, this One-Take You Tube video I shot two days ago. It basically covers, more or less, the essence of those two words.
So many of you won’t click on the video, because you’re too busy, too afraid, or idiotic.
And remember, by idiotic, we define it as: Someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way.
There once was a man from Nantucket, ….
Okay, sorry, forgive me please.
There once was a man from Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, who traveled around the country, by bus, by (someone else’s) car and by bicycle.
In 1984, he and his wife of one year, flipped a coin. Palm trees and sunshine won out over mountains and wide-open spaces.
As the years went by, he read many a good book. Gained a ton of knowledge, and even hand-crafted a personal vision/mission statement.
A 463-word vision/mission statement.
Until one day, while teaching to others the critical importance of a leader’s vision, he had a flash of brilliant insight.
The reason people don’t remember fancy, wordsmithed corporate vision/mission statements is due to one glaring reason.
With only a few glorious exceptions, they are way too fancy and way too long.
So he set out to do something about it.
And he labored and poured his heart and soul into it. He took a 463-word vision statement and made it shorter.
Much shorter.
He made it 461 words shorter. For real.
He made it two words.
“To Love and be Loved.”
“Wait! That’s it? That’s all you got? Are you kidding me?”, people might be thinking.
And I say, “What? it’s too simple for you?”
Hello. Earth to astonished person. Wake up. Of course it’s simple.
It’s profoundly simple, and yet simply profound.
“To Love and be Loved.”
Most of life is simple. It’s our nature to want to complicate things, to believe, “Everything is important.”
Why? It’s remains a mystery to this very day. Perhaps it’s the whole “keeping up with the Jones” syndrome.
Simplicity is the way. The only way.
By the way, “I’ll bet you still don’t have an answer, do you?”, he thought to himself as he finished writing this blog post.