Tag: Over 40

Despair Is The Price

“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim”. — Graham Greene

Wow. Then what does it mean, “If your goal isn’t impossible, you’re not reaching high enough”?

Simply this:  You can set the bar low and reach a goal, and then wonder if you could have done better, eventually living with a certain degree of regret for not trying harder.

Or, you can set the bar impossibly high, give it your absolute best, fail, yet live with the satisfaction and peace that you left nothing on the table.

There are no guarantees in life.  But you already knew that, right?

Who Gives A Crap?

“He that would govern others, first should be Master of himself”. — Philip Massinger

If this is the case, then there really aren’t too many qualified leaders out there. Are there?

How hard do you work to gain mastery over yourself?  Do you even care?  Isn’t it an awful lot of work to polish things no one can immediately, if ever, see?

Then why do it?  Simply this, you will know.  And if you never get to the point where this is important to you, then you will never understand self-mastery.  If you never understand this, you will always be frustrated with people, particularly yourself.

Who gives a crap, right?  My point exactly.

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

“Whose life is it anyway”. — Brian Clark

You know what?  I’m not sure where to begin on this one.  Seriously.  The quote is so intriguing, yet so open for interpretation.

If you’ve been in the workplace all your life and now into mid life, you are well aware of how “work” can own you.

Others may understand this, “You either run your business or it runs you”.

Or, no one ever said on their deathbed, “I wish I had spent more time at the office”.

No matter how you think about today’s quote, it certainly does make you think, doesn’t it?

But does it call you to any action?

Reading Is Fundamental

“Outside a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.  Inside a dog, it’s too dark to read”. — Groucho Marx

I read every day. Currently reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow.

It’s a book about what it takes to be remarkable. If you saw a herd of cows in a big field and one of them was purple, that would be remarkable. It’s a business book.

And yet, I can’t help but correlate it to life, especially mid life.

There’s a temptation, in mid life, to think that we are past prime and there’s no point to reinventing ourselves.

Bullcrap.

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An Old Ironic Habit

“It is an old ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way”. — Rollo May

I’m tempted to question myself. Why? Because many I talk with, think I’m crazy to believe that people will want to change if the right recipe comes along.

There is a secret recipe. Everyone knows it. But because we ignore it, it remains a secret.

The secret is, “work hard and find your purpose”.

Most people don’t want to do either. I certainly didn’t. Most of my life was, “Work hard, play hard”. That’s a catch phrase for, “Hurry up, we’re lost”.

Then I regained consciousness and started looking around.  There’s much work to be done.  The harvest is great, the workers are few.

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