Many of you are familiar with the fact that I like to paraphrase a well-known quote: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”*
I discovered my why at an early age thanks to my mother. She instilled in me an incredible, all-out work ethic and a fierce desire to be someone who makes more emotional deposits in life rather than withdrawals.
My path since that day is marked by successes and plenty of failures, but I’m grateful for both outcomes because they prepared me for the writing journey I’m embarking on today.
I invite you to come with me as I explore some of my life lessons in this blog series. We’ll look back on 35 years of leadership experiences and we’ll cherry pick a few highlights along the way—and most importantly, we’ll focus on the lowlights because there have been some doozies. Sometimes my reflections might contain advice that’s difficult to hear, but one of the best deposits I can offer is to describe hard-won lessons so you don’t have to repeat my mistakes.
Some of you may be too young to remember “destination TV” when you had to wait each week to find out the conclusion of a cliffhanger episode. My goal is to create that same anticipation with each “episode” I send and give you the satisfaction of knowing how your own plot can unfold if you focus on being the best you can be.
This isn’t an ego thing, but a desire to pay it forward. I feel a calling to share my reflections with you and am anxious to get started! If you want to join me on this journey, choose a channel you like. I’ll be on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Or you can simply enjoy the regular posts I send via email.
Stay tuned for my next episode when I talk about the biggest failure in my life and what I learned from it.
Stand by your why,
*Mark Twain is often credited for the quotation I’ve shared above but no evidence of him saying or writing the phrase has been located. A fuller version of this narrative, however, is found in The Character Code by Taylor Hartman (Scribner, 1991).
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