Weekly Thought – November 5, 2013
Fred sat on a tombstone when he was in his twenties thinking about the direction he wanted for his life. To codify his thinking he wrote out an epitaph: “He stretched others.” He said, “I enjoyed seeing people productive and growing.” His tombstone in Dallas, Texas bears those three words for indeed, he did!
“Thank you for last week’s email. I really needed to hear that and I am sure many others did, too.” The Weekly Thoughts are sent as an encouragement and as a way to allow Fred’s work to keep on stretching others. As you know we are currently having a critical fundraising drive and your help in large and small contributions is needed.
Direction not Goals
Choosing a life direction is more important than just focusing on goals. Enticing short term goals can take one off course and in a faulty direction. Mature success and satisfaction come in the direction we move, not in the goals we attain.
I oppose setting an ultimate goal for one’s life, in the sense of a specific, definable, measurable, figure-oriented place in life — the place for arrival. This puts too much importance on one decision. This closes off the serendipity of life which leads to magnificent adventures.
I have known too many executives who set a title as their ultimate goal only to realize that the joy was in the challenge of achievement, not the actual job attained. The old song says it well, “Is this all there is?” I laugh at the picture of the man spent a lifetime climbing a ladder only to realize at the top it was leaning against the wrong wall. (more…)
