Give me One Word and I'll Give you a Direction for your Life

Awhile ago I started reading a book called ‘Full Steam Ahead‘ by Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stoner.

The basic idea of the book is to teach the reader the absolutely invaluable lesson that if you want to accomplish certain things in your life, you have to have a very clear vision of what you want to accomplish.

It seems like common sense to read it in such simplistic terms, but the truth of the matter is that most people don’t really give their lives a mission or a vision.

Most people tend to look around the next corner for toys or experiences, when in all actuality, your life can represent a lot more than that.

If you have a nice car (or 5 or 6 of them), if you have a beautiful house on the beach, and if you have enough money that you could literally start throwing it away, do you really think that people are going to remember those things about you?

People remember how other people make them feel, not how much money someone had, or if they had a nice car or a big house.

I remember way back when I used to be in the Army, and I was home on leave visiting my family, my friends, and my girlfriend. My best friend had moved into a new apartment since the last time I had been home, and the new place was pretty small, especially when you got 8 or 10 people packed in there.

However, when I remember that vacation, I don’t think about how small the apartment was. I think about the fact that we had SO much fun while I was home! I remember the entire experience as leaving me with “warm and fuzzies” and I was actually upset when I found out that he moved out of there.

My point is that even though most people strive to have financial or material success – and there is nothing wrong with that – you might also think about about what the “bigger picture” in your life is.

In ‘Full Steam Ahead‘, the book opens up with the description of a heart-warming and tear-jerking eulogy that a girl reads about her father at his funeral.

After the funeral, someone comes up to thank her for putting together such wonderful words about her father, and she admits that she didn’t write the eulogy.

It turns out that he had written it – many years earlier!

The man had such a clear vision of what he wanted his life to be like, that in order to live up to his wonderful dreams, he wrote a eulogy about himself, and then spent his life making sure that he was living up to those standards.

When he finally left the physical earth, his eulogy didn’t need to be modified at all, because he had successfully lived up to his own standards, and as a result, everyone who knew him also adored him.

That is not to say that your goal should be the adoration of the masses, or that you should start living your life in such a way so that someone can read a great eulogy about you when you’re dead.

However, it does speak volumes about the fact that by deciding what you to accomplish in life – and never backing down from that decision – that you will empower yourself to have, be, or do anything that you can imagine.

Over at The Marketing Minute, Drew’s “Quought of the Day” (see site for details) was as follows:

“If, on the day of your funeral someone were to walk up to the podium and speak a single word or phrase that captured the essence of your life – what would you want that word or phrase to be and what are you doing today and every day to earn it?”

So, what is YOUR word?

Mine is FUN, and you can bet that I make sure I have some of that every single day!