“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success"
I know this works, it is how I was able to ever get an "A" in school, it is how was able to have any success athletically, and it is how I was able to have success with the firm. It is also what has made me successful at times as a coach, only to have that success lessoned as my obsession was diverted. Interestingly enough this is also what has made my relationships flourish early and dwindle over time.
Obsession is what this quote is really describing. Obsession is what makes CEOs successful, it is also what causes them to have heart attacks, lose their families, or just simply be detached. Obsession brings great wealth, and power, and yes, huge amounts of success but, for the very few, the infinitely small percentage of people that obsession helps in this way, there are millions upon millions that get chewed up and spit out by this very same approach.
When you have one thing that is yours, and yours alone, that can be a great and wonderful thing, it can also be your undoing. For me over the years it has been both. When it has been good it has been really good, when it has been bad I have wanted to die. That is the nature of giving everything you have to one thing and one thing only. It is easy for me to see how the approach in this quote can make for great success, but understanding that a microscopic distance away from such huge success is epic failure.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Validation - Sort Of
"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out." - Roy Croft
People much smarter and more eloquent than I tend to take what I think, feel, and/or obsess about and find a way to put it into words that I never could. The above is another quote from the same colleague and again this strikes a cord.
It is amazing how for all of my life I have felt this, lived this, believed this. Coming up on forty seven and counting, not to mention single, I have, at the very least, been questioning all that which I believe, if not beginning to lose hope, faith, in what I believe.
I have had some wonderful relationships, some wonderful interludes, some wonderful ships pass by in the night, and it can definitely be said that I liked the person I was when I was with those people, I liked the person I was becoming when I was with those people, and I liked the strong, confident person that came out around those people.
I don't know why I am being sly and saying people, women, there I said it.
I have always said that I love women, and I guess that is a true enough statement, there is something about them, but there are seldom few that can actually make me feel this way and it has to do with love more than lust, chemistry more than thought, attraction, yes first physical, but then in all other ways. And, most of all, it has to do with the power of caring more for someone else's happiness than for my own, which when that happens does in fact make me someone I like more, respect more, enjoy more, and that is the power of being in love, at least to me.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
People much smarter and more eloquent than I tend to take what I think, feel, and/or obsess about and find a way to put it into words that I never could. The above is another quote from the same colleague and again this strikes a cord.
It is amazing how for all of my life I have felt this, lived this, believed this. Coming up on forty seven and counting, not to mention single, I have, at the very least, been questioning all that which I believe, if not beginning to lose hope, faith, in what I believe.
I have had some wonderful relationships, some wonderful interludes, some wonderful ships pass by in the night, and it can definitely be said that I liked the person I was when I was with those people, I liked the person I was becoming when I was with those people, and I liked the strong, confident person that came out around those people.
I don't know why I am being sly and saying people, women, there I said it.
I have always said that I love women, and I guess that is a true enough statement, there is something about them, but there are seldom few that can actually make me feel this way and it has to do with love more than lust, chemistry more than thought, attraction, yes first physical, but then in all other ways. And, most of all, it has to do with the power of caring more for someone else's happiness than for my own, which when that happens does in fact make me someone I like more, respect more, enjoy more, and that is the power of being in love, at least to me.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
The End Before the Beginning
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France
No wonder I am so tired!!
This quote comes to me from a colleague and struck me directly. With all that I have done in my life, the places I have traveled, the things I have seen and experienced, the people I have met, I have always felt profoundly sad, depressed even, at the end of each "thing" that has happened in my life, eventually followed by the excitement of the next. I always thought this was because I am so goal oriented that this was simply the vacuous feeling once the goal was achieved and the days and months spent attaining that goal were over, I had never thought of this as grief over what was being left behind, what was ending, at least not until now.
Where does the phrase "to die a thousand deaths" come from?? Wherever, and whomever, it now seems vastly appropriate. Just the eight years with "the firm," I was constantly reaching the end and forging a new beginning, essentially every few months. We did this with such regularity and absolute abandon that I was on a golf course in Chicago on a Thursday afternoon, packed and on a plane for London on Sunday, back in Chicago on Friday to put everything I owned in storage and back in London the following Monday for a year of working in Europe.
For my year in Europe there were three hellos and three goodbyes. Wow. Just never really thought of it this way. Another thought that came across my desk today had to do with the true cost of something rather than simply the dollar cost. The vacation home may cost three hundred grand, but what about the five years of working nights and weekends it took to get it. What was the true cost of the way I have loved my life, and the experiences I have had?
Single, alone, tired, old, fat, bald, glasses, no kids, hmmmm, what cost indeed.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
No wonder I am so tired!!
This quote comes to me from a colleague and struck me directly. With all that I have done in my life, the places I have traveled, the things I have seen and experienced, the people I have met, I have always felt profoundly sad, depressed even, at the end of each "thing" that has happened in my life, eventually followed by the excitement of the next. I always thought this was because I am so goal oriented that this was simply the vacuous feeling once the goal was achieved and the days and months spent attaining that goal were over, I had never thought of this as grief over what was being left behind, what was ending, at least not until now.
Where does the phrase "to die a thousand deaths" come from?? Wherever, and whomever, it now seems vastly appropriate. Just the eight years with "the firm," I was constantly reaching the end and forging a new beginning, essentially every few months. We did this with such regularity and absolute abandon that I was on a golf course in Chicago on a Thursday afternoon, packed and on a plane for London on Sunday, back in Chicago on Friday to put everything I owned in storage and back in London the following Monday for a year of working in Europe.
For my year in Europe there were three hellos and three goodbyes. Wow. Just never really thought of it this way. Another thought that came across my desk today had to do with the true cost of something rather than simply the dollar cost. The vacation home may cost three hundred grand, but what about the five years of working nights and weekends it took to get it. What was the true cost of the way I have loved my life, and the experiences I have had?
Single, alone, tired, old, fat, bald, glasses, no kids, hmmmm, what cost indeed.
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Answer
Three "serious" relationships totaling a little more than a decade. Recovery time after each, increases with each singe, totaling a lot more than a decade. Three stints honoring significant requests that I will never regret totaling almost four years. Let's see, that is already almost twenty five years right there, and then factor in absurd focus on job, and/or current coaching stint, and you get 47 and single in two weeks and two days.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, all the time spent ring shopping, and the one engagement, and the two fortunes lost because love is not just blind, at least not in my case, it is deaf, really f---ing dumb, and blind, plus extremely broke!!
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, all the time spent ring shopping, and the one engagement, and the two fortunes lost because love is not just blind, at least not in my case, it is deaf, really f---ing dumb, and blind, plus extremely broke!!
Thank you again for getting this far with me.
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