Carly Fiorina, Former CEO, and Current Presidential Candidate
“I lost my job in the most public way possible, and the press had a field day with it all over the world. And guess what? I'm still here.”
When everything hits the fan, most people call it failure, and that is usually construed as quite the negative. Being human, this a completely natural reaction, mostly because it’s hard to feel positive when things didn’t work despite your best efforts, and you are not in control of the outcome.
How do successful people look at this type of situation? Ms. Fiorina decided to run for office. In 2010 she won the Republican nomination for the U. S. Senate in a three way race in California, but lost in the general election. Strike two. At the time of this episode, she is running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.
Whatever she ends up accomplishing she is quite driven and will continue to go for it. In this case, she will either lose in the primary, or general elections, but stands a chance of being the first woman to be president of the United States. If she didn’t run, she definitely would not have a chance. But she is, and she could be.
C. S.Lewis
“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”
In Episode 9 of Daggers Of The Mind, Michael Jordan talks about how you have to expect something of yourself before you can do anything. Later in the same episode, Thomas Edison, one of the worlds greatest failures is quoted. He is really only known for the amazing successes he is credited for. The incandescent light bulb is probably the best known.
He failed more than a thousand times before he discovered the secret. I don’t know many people with that kind of tenacity.
When you crash and burn, put out the fire and see what is left in the debris. You will be surprised at the amazing value in what remains. You’ll find some building blocks for the next attempt, and some serious lessons learned. It’s time to get up, dust yourself off and get cracking!
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Steve Jobs, Legendary Apple Computer Guy
“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
Impending death is certainly a sobering thought. I imagine for all of us, this would be something that would make you come up close and personal and evaluate everything you have done, and what you still have time to do.
Today would be a different day with different priorities if you knew you didn’t have long on this earth. There are lot things we find really important now that would seem quite frivolous with that hanging over you.
Now this begs to ask, Why do we wait until we are dying before we take a serious look at our priorities? Shouldn’t our agenda be similar anyway? How much do we do every day that could be discarded in favor of the truly worthy causes?
A great article on setting your priorities straight for a happier life is on tinyBuddha.com. The link will be in the show notes for episode 40.
Take a moment right now and think about this. What are you doing today that would be completely discarded if you were dying? Now it’s time to ask yourself why are you doing this in the first place. Could you think of something more important to take its position in your agenda?
A lot of the things we do in a given day are the urgent things, not what is actually important. Things that start as important get urgent because we put them off until later when they could have been done much more efficiently at the beginning. Each day they get more and more urgent, and then we find ourselves putting off other important things because the deadline is here for important things we put off in the past.
It’s time to get our priorities in an order to account for the life we want to live, while we have time to live. Just think how much easier the end of life choices will be if we are caught up on important things when we get that tragic news. Then we can take care of the most important task of all, being ready to go. All preparations made, our family taken care of, and being prepared to take that great leap. I hope, when you arrive, you can feel you have had a life well lived.
A final quote from Techumseh
“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/live-a-life-you-love-5-steps-to-set-your-priorities-straight/
https://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
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My wife Dee and I have a new show called the WV Podcast. It is a show about the great state of WV and the stories of the amazing people who make it such a great place to live. Let’s tear down the negative hillbilly stereotype assigned to us by the national media. Let’s tell our own story. You can find the show at wvpodcast.com.
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This is something I need to learn.
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