Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success by G. Richard Shell

Author:G. Richard Shell [Shell, G. Richard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781101601464
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-08-14T14:00:00+00:00

Motivation is the energy that gets you up every day and keeps powering you toward your goals as you encounter obstacles large and small. It is what puts your capabilities to work.

A final note: underlying everything we talked about in this chapter is one inevitable fact that we did not discuss but that affects all our motivations—the limited time we have on this earth to achieve our life’s work. About halfway through the Success course, I write the number 32,850 on the blackboard before the students get to class and then challenge them to figure out what the number means sometime before the class is over. See if you can figure it out right now. Any ideas?

If nobody guesses, I tell them at the end of class: it is the number of days you get to live if you are fortunate enough to be alive for ninety years. Every day that goes by, one digit ticks off that total.

I do not dwell on the fact that our days are numbered because it can be depressing to some people. Who needs to be reminded of death? But if you see this fact clearly, it changes everything—making life itself the most inspiring motivation of all. For example, a memorable part of Steve Jobs’s famous 2005 Stanford graduation speech, which I quoted near the end of the introduction, was his description of how he motivated himself through awareness of his own death.

As he put it:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. 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…. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

If there is any reason to, as the hockey coach Fred Shero put it, “set yourself on fire” with motivation, this is it. With only one life to live, why not live it with purpose and energy? Why not make it memorable? What have you got to lose?

You are now ready to embark on the next stage of your journey—one that will take you from your inventory of capabilities and motivations to an even deeper place. One of the most important assets needed to succeed is resilience—the ability to pick yourself up when you fall.

The next chapter will help you discover the sources of your self-confidence.

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