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What do you really want out of life? Now what's stopping you?

Sunday, October 29, 2006

The Essence of Life?

Am writing this from a different PC to usual, mine crashed last week and is in for repairs.

One of the long term friends of our family is a couple who currently reside in South Africa. During my trip back from Cape Town, I stayed a few nights with them. The amazing thing about this couple is that they have been married for 62 years! They have stuck it out through thick and thin, through sickness and health and family trauma. He was abducted during the war in Zimbabwe, he has a long-standing heart condition and she is prone to falls. They are lovely to watch. They still hold hands. Aware that this could easily have been the last time I would see them, I asked them what the secret of their success was. Their answer, ‘they never went to bed angry.’ A simple but profound key; a nugget of wisdom that they consider to be one of the pivotal cores of their success.

Now, I am aware of the pitfalls of oversimplification, but what would your response be if someone asked you for the best piece of wisdom that you had? If you could distil your experiences and examples down into one phrase, what would it be? It may be something you thought up, a core value deep within your system, or it could be something you read, but I guarantee you, that if you think long enough you will find something you can pass on.

Mine, hmmm. I’ll admit it took some thinking-I have sat under the teaching of some great men. I guess for me it would be ‘Get on with it!’ Too many people have a dream or an idea that they never act on. Great people never started ‘great’. They began where they were with what they had (which was often just a great dream). The Wright brothers did not always fly, nor was the mane ‘Gates’ part of every household. If you know what you want to do-then set about doing it. So that’s my current piece of advice. It may change in the future, but probably not too soon. What’s yours?

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