Steve Jobs, Les Brown, and Eric Thomas on confronting mortality, enduring hardship, and obsessive self-improvement. Jobs asks himself daily if today is his last day. Thomas says most people chase money instead of relentless growth. Brown notes many billionaires started with nothing.
Chapters
If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.
Evan Carmichael.
It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I've 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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
It's hard. Easy is not an option. It's hard living. Life is hard. See, it's hard when, when you are 49 years old, been working on a job for 17 years, and they come in and tell you you're finished and give you one week severance pay. And you got to start all over again. It's hard when you're married and raising children and your children are crawling and your husband dies unexpectedly. It's hard handling just the tragedies of life. It's hard when you're working on something and, and you put everything you have in it and it doesn't work out.
You know, teenage mom got pregnant at 17, you know. And, you know, I just been failing my whole life, man. My old dude didn't come in my life until I was about 30. Dropped out of high school, took 12 years to get a 4-year degree, man. I like, I mastered failing, you know.
We can look at a laundry list of billionaires who started with absolutely nothing and ultimately got to where they wanted to be. Sam Walton, Ralph Lauren, Harold Hamm, David Murdoch, Howard Schultz, Oprah Winfrey, Larry Ellison. All these people started from absolutely nothing.
The problem with most people is that you're not obsessed with improvement. You're obsessed with making money. You're obsessed with taking your business to the next level. And can I be honest with you guys? When you become I'm obsessed with improvement. I will spend more time learning in Australia than I will speaking. I'm gonna say it again because you missed it. I will spend more time sitting under people. I will spend more time learning than I will speaking in this country. I will walk away with stuff I never heard before, books I've never read before, audios I've never seen before, going to conferences that I've never gone, hanging out with people that I never hung out with before. This is nothing, guys. This is just a dessert.
Me speaking is just a dessert.
This is just the beginning. I came to Australia to learn. I came to Australia to get an upgrade. And when I go back, my wife will notice the difference. My kids will know a difference.
Why?
I'm obsessed with improvement. Every day I'm getting better. There are those of you with phones, and every new phone that comes out, you get it.
Every upgrade, you get it.
Every piece of software, you get it. You are upgrading your technology and you've not upgraded yourself.
What are you— how do you hang in there during the hard, difficult times? Bless you. You must have faith. You've got to believe in yourself. You've got to believe in your abilities. You've got to believe in your service, your company, your ideas unquestionably. You've got to have faith, and that faith gives you patience. That is not going to happen as quickly as you want it to happen. A lot of things are going to happen that will catch you off guard, and so therefore you've got to deal with and handle it as it comes. And not only that, but that faith and patience drives you into action. You've got to keep moving and keep plugging away. In the Far East, they have something that's called the Chinese bamboo tree. The Chinese bamboo tree takes 5 years to grow, and when they go through a process of growing it They have to water and fertilize the ground where it is every day, and it doesn't break through the ground until the 5th year. But once it breaks through the ground, within 5 weeks it grows 90 feet tall. Now the question is, does it grow 90 feet tall in 5 weeks or 5 years? The answer is obvious. It grows 90 feet tall in 5 years. Because at any time had that person stopped watering and nurturing and fertilizing that dream, that bamboo tree would have died in the ground. You got to keep on watering your dream.
