I’m a junkie . . . no really, I’m an info junkie. I love gathering information and then try to figure out how to make it useful.
One of the only studies conducted by the IRS that I found interesting states that only 1 in 8 people do something to earn their income that they enjoy.
This is probably why more heart attacks happen on Monday morning that the other 6 ½ days of the week combined.
My grandmother took my father to Houston when he as 18 and declared “Pete I’ve enrolled you in school and you’re going to become a nurse.”
My father wanted to be an engineer but out of respect to his mother he did graduate even though a little reluctantly. He was the only guy in his class and he knew his odds would never again be that good.
He immediately joined the Navy because he desperately wanted to see the world. He was assigned to a submarine that toured the California coast. They spent most of their time underwater and barely came up for air in San Francisco.
That’s where my parents met. Just before I turned two, my father saw a little boy get hit by a car. When he got to the hospital for his shift, he was assigned to the same child. He came home and told my mother “Pack us up, we’re moving to the country!”
Just like that, one week later they moved to a beautiful picturesque little town even though it was most women’s biggest nightmare . . . there wasn’t a single department store within 100 miles!
Daddy loved living in the middle of the forest . . . even though he had to work 3 jobs just to take care of us. After Daddy retired my parents decided to move back to Texas . . . it was less expensive to live. With what they were able to make off of the sale of their home, they were able to begin to build their first new home and even buy brand new cars.
I went back to visit just as the house was being framed. You should have seen how proud my father was, walking me through each room explaining what they would be . . . especially the 3-car garage. He was making one of the stalls a workshop. He loved to work with wood and had even hauled his beat up old workbench all the way from California. I’m sure it’s one of those things that only a man would appreciate.
About a week after they were able to move into their new home, I got that dreaded phone call at 11o’clock at night. My brother quietly told me, “Daddy had a massive heart attack and didn’t make it.”
It took about 6 months, but I used my father’s passing as a catalyst to begin speaking to recently downsized executives. My message was loud and clear: “live every day on purpose”!
I’ve worked with more than 2000 people since my father passed and nearly every one of them had been waiting for some event to take place so they could begin to live their dream or start to do what they had always wanted to do.
We all know life is too short to fit in all that we want to accomplish, but we have a tendency to think we have all the time in the world.
We don’t!