Part 1. Greatness
In the last decade I’ve presented “The Pursuit of Greatness” to thousands of people. The first audiences were high school students entering college and back then the title was “How I Avoided Growing Up.” Over the last few years, the largest audiences have been professionals in career transition (i.e., unwillingly unemployed) and the title was “The Big Picture and Big Decisions.” The words have evolved over the years, but the message hasn’t.
The Pursuit of Greatness is for people at a point in their lives when they are making long-lasting decisions about who they are and what they want to be.
There is something about this speech that fires people up. I’m no bubbly optimist, though I do understand the power of positive thought and can explain it in terms that make sense (and I will in ). I make wisecracks. I rub your nose in your own mortality. I mix metaphors. I make demands of you and am prone to making light of your most deeply held beliefs. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but sometimes I am. Regardless of any of that, I am inextricably on your side. Maybe that’s it. Whatever it is, people really like the presentation and love this book. This simple message helps them move on:
Rule 1: You are obligated to fulfill your Greatest potential. Go on, no excuses, get to it right now!
Not only do you owe it to yourself, you owe it to me! And the guy sitting next to you. And your dog. (You don’t owe it to your cat though. Your cat doesn’t actually care about you.)
Chapter 1. How to use this book
This book will help you understand, recognize, and approach each stage of your own unique Pursuit of Greatness. In many ways, you’re making a transition into a new world. This “new world” business is more than a convenient metaphor. For the last 40,000 years or so, the worlds that people inhabit have shifted. The transition from physical evolution to cultural evolution reflects the fact that our cultural environments affect our lives as much as our physical environments.
Economics is the monetary image of a culture. It is ultimately bound by physical laws, but the so-called laws of economics, including market forces, supply and demand, and monopoly and commoditization, depend on a combination of politics, religion, social norms, and the values and ethics of a society; the sum of which is “culture.” It is in this sense that the instant you begin your Pursuit of Greatness you begin the transition from one world to another.
In the course of this transition, I’ll help you find ways to be realistic in charting your course to Greatness. And by “realistic,” I mean a realistic evaluation of the stakes; “realistic” yes, but not in the cynical voice of the jerk who asks, “What are you, nuts?”
We’ll have our cynical moments, some sarcasm, too, but always with the complete appreciation that Great challenges have been met by human beings hundreds of millions of times and there is simply no compelling reason to exclude you from that level of success.
|
