Exercise 1 - Finding Passion

"Whatever you decide to do in life, just be passionate about it…   Don't be intimidated by competition, as success is sweeter and failure less bitter when you have given everything. You have to be true to yourself -- it's your life. You are the masters of your destiny and passion, not pedigree, will win the end."
Jon Bon Jovi addressing Oxford University's prestigious Oxford Union debating society, June 15th 2001.

Passion is such a good indication of purpose because it’s so irrational. Passion is great because it breaks down the linear nature of existence that our society tries so hard to indoctrinate people with.  What I mean by that is, we are told from an early age that we must do this, or do that.  We are given tasks that we must accomplish and we are measured or judged by how well we go.  That is, good, bad, mediocre, which box do you fit into?

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art”
Leonardo Da Vinci

In this sense, life becomes very linear or one directional.  It’s hard just to ‘be’ when someone is always asking you what you’re doing.  Passion breaks this down because when you’re passionate about something you’re happy just to be in it.  That’s not to say that it’s not nice to win at something you’re passionate about, or to be acknowledged for it, but it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen.  If you’re in line with your passion that’s enough.

So, take yourself off somewhere quite and start by writing a list of all the things you’re passionate about and simply love to do.

For example I love:-
- any form of motor racing or speed orientated pursuit
- being in nature
- building and creating things
- ancient traditions, ceremonies, shamanic practices
- new cutting edge technologies

When you have created this list then ask ‘What have I been good at in my life?’

For me I am good at:-
- driving and controlling machines
- understanding complex theories and translating them into practical application eg economics, philosophy
- working with and growing plants
- helping other people to be grounded and sort out any issues

Now when you have both lists the trick is to ask:- What is the common trait in both lists?

This is something that may not appear immediately obvious and you may have to sit with it for a while. When I did this exercise what came up for me is that the common traits were:-
- the need to explore limits and still remain in control – seen in the motor sport stuff and also with regard to my attraction to shamanic practices and ceremonies
- the issue of freedom comes through very strongly – I need to feel free and I love working with plants and being in nature
- creation is also a common theme
- practicality – it’s not enough for me just to work on the theoretical side of things I need to apply knowledge

By now you might see a trend? From this exercise I would say that my life purpose relates to:-
- exploring new ways and ideas for creating freedom of expression that  people can practically apply in their life

So… I write, teach and research new ways of living and working then create courses such as this one to make them real.

How about you? Are you aligned to your passions?

Exercise 2 - Defining Moments

“A value isn’t a value unless you’re willing to pay a price to uphold it”

Values are the things we care about most in life, they are the things that keep us headed in the right direction much like the tracks steer a train. Common values include; love, family, honesty, fairness, freedom, tolerance, responsibility, respect for life, accountability, achievement, duty, justice, empathy, humour, integrity, humility, obedience, patience, self confidence, wisdom, independence, serenity, creativity, generosity, loyalty, safety, dignity, service and generosity. 

Amidst the Chaos all around us, values allow us to see what is most important and to pursue these things in our lives. 

Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to this when he said,

“If you haven’t found something you are willing to die for,
you are not fit to live.”

We don’t see values though – what we see is actions and through others actions we then determine what their values are.

 

Values form the foundations of character. Without solid values we stand on shaky ground.

 

The crucial moments of our lives come not when we are faced with the choice between right and wrong but with the choice between right and right. Should we tell the truth and confess to the teacher that our best mate just hit them in the back of the head with a paper jet? Or should we lie to protect him?

Should we work back to meet a project deadline and miss our daughters school play or leave work early and risk losing the job?

Should we stand up for a stranger in the street who is being harassed by youths and risk being harassed ourselves or cower in the corner trying not to make eye contact for fear of the consequences?

Right versus right.

The defining moments of our lives are those times when we are forced to choose what values we will uphold. It is these times that define our character and shape our personal legend of who we are.

Shared values form the underpinnings of culture. We are unlikely to continue a friendship or relationship unless we have shared values.

So, what have been the defining moments in your life?

The times when you have been forced to pay a price to uphold what you thought was most important?

What price did you pay and what benefit did you gain?

What did that tell you about the Values that are most important in your life?

How has this affected your life since?

What story do you tell yourself about who you are because of these events?

Exercise 3 - The Power of Stories

Considering the World from the perspective of the 3 Domains of Being – Past, Present and Future – in the Past we have a fixed view of the World which includes our belief about who we are and what we deserve from the World.

 

It is useful to uncover what these stories are and whether or not they are supportive or obstructive to us in being able to create what we really want in the World.

The first step is to begin to become aware of your internal dialogue and what the main themes of your ‘self talk’ or stories are.

Researchers say that we think about 90% of the same thoughts today as we did yesterday so don’t worry too much if you don’t catch it all the first day – you’ll get another chance tomorrow.

The best way to do this is to carry a journal with you and simply jot down the main gist of your internal dialogue as it arises. For instance you may find yourself sitting in traffic in your car and your mind wanders to your job and your relationship with your boss. You might have a dialogue that starts with the thought that your boss doesn’t like you and that’s why you never get promoted.

A little while later you may be having lunch and you begin to think about your husband or wife and how you don’t spend enough time with each other anymore and that you’ll probably just drift apart.

Driving home you may then begin to think about your children and how they will soon be leaving home and how lonely you will be.

These three things would then be identified as the main themes in your thinking.

Once you have identified the main themes then you can dig deeper and uncover the sub parts. The individual stories that you tell over and over again.

For example – with regard to the main theme identified above of the relationship with the boss. The sub parts may include:- recounting past events where you have been looked over for promotion; past events when he/she gave you odd looks or mixed feedback; past events where you actually did stuff up.

If you stick at this exercise, over a period of time you will uncover the main themes and all the sub-part or supporting stories – the evidence to support the main theme.

Once you have all this written down you need to ask:-
- Who are you in this story? Good or bad
- What does the story tell you about what you deserve from life?

In the example above, the story may be that you are always missing out on opportunities because you don’t present well (read bad). Therefore the logical conclusion is that you don’t deserve to be promoted and hence you are actually getting exactly what you believe you deserve.

The challenge once you have identified such a story is then to re-write it into a positive one.

Then every time the story arises – usually there will be an environmental trigger e.g. office meeting – you can simply acknowledge and redirect.

That is – “Oh, there’s that negative story again – I acknowledge that story is there but I refuse to buy into it and I’m going to focus on what I want instead.”

In this way – over time – you can deconstruct your internal dialogue and reconstruct it in a much more supportive way.

Reading 1 - Are You Deciding On Purpose?

Interview with Richard Leider from Fast Company, Issue 13, page 114.

Fast Company spoke with Richard Leider about his "laws" for making decisions on purpose.

1. Life is a Spiral
People today are intimidated about how much choice they have.  There are almost too many career choices, too many life choices.  People are overwhelmed at times by the decisions they get to make and have to make about their jobs, their families, their businesses, and their futures.  There are so many variables today: Where will you work?  Where will you live?  What do you want for yourself?  What do you want for your family?  If you don't have a way to sort it all out you can become paralyzed.

I have a visual exercise that helps you understand the choices you have to make at different points in your life.  Draw a little spiral, something like a tornado going upwards.  That spiral represents the different phases you encounter in your life.  There are times in life when you're on a plateau, where things are well balanced.  Then along comes a triggering event that knocks you into limbo.  When that trigger occurs, you have to put all your energy into handling the situation, whether it's an emergency at work, the death of a close friend, or your own health crisis.

That puts you into the third part of the spiral: a period of uncertainty.  Something is ending, something else is about to begin - but you're between the ending and the beginning.  To get out of limbo, you have to look at everything you've been carrying with you.  You have to unpack your bag and then repack it, so you can go on with the next phase of your life.

Today, more and more people are being struck by more and more triggers.  One out of every two marriages ends in divorce.  Every eight seconds, one of the country's 76 million Baby Boomers turns 50.  In the workplace, companies have downsized and reengineered, and people have become free agents.  As a consequence, more people are asking themselves where they're going, what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, and what really matters to them.  These aren’t decisions you can just think your way through.  They involve emotions more than ideas - how we feel about ourselves, more than how we think about ourselves.

2. Answer these two questions. 
Ask yourself these questions and answer them honestly: What do you want? And how will you know when you get it?

People really do have their own solutions.  The problem is, either they don't know how to discover them, or they avoid discovering them.  But if you want to come up with good decisions for your work and your life, simply ask those two questions, because it comes down to the very simple things.

3. Feed these three hungers
There are three hungers that people are trying to feed throughout their lives.  The first is to connect deeply with the creative spirit of life.  Sooner or later, most people come to recognize that there is some sort of creative energy that infuses all of life.  They feel a hunger to touch that energy and to be touched by it.  That doesn't mean you have to be a creative person in a classic sense - to make your living as a painter, a dancer, a writer, or an actor.  It could mean an experience as universal as bringing a child into the world, or helping to nurture and shape a life.  It could mean finding ways to infuse the workplace with more creativity and more playfulness.

The second hunger is to know and express your gifts and talents.  The people I have met in my 30 years as a career counselor are always absolutely sure they have some unique talent.  They may not know what it is yet.  They may not know how to express it.  It may have nothing to do with how they earn a living or what they do at work.  But they know they have something within them that they have to contribute.  And this feeling lasts throughout your lifetime:  The healthiest seniors I've met continue to explore their gifts and abilities, long after they’ve left the workplace.

The third hunger is to know that our lives matter.  Everyone wants to leave behind some kind of legacy, some kind of personal mark.  It doesn't have to be great or magnificent.  But human beings know that at one level, we each have our own unique thumbprint, and we all want to leave that print behind for others to see that we've been here.  We can be successful, make a lot of money, reach a certain status, but it will be success without fulfillment.  Fulfillment comes from feeding these three hungers.

4. Discover the four factors of every decision
No matter what decision you're facing, the same four elements apply.  First, to discover how to live from the inside out.  You absolutely have to start with yourself, not with the external demands of the situation.  Second, discover your gifts.  What is it that makes you unique?  What song do you want to sing?  Third, discover what moves you.  Where do you find joy?  A decision that connects with your own emotions is much more likely to succeed.  And fourth, discover solitude.  Go to a special place where you can find quiet.  If it's in the mountains, take the time to get there.  If you can’t go there, create a space in which you can find a similar piece of mind.  In solitude, you're much more likely to deal with the first three elements of this process.

5. Answer the ultimate question
The ultimate question is, What is your vision of the good life?  In this culture, there's a tendency to talk about the good life in consumerist terms.  It's all external.  We measure the good life by the car we drive, the Scotch we drink, the designer brand we wear, the community we live in.  In doing research for my books I ask people their definition of the good life.  Remarkably, I hear the same answer:  The good life means living in the place where you belong, being with the people you love, doing the right work on purpose.

You can boil it down to these four elements.  You live in a place where you feel you belong.  You're with people you love, and your relationships are working, including your relationship with yourself.  You've got the right work:  You're using your talents on something you believe in, in an environment that fits who you are.  And you're doing it all on purpose:  It fits your overall philosophy.

With all those elements, you look at your life and you work from the inside out.  They're all about you as an individual, about creating meaning for yourself, rather than having the outside world create it for you.

6. Make every job search an inventure and an adventure
Looking for a job is so much a part of everyone's experience, and is so important to each of us, that not only is it worth talking about in its own terms, but it also relates to the much larger issue of personal direction.  Start with a fairly simple fact: If you don't know what you're looking for almost any job will look great.  And if you don't know where you're going, a lot of paths will take you there.  But if you do care where you work and where you're going, how do you assess what's right for you?

We all need good information to make good decisions.  There are two paths to good information gathering.  The first is internal - I call it "in-verturing".  It means taking a very long look inside yourself.  For some people, particularly tough minded, old school business people, that can be very difficult.  This personal reflection stuff is not their cup of tea.  They're not interested in it, and they're not comfortable with it.  For others, it's not only part of who they are - they've built time for it into their life.  By participating in such programs as Outward Bound, they try to live a more conscious reflective life.

Whether you're comfortable with it or not, to make a good life decision, you have to answer some hard questions about who you are and what you want.  I believe we all have answers to those questions - we all have mental maps that express our innermost sense of ourselves.  In-verturing gives us the quite and the time to discover those maps.

Then, after you know more about your map, you're ready for the second part of good information gathering: adventuring.  Adventuring takes you out into the world, prepares you to find the people and the environments that fit your needs, suit your talents and match your map.  Of course, in reality, you don't first do in-venturing and then do adventuring; they happen simultaneously.

But frequently, in-venturing doesn’t happen at all - people simply avoid it.  An event will trigger a change, but instead of taking time for reflection, they go back out into the world.  And what they find is the same type of job, and the same type of situation that didn't work for them before.

You see the same pattern in both work and marriage:  You leave a job that makes you unhappy - and then you find the same kind of job.  You get divorced and then marry the same kind of person.  And typically, you blame the world for these bad experiences, rather than doing self reflection or finding some coach to break the pattern.

7. Use this formula for a good career decision
Over the years, I've devised a very simple formula that lays out the critical factors to consider when you're making a career choice:  T + P + E x V

T stands for talent, and it's where you should begin when you're considering a career choice or a career change.  Very simply the questions are, What are your strengths and weaknesses?  How can you focus on your strengths and manage your weaknesses?

Most people aren't using their talents.  They didn't choose their career, their career chose them.  They got into a line of work because they had to get a job, or somebody told them they'd be good at a job.  They were young, they started down a certain path, and they never stopped to ask what their calling might be - not just their job, but their real calling.  Then before you know it, they hit midlife, and they're asking themselves, "Why am I doing this?  Why did I start down this path instead of following my real talents?”

P stands for passion, or for purpose.  Talents develop best in the context of interest.  Aristotle said it a long time ago: "Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation."  Ask yourself, "What needs doing in your organisation?  What needs doing in the world?"  Then put your talents to work on some area of need that you believe in.  Choosing your work is your chance to do something more meaningful than getting up in the morning, putting in your time, doing what it takes to pay the bills.

The E stands for environment:  What work environment best suits your style, your temperament, your values?  I often meet people who have identified their talents and their passion, but who are working in an environment that doesn't permit them to express themselves.  When they move to a new environment, one that uses their talents and honors their values, they suddenly find an alignment that works.  They discover new energy and new purpose in their work.

V stands for vision - how you see the rest of your life.  Talent, purpose and environment are all about work style and work choice.  Vision describes how work fits into the rest of your life.  Where do you want to live?  How much money is enough?  How important are your relationships?  What are you doing to stay healthy?

8. Live in the real world
In an ideal world, you would do what you love, and get paid handsomely for it.  But in the real world, you're often pulled in two or more different directions.  It's become popular to say, "Just follow your bliss and the money will come."  I don't believe that at all.  These decisions take hard work.  You can't simplify life into that kind of wishful thinking.

But what does work is something called natural productivity.  It happens when the elements of that formula T + P + E x V are in alignment:  You do your best when you're using your talents on something you believe in, and when your environment supports your effort.  The number one factor that holds people back in their environment.  People have real talents that they're prepared to apply to something they believe in, but their environment is toxic.  They take their talents and sense of purpose to a job across the street and they shine.

Mostly people who feel tension between what they say they want to do and what they find themselves doing simply haven't done their homework.  They're waiting for someone else to make the choice for them - or for the world to present them with a corner office, a lot of money and a life of travel.

9. Don't sell yourself short
Work can and should give you a sense of joy.  You spend 60% of your life doing work or getting ready for it.  So, to dismiss your work by saying, "I'm just doing this to pay the bills" seems like an enormous trade off.  Are you really willing to trade off 60% of your time juts to have money to spend in the time that's left?  That's not a good investment.  And if money is what motivates you, ask yourself this:  What if you could invest in yourself?  Would you invest more if you knew you were working on something that used your talents and tapped your passion?  If you could invest in yourself, why not invest in your time?

10. Find motivation from within - and from without
I'm not naïve about motivation.  External rewards like money play an important role in motivating people.  But so does getting recognition for mastery.  I know a lot of people who have made a lot of money, and what they want now is the recognition that comes from being at the top of their profession.  Another motivator is a chance to work with a team that you value in a place where you feel valued.  You love going to work because of the people you're working with.  Together you have a chance to create something that really matters.  On an internal level, recognising your talents can be a great motivator:  What you want more than anything else is the opportunity to express yourself.  For purposes of self motivation, nothing is more powerful than the desire to demonstrate your talents.

11. Get advice from within - and from without
I start with one simple truth:  All change is internal change.  Ultimately every decision comes from within you - and you can't separate yourself into a work "you" and a life "you".  Every decision touches all of you.

That said, it's just as critical to have other people you can turn to for advice and perspective - a personal board of directors.  You need a variety of people, each with a different outlook.  As you go down the boardroom table, you see your family; you see someone who's been a mentor to you.

I recommend at least one or two people who are "go - to" people - regular sounding boards.  You need at least one person you see all the time, someone who's a great listener and who allows you to make your decision.  You're not asking that person to make the decision.  You're asking them to listen and to help you with your decision process.

You may even have someone on your board who's no longer alive - but whose opinion you value and with whom you can have a virtual conversation about the decision you're facing.

12. Make your decisions the way senior citizens wish they had
For nearly 25 years, I've been doing interviews with senior citizens, asking them to look back over their lives and talk about what they've learned.  I've conducted more than 1,000 interviews with people who were successful in their jobs, who retired from leading companies after distinguished careers.  Almost without exception, when these older people look back, they say the same things - things that are instructive and useful for the rest of us as we make decisions going forward in our lives.

First, they say if they could live their lives over, they would be more reflective.  They got so caught up in the doing, they say, that they often lost sight of the meaning.  Usually it took a crisis for them to look at their lives in perspective and try to reestablish the context.  Looking back, they wish they had stopped at regular intervals to look at the big picture.

They also sounded a warning:  Life picks up speed.  The first half of your life is about getting prepared and getting established.  Then time shifts gears.  You hit the second half of your life and everything moves faster.  Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and all of a sudden you're 65 years old.  Looking back, they say, you realize that time is the most precious currency in life.  And as they get older, having time for reflection became even more important.

Second, if they could live their lives over again, they would take more risks.  In relationships, they would have been more courageous.  And in expressing their creative side, they would have taken more chances.  I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said "Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside us."  Many of these people felt that, despite their successes, their music was still inside them.  Almost all of them said they felt most alive when they took risks.  Just being busy from business made them numb.  Aliveness came with growing, stretching, exploring.

Third, if they could live their lives over again, they would understand what really gave them fulfillment.  I call that the power of purpose:  doing something that contributes to life, adding value to life beyond yourself.  Purpose is always outside yourself, beyond your ego or your financial self interest.

We all want both success and fulfillment.  Success is often measured in external ways, but there's an internal measure of success, and it's called fulfillment.  Fulfillment comes from realizing your talents - adding value and living by your values.  Fulfillment comes from integrity, from being who you are and expressing who you are as fully as possible.  It doesn't have to do with your job description or the specifics of your work.  It has to do with how you bring yourself to your work, regardless of what that work is.

Reading 2 - Get What You Want Out Of Life

By  Robert McGarvey

Years before rising to prominence as coach of the University of Notre Dame’s prestigious football team in America, Lou Holtz made a list of 107 things “to do before I die”.  It covered the gamut from attending a dinner at the White House to sky diving.

So far, Holtz has made it to goal 91.  “Set goals and follow through on them,” he says.  “You transform yourself from one of life’s spectators into a real participant.”

We all have dreams and desires, but relatively few people have goals.  Strongly held wishes – “I want to be rich”  or  “I wish I were thinner” – do not qualify.  Though they begin as dreams, goals are specific objectives, attained only through concrete action.  “If you can’t measure it, rate it or describe it, it is probably not a goal,” says Michael LeBoeuf, a business consultant.

Coach Holtz sees this first hand.  Nearly every first year player dreams of professional football.  He explains to them the distinction between goals and fantasies.  “I tell them lots of little goals lie between training camp and playing with a professional team.  First they have to make the Notre Dame team.  Then, one by one, they have to clear the hurdles, and that’s true of every goal we set.”

As Holtz suggests, high achievers know exactly where they want to go.  Here are the steps he and others have followed to fulfil their dreams.

Define your objective
From the time he was eight years old, Dave Thomas wanted to own a restaurant.  “That way,” he says, “I’d never be hungry.”  Orphaned at birth, Thomas never had a stable home life.  Nor did he excel at studies.  But he clung to his goal.

When he was 12, Thomas got a job cleaning tables in a restaurant.  Later, he worked his way up to become a restaurant manager.  He turned around four failing fried chicken restaurants and became an executive with a national chain. 

Finally, after putting together the necessary capital, he opened his own place and named it after his daughter Wendy.  Today he has over 3,800 restaurants.

“I didn’t set my sights on owning a thousand restaurants or even ten,” he says.  “I just concentrated on making one profitable, then another, one step at a time.  Too often people set a difficult task, then give up.  Goals should be focussed on what is achievable.”

Put it on paper 
Once you’ve defined your goal, write it down.  High achievers trace their accomplishments to the time they committed their goals to paper.

When Curtis Carlson was 24, he founded the Gold Bond Stamp Company in Minneapolis and set a goal of earning 100 dollars per week – a princely sum in the Depression.  He wrote down that objective and carried it in his pocket until the paper was frayed.  Today, Carlson Companies ranks among America’s largest privately held corporations, with annual revenues topping 9,000 million dollars.

“Writing out a goal crystallizes it in my mind,” says Carslon.  “I can quickly evaluate whether decisions will take me towards that objective or away from it.”

Map your strategy 
Breaking a goal down into bite sized pieces makes achieving it seem less intimidating.  A technique called backward planning consists of setting an objective and then retracing the steps needed to achieve it.

When Jeff Jackson lost his job as manager of a car dealership, the 36 year old could have landed another sales position.  But he had dreamt of being an independent filmmaker.

It’s now or never, he thought.  Expenses for the project he had in mind would come to 250,000 dollars.  It seemed far fetched, but he had an idea.

The property where Jackson lived was for sale, and he sketched out a series of goals to buy it.  These included finding partners and identifying a potential buyer to make a quick resale.

By pooling resources, Jackson and his team bought the building and promptly resold it for a profit.  With this cash, Jackson bought land, and by selling off small parcels he’s been able to finance his film.  “As I made the individual steps happen,” he says, “I became increasingly sure I could do it.”

Set a deadline 
“A goal is a dream with a deadline,” says motivational expert Zig Ziglar.  “Deadliness provide a time frame for action and get us moving in pursuit of our dreams.”

When Jan McBarron, a nurse, was 25, she acted on her dream of becoming a doctor.  “At first, I thought it was beyond my grasp,” she says.  Then she saw each step towards medical school had a built in deadline.

“Rather than dread deadlines, I used them,” she says.  “Applications had to be in by a certain date, assignments completed at a certain time.  Once I saw what deadlines could do, I began setting my own.”

Twelve years later, Dr McBarron enjoys a thriving medical practice.

Commit yourself
Sales trainer Dave Grant offers this example.  Say your goal is to go to Tahiti a year from now.  What steps can you take ?  How about giving a travel agent a non-refundable deposit ?  If you are really committed, you will make that goal a reality.

That sort of gamble can be used in professional life as well.  Set an ambitious target and commit to it with your boss.  You’ll find you can rally resources you never thought you had.

Don’t fear failure 
Sixteen years ago, Pam Lontos was unemployed and 18 kilograms over weight.  “I was afraid of everything,” she says.  “Nothing was going my way.”

One day in 1976, on impulse, the 31 year old joined a health club, began listening to motivational tapes, and things started clicking.

As her appearance improved, so did her confidence.  “I was still plagued by fear of failure,” she says, “but I decided I had to take steps towards a career goal.”

Lontos asked the club’s owner for a job selling memberships, and within a few months she was the club’s top salesperson.  After two years, she found a bigger challenge in advertising sales with a radio station.  Sales zoomed.

Lontos’s impressive record prompted the station’s owners to promote her to top management.  “In three and a half years, I’d gone from a frightened, overweight housewife to an executive with a major entertaining company,” she says.  “I did it by taking small steps.  That’s the only way I could overcome my fears of failing.”

Usually, it’s the anticipation of failure that paralyzes, not failure itself, according to management consultant Allan Cox.  “We survive our failures,” he says.  “We pick ourselves up and try again.  We have to.”

Persist, Persist 
Along the way to any goal, you will be confronted with obstacles.  Belief in yourself can act as an anaesthetic against these setbacks.

After he was expelled from university, Duke Rudman drifted into jobs in the Texas oilfields.  As he gathered experience, he dreamt of trying his hand at independent oil exploration.

Whenever he could scrape together a few thousand dollars, Rudman leased drilling equipment and sank a well.  He drilled 29 wells over two years, each time coming up dry.  “That,” he says, “was failure.”

Nearing 40, Rudman still hadn’t hit oil.  To improve his chances, he studied land formations, shale types and other aspects of geology.  Then he leased his thirtieth tract.  This time a huge oil reservoir was discovered under his land.

Three of every four holes Rudman drills, turn up dry.  Over 60 years he believes he has failed more frequently than anybody in the business.  But he has struck oil often enough to accumulate a fortune.

“There were days when I wanted to give up,” says Rudman.  “But I’d just push the thought away and get back to work.”

It’s Never Too Late 
Age is not a barrier to achievement.  As we grow older and learn more, we gain the confidence to take on new challenges.

Ask Kirk Fordice.  Fordice prospered as a contractor in Mississippi, but as he entered his fifties he wanted more.  With a friend’s encouragement, Fordice decided to run for governor.  The idea seemed ludicrous to some, but not to Fordice, even though he was nearly unknown.

Fordice became convinced that the politicians weren’t listening to what the voters were saying, so he drew up a plan to mount a challenge.  Then, at 57, he announced his candidacy.

Rather than play down his age and relative lack of experience, Fordice put them to work for himself as assets.  “I honestly felt it would take someone like me from the real world to make a difference,” he says.

On election day, to everyone’s surprise, he won.  “Nobody ever told me I was too old to try this,” says Governor Fordice today.  “When I entered the race, I set the goal of going all the way.  Now I’ve set goals for the next four years and am committed to seeing them through.”

This then is the power of goals: they can give us new energy, new direction, a purpose we might have lacked.  And as Coach Lou Holtz has demonstrated they can help us get the most out of life.