Does everyone have a purpose
[Music]
hello everyone and thank you so much
for being here and one of our greatest
resources
is our time and i am so grateful that
you have chosen to spend part of your
time
here with me and i promise to do my very
best
to make it worth your while to get
started today what i’d like you to do is
take anything
that is in your hands and go ahead and
put it to the side
and go ahead and take your feet and put
them flat on the floor
and go ahead and take your hands and put
them flat on your
knees close your eyes
and take a nice deep breath in for me
please
and exhale
and go ahead and take a nice deep breath
in for me please
and exhale go ahead and keep your eyes
closed imagine
if every moment of your life was
recorded
everything you did everything you said
all the places that you went
all the ways in which you spent your
time and towards the end of your life
a museum was built to honor you
only your museum would show your life
exactly how you lived it
so if 80 of your time was spent at a job
that you didn’t enjoy
or on activities that you didn’t like
then 80
of your museum would be dedicated
towards that there would be pictures
videos kiosks all showing you spending
your time on these things that didn’t
bring you joy
if you love spending time with your
family or your friends or pursuing some
particular passion or hobby
but for whatever reason you only spent
two percent of your time on those loves
then no matter how much you wished it to
be different
only two percent of your museum would be
dedicated towards that
maybe just a few pictures near the exit
door
imagine what it would be like to walk
your museum
what would you see how would you feel
now imagine if heaven or the afterlife
or however you perceive this whole
experience to work
actually consists of you being the tour
guide
for your own museum for all
of eternity
excellent take a nice deep breath in for
me please and
exhale go ahead and open your eyes
shake your arms out a little ladies and
gentlemen
if at any time in the future you feel
yourself stressed
or overwhelmed i encourage you to take a
few minutes
and go into a quiet space and spend a
little quality time in your museum
it is one of the most amazing ways to
center yourself
and it is incredibly useful for
something like which way should i go on
a particular decision
because when you enter that space and
you think to myself if i go left what
would that look like
in the museum of my life if i go right
on that path
what would that look like it’ll provide
you with amazing guidance i promise you
for the rest of your life
now i have found the way to create an
amazing museum
a museum that you would be proud to walk
not just today not just tomorrow
but literally for all of eternity is by
focusing on something called
your big five for life at the age of 33
i did something that most people said
was crazy i left behind a very lucrative
career
sold almost everything i owned and went
to go backpack around the world for a
year on 40
a day with my wife and it was something
that i dreamed about something i’d
wanted to do and it was absolutely
a life-changing experience and one of
the most powerful places
during that adventure was africa and
when you go to africa
everyone talks about something called
the african big five
and it’s the five specific animals that
people want to see on safari
and they gauge the success of their
safari experience based on how many of
these five they see
so if they see two of the african big
five it’s like ah pretty good
for the african big five better and if
they see all five
of the african big five nirvana right
this is exactly
what i came to africa for well coming
out of that experience
i had a pretty major epiphany and i
thought to myself
what if we were to look at our lives
that way what if we were to articulate
the five things that we most want to do
see or experience in our lifetime before
we die the five things so powerful that
if we were to do see or experience them
that on our deathbed in the last moments
of our time
we could look back over our life and we
could say you know what no matter what
else i did or i didn’t get to
i got to those things and therefore my
life was a success
by my own definition of success
and what if we were to align our
resources on those
our time our energy our thoughts
our financial resources all aligned
to helping us live the life that we want
to live
now your big fire for life can be
short-term in nature if you say i want
to watch the sunset
over the serengeti just one time or they
could be longer term in nature you may
say i want to have a loving relationship
with the people that matter most to me
the choice
is entirely yours since we have a
limited time together today
i would like to share with you five
guiding concepts to help you fill your
museum with amazing moments
as you live your big five for life
item number one it’s who not how
so many times in life when we we know
where we’re at in our existence
and where we want to go to the question
that pops up in our mind is
well how do i get there and the problem
with this is that question
how is full of learning curves and
barriers and
obstacles and every one of those is like
a mountain but we say to ourselves no no
this is something so important to me
right i’m willing to invest the time
invest the energy and we get to the top
of that first mountain and we look out
and we see
another mountain and we say no no but
this is something so important to me
so we invest more time we invest more
energy we get to the top of that second
mountain we look out and we see
another mountain and by the time most
people get to the third mountain
they give up they have succumbed
because the question to ask is not how
the question to ask my friends is who i
guarantee you that no matter what is on
your big five for life list someone at
some point in the history of the planet
has already done seen or experienced
what you want to do see your experience
the trick is to use the power of the
technologies that we have at our
disposal
find these hoos learn everything you can
about them
and then imitate it that single small
adjustment in the way that you do things
will change your life in incredible ways
all right concept number two shuffling
through the caribbean
a woman once shared with me this
incredible story of the power of using
who
versus how she said i went to school and
i was trained as a chef
and when i got done with school i
decided that what i really wanted to do
was to go cruise the caribbean
and so i used this other aspect of the
who technique which is telling
everybody possible about your dream she
said i told my parents i told my friends
i told the rest of my family
told the people at the school where i
was trained as a chef so a week later
her phone rings and it’s the people at
the chef school they say you’re not
gonna believe this
but a guy just walked in he and his wife
own a private yacht
they’re looking to go sail the caribbean
they’re looking to hire a personal
chef and we thought of you i said what
happened she said well i got the call i
did the interview which consisted of
making a bunch of meals they loved it
and i got hired
i said well what was it like i said what
did you do exactly she said well as the
chef i was responsible for making the
meals
i said all the meals she said no you
know there’s lots of islands in the
caribbean
she said a lot of times they would stop
so i just had to make it when they
weren’t doing
that stuff it’s like oh my gosh i said
well what about um serving the food were
you responsible for that she said oh no
no
they had a person to do that so what
about cleaning up afterwards
oh no no they had a person to take care
of that i said how about buying your
groceries
she said well i like to do that as a
chef but if i didn’t feel like doing it
they had a person who would take care of
that i said where did you stay
she said oh i had my own private
stateroom aboard the yacht
and then i’ll never forget she looked
right at me and she said oh
and i got paid a lot of money for this
too
and i asked her i said how long did you
do this for
she said 18 months 18 months
so why did you quit she said ah i got
bored of cruising the caribbean how many
of you
would like to have the problem of being
bored of being paid
to cruise the caribbean doing something
that you love
that ladies and gentlemen is a big fight
for life type of problem
all right concept number three the power
of selflessish
and if you can embrace this concept this
paradigm shift
i promise you it will change your life
in unbelievable ways and i can say that
with such certainty
because it is absolutely a hundred
percent changed my life
a while back i’m standing on a stage
talking to over a thousand teachers and
i asked them a question i said how many
of you
have an easier time giving help than
receiving help
and almost every hand goes up which is
not entirely unexpected because i find
that people with the biggest hearts
have this issue and teachers i find have
some of the biggest hearts the great
teachers
so i said something to them which gave
me a very high chance of being the only
person in recent history
to be thrown off a stage by a mob of
angry teachers
i said why are you being so selfish
and because i sensed my immediate
potential demise i followed that up
quickly with another question
which was why do you help people
and someone yelled out from the crowd
they said because it makes a positive
difference
in their lives i said well that’s true
and someone else yelled out
because when i do that i know that it
helps them in some capacity
and that’s totally true too but then one
young lady in the front raised her hand
so of course i called on her and she
said
i help people because it makes me feel
good
and that right there is the crux of it
we help people because it makes us
feel good and therefore when we don’t
allow them to help us we are denying
them the opportunity
to feel good and that’s selfish
and here’s the thing people love to help
but they really love to help on the big
things
and there is nothing bigger than you
articulating the things that you most
want to do see
or experience in your life so do
yourself a favor
if you’ve struggled with this allow
people to help you
let them be happy don’t be selfish
concept number four things we love come
to an end
my father is 79 years old and he’s been
suffering from parkinson’s disease
for many many years now and
unfortunately the symptoms of that he
has trouble with his balance he has
trouble with his division
he has trouble remembering things at
times
and ever since he’s a little kid he’s
always loved to fish and he loved it as
an adult too
but there came a time because of his
medical condition that he just couldn’t
do it anymore and you know
in our everyday lives it’s not like
being a celebrity athlete a celebrity
athlete they retire and they get the
whole
unbelievable tour right every stadium
there’s videos showing their
highlights and the rest of that and they
have this fantastic experience
of celebrating each step of their
retirement
but life isn’t quite like that you know
we don’t get the countdown
my dad didn’t get to know that he had
ten trips left and then five and then
four and then three and then
one and i think the main takeaway
from that for us is to just try and
appreciate a little extra bit
things as we’re going through them and
i’m not saying we take this to the
extreme right it’s not like
i’m eating a grape this may be the last
grape i
ever eat and i’m chewing my grape for
the seventh time this might be the last
time i
ever chew a grape seven times right
that’s too much but i think that we can
take a moment for the things that matter
to us i’m getting on an airplane
and i’m flying off to an exotic
destination for an adventure
i’m heading off to a restaurant that i
love to have one of my favorite meals
or i’m seeing a friend of mine and i
know that i’m going to give them a giant
hug the kind of hug that lets them know
you matter to me because i think that if
we do that
and we do it well then no matter when
the end
comes we’ll know that during the course
of our life
we’re a hundred percent full in
all right concept number five amazon
doesn’t deliver this
statistically speaking the average life
is approximately 28
900 days if you take your age multiply
by 365 and subtract from 28
900 statistically that’s about how many
days you have left
and if we’re not careful a day becomes a
week a week becomes a month month
becomes a year
and if nothing has changed for us then
we end up doing the same thing next year
that we just did last year very often i
hear people say something to the effect
of
as soon as i have more free time then
i’m going to
insert dream of choice it’s like we have
this perception that we’re going to open
the door one day to head out to our car
we’re gonna look down
there’s a box sitting there honey honey
great news
amazon delivered the box of free time
now we can finally start doing those
things we most want to do
and while that would be awesome if
that’s the way that it actually worked
we know that it’s not we get the free
time
we get to live the life we want by
consciously looking at our calendar
consciously looking at our life and
crossing off things that are
not what matter to us most and
substituting in
the things that do ladies and gentlemen
our time here is winding to a close
and i want to leave you with one final
thought
i believe that everyone has genius
within them
everyone has something special to offer
and when we allow ourselves
to be our most authentic that is when we
let that genius out
and in the process of doing that not
only we get to live a spectacular life
but we also do one of the most important
things possible
we inspire others to let their genius
come forth
and maybe just maybe
that is the purpose of this little game
called life
thank you so much for spending part of
your life here with me today
thank you
you