I was sitting outside in the sunshine at a trendy restaurant on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles interviewing the executive producer on Shark Tank, which was in the middle of its second season, for a client’s book. He was telling me about one amazing entrepreneur after the next who had been on the show. I have to admit that I felt somewhat “less than” as I listened to his tales of Congressional aides creating barbeque sauce, a woman who invented a self-cleaning litter box for cats, and so on. What didI do for a living? Nothing that interesting. “Let me ask you a question,” said the executive producer, a man named Brien Meagher. “Have you ever thought about appearing on our show?” I looked over at my assistant, who was sitting in and listening, to make sure I had heard him correctly. His question knocked me speechless. “But there’s nothing…
Lives have turning points, or “hinges,” as some people say. For me, two such turning points happened within weeks, and as a result, I had a sense of purpose and the skills I would need to live that purpose. Although I certainly didn’t understand that at the time. As my sophomore year at Amherst College was ending, I was invited to the Classics Department’s annual year-end party. It was the 1970s, so there were no rules. And classicists, at least at Amherst, had a reputation for out drinking every other department on campus. I had never tried shots of tequila, lime, and salt before. I don’t think I felt the first eight or nine. The tenth or eleventh hit home, though, and by the twelfth or fourteenth—if you can remember how many you had, you didn’t have that many—I actually silenced the entire room and swore that since they were…
In Viktor Frankl’s classic work Man’s Search for Meaning, he says that his fellow prisoners in the Auschwitz death camp were more likely to survive not because they were young and strong but because they had something to live for, something that gave meaning to their lives. Someone they loved and hoped to see again. Compelling work. Religious faith. At Auschwitz, meaning was often the difference between death and life. And the same rule applies in our world. Meaning changes everything. I was always a huge Zig Ziglar fan. Zig, as he called himself, was a premier motivator, sales trainer, and inspiring individual of his time. As I recount elsewhere in these pages, it was my incredible privilege to edit his last book. Zig loved to tell the story of an individual who passed three workers digging a ditch. He asked each of them what they were doing. “I’m digging…
It’s not a new question. In The Canterbury Tales, written more than 600 years ago, Chaucer asks, “What is life? What does man ask to have?” An even older quote from a prayer that goes back more than 2,000 years puts it this way: “What are we? What is our life? What is our lovingkindness? What is our righteousness? What saves us? What is our strength? What is our power?” Human beings have been meaning-seekers and makers since the dawn of time. We have sought to understand our place in the cosmos, our purpose, responsibilities, and destiny ever since our ancestors first gathered around the fire to tell stories. Humans find meaning in a wide variety of domains, including from love to war, service to self-centeredness, and competition to cooperation. While we are busy marrying, raising children, and launching our careers, we don’t always have time or focus to devote…