From time to time – perhaps a few more times than modesty might allow me to admit – people tell me that something I told them inspired them at a particularly difficult time in their careers.
Okay, so now you are thinking, when did Pat start to believe he is some sort of business visionary, imparting inspiration to the masses?
Well, the answer to that is easy: From since forever.
Now, back to reality. I don’t think I am a particularly successful entrepreneur and I have been more of a toiler in the vineyard of my dreams than the conductor of my own symphony orchestra.
I also have it on reliable authority that I talk way too much for my own good, and that my outspokenness on the radio and in certain newspaper columns hasn’t done me much good in the world of business and politics.
Don’t attack the Bees and the Dems at the same time. Don’t have a problem with all organized religion. Don’t support gay rights as human rights. Don’t have a problem with big business almost by definition.
My problem is that I keep forgetting all these rules and end up just writing whatever it is I am thinking or feeling about. Usually to the chagrin of my editor.
So while there may be a price to be paid in monetary or career terms, there isn’t much I can do about it.
It therefore comes as a bit of a surprise when someone tells you that you helped them come to a decision, or take a leap of faith, or go in a direction they were feeling in their heart but about which they were still unsure. Most of the time, I have to ask them what were the pearls of wisdom that fell from my lips since I really didn’t remember telling them, “My son/daughter, this is the way . . .”
Whatever I did say that turned out to be the catalyst in their own mental processes must have been something along these lines: How do you measure your success in your career? Do you count success only in the stratospheric promotions you have received or would like to receive?
If you do, you had better be prepared for a sometimes even more rapid descent down the corporate ladder. Some of the very best people I know have been shown the door by security, escorted out in a sort of corporate “perp walk” to the front door of a building they helped build through their own talent and sweat over many years.
Some have ascended the ladder only to find that along with the better salary came tension and resulting high blood pressure, or worse.
There are some people in business I admire greatly who happen to be billionaires. But while their fabulous net worth does put a Hollywood-style gloss on their career, I wouldn’t feel the same way about them if they had just inherited the money.
It is usually the backstory that tugs at the heart strings, which is why the first thing those talent shows want to know about anybody with any talent is where they came from and how hard was it to pursue their dreams thus far.
So if I sometimes turn out to be an inadvertent inspirer who has to ask of the inspired, “And what was it I told you again?” it is because all I am interested in is what they really want to do in life. If it goes counter to what they are doing now, chances are they are not happy and are therefore shopping for heart disease and other problems caused by body and soul being out of sync with each other.
Your body should be doing what your soul wants it to do. Nothing else matters in the end.
Okay, reality check again. You have to work to make a living, which means you have to do jobs that you wouldn’t choose as your first career, if the choice were yours. Sometimes you do your projects on the side, and if the opportunity, or even a glimmer of one, peeps out around the corner, you take the risk and go for it.
Congrats, that makes you an entrepreneur, in some ways at the same level as a Steve Jobs or a Sir Richard Branson. Everybody starts the same way even if some go a lot farther.
Sometimes you stay in the job and do it the best you can, moving up the ranks and becoming a real positive force in your business sector. As long as you are happy in this, then maybe it is the right path for you. Or maybe you find other outlets though a hobby or community service.
This is why I never tell people what they should do in life or career. Never tell an adult who they should be living with or, equally, how they should be earning their living.
But if they ask you, you can inquire of them how their body and soul are getting along. When they answer this question for themselves and in their own way, sometimes over a long period of time, the decisions that ensue usually help them to make the best possible path forward.
And when they trace the genesis of their decision back, you may show up somewhere in the picture. Even if you can’t remember ever having had the specific conversation. Which is as it should be.
Kennedy and Kerry, along with a few others, I am very proud of you.
