A scary thing happened to me the other day.  The family got together to celebrate my step-father’s eightieth birthday.  Eightieth!  How did that happen?  Five minutes ago he was in the prime of his life and it was 1972!

In speaking to dad, it became clear that time really had shot by at a staggering rate of knots.  I know we all feel like that at times but at eighty years old, it’s not uncommon to feel remarkably mortal as you live your remaining years and to shake your head as you think about the rapid passage of time. My dad likened it to Star Trek when Captain Kirk says, “Warp speed Mr Sulu” and everything accelerates.

When I look at my folks, I see the life I have worked to avoid.  They have worked hard all their lives for scant reward.  They did what many working class people do.  They just got on with it and did enough to pay the bills and hopefully have a little to set aside.  Which didn’t really happen in our case and Christmas was always on the ‘never never’ in a time before credit cards funded the lifestyle of so many.

My parents are quite happy with their lot these days although it hasn’t always been like that.  Year after year of robbing Peter to pay Paul created immense stress and frictions.  As happy as they now seem to be, I wonder if they ever sit down and ask themselves if it could have been different.

I think it could have been very different but for one small conversation way back in the mists of time.  The conversation that said you don’t have to take the first job that pays enough for you to scrape by.  The conversation that said you can get more for being the manager than for being the doer.  What about the conversation about having a career and the benefits of working for large organisations? And what about being an entrepreneur and maybe running a little sideline as well as the day job, or multi-level marketing?  These things existed in the days before the internet after all, and spawned many a millionaire.

It seems that is not the way it works for the majority of people.  There are very little in the way of words of wisdom outside of ‘do as I have done’.  You know and I know that this is all very well if that person is hugely successful, either in business or monetary terms or in shaping their own quality of life.  More often than not though, they are just words.  Well-meaning words.  But just words from somebody who may have spent his entire life living on or just above the breadline.

It wasn’t that I was the recipient of any words of wisdom either.  It’s just that one day a light bulb went off in my head that told me I didn’t want to live my life like that.  There was more out there and there were many extremely average people doing very well for themselves, thank you very much.

I went through the corporate grind and came out the other side better for it.  It was no picnic, but I learned a lot about business and myself.  I also knew I didn’t want to work for an employer.  Having run my own businesses in the traditional sense I also realised that all I was really doing was working harder and harder and again, there must be a better way.

With that in mind I have scaled back my traditional business and even walked away from a partnership, in order to focus on the areas that are my passions.  Coaching and personal development are the two areas about which I get excited and can’t get enough of.  When I’m doing this it never feels like work and it’s about real enjoyment, giving and of course receiving.

I have what you might call a hybrid model where I rely on some traditional income whilst my personal development business is building.  I’m building it right first time.  To rush is to make mistakes and to force the pace.  I’m a great believer in that you can open the door for people and that they must decide for themselves whether to walk through it.

The steps we take today have a direct impact on our tomorrow.  We know that if we keep doing the right things, when we get to eighty we shall look back and know that we’ve given our all, received a whole heap of goodness in return and will have lived the lives we wanted to live.

More importantly, we’ll be able to have that conversation.  The one where we can say you can have it all, be who you want, there are options out there.  In fact, I can say it already.  Just ask my kids!

What about you?  Where do you want to be when you’re eighty years old and looking back upon your life?  Hurry, hurry, the clocks a tickin’!

Thanks, as ever, for stopping by.

Regards,

Andrew