In darker days I did a corporate gig at aconference for this big company who made and sold accounting software in a bid, I presumed,to inspire their salespeople to greater heights. They’d forked out 12 grand for an inspirationalspeaker who was this extreme sports guy who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off whenhe got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. It was weird.
Software salespeople I think need to hearfrom someone who has had a long successful career in software sales not from an overlyoptimistic ex-mountaineer. Some poor guy who had arrived in the morninghoping to learn about sales techniques ended up going home worried about the blood flowto his extremities.
Software salespeople I think need to hearfrom someone who has had a long successful career in software sales not from an overlyoptimistic ex-mountaineer. Some poor guy who had arrived in the morninghoping to learn about sales techniques ended up going home worried about the blood flowto his extremities.
It’s not inspirational, it’s confusing. And if the mountain was meant to be a symbolof life’s challenges and the loss of limbs a metaphor for sacrifice, the software guy’snot going to get it, is he? Because he didn’t do an Arts degree, didhe? He should have. Arts degrees are awesome and they help youfind meaning where there is none. And let me assure you… there is none. Don’t go looking for it.
Searching for meaning is like searching fora rhymes scheme in a cookbook. You won’t find it and it will bugger upyour soufflé. If you didn’t like that metaphor you won’tlike the rest of it. Point being I’m not an inspirational speaker. I’ve never ever lost a limb on a mountainsidemetaphorically or otherwise and I’m certainly not going to give career advice because, wellI’ve never really had what most would consider a job. However I have had large groups of peoplelistening to what I say for quite a few years now and it’s given me an inflated senseof self importance.
So I will now, at the ripe old age of 37-point-nine,bestow upon you nine life lessons to echo of course the nine lessons of carols of thetraditional Christmas service, which is also pretty obscure. You might find some of this stuff inspiring. You will definitely find some of it boringand you will definitely forget all of it within a week. And be warned there will be lots of hokeysimiles and obscure aphorisms which start well but end up making no sense.
So listen up or you’ll get lost like a blindman clapping in a pharmacy trying to echo-locate the contact lens fluid. Looking for my old poetry teacher. Here we go, ready? One:You don’t have to have a dream. Americans on talent shows always talk abouttheir dreams. Fine if you have something you’ve alwayswanted to do, dreamed of, like in your heart, go for it. After all it’s something to do with yourtime, chasing a dream. And if it’s a big enough one it’ll takeyou most of your life to achieve so by the time you get to it and are staring into theabyss of the meaningless of your achievement you’ll be almost dead so it won’t matter. I never really had one of these dreams andso I advocate passionate, dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious.
Put your head down and work with pride onwhatever is in front of you. You never know where you might end up. Just be aware the next worthy pursuit willprobably appear in your periphery, which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you you won’tsee the shiny thing out the corner of your eye. Right? Good! Advice metaphor… look at me go. Two: Don’t seek happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away. (crowd laughs) Keep busy and aim to make someoneelse happy and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn’t evolve to be constantly content.
Contented Homo erectus got eaten before passingon their genes. Three: Remember it’s all luck. You are lucky to be here. You are incalculably lucky to be born andincredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family who encouraged you to go to uni. Or if you were born into a horrible familythat’s unlucky and you have my sympathy but you are still lucky.
Lucky that you happen to be made of the sortof DNA that went on to make the sort of brain which when placed in a horrible child environmentwould make decisions that meant you ended up eventually graduated uni. Well done you for dragging yourself up byyour shoelaces. But you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that draggedyou up. They’re not even your shoelaces.
I suppose I worked hard to achieve whateverdubious achievements I’ve achieved but I didn’t make the bit of me that works hardany more than I made the bit of me that ate too many burgers instead of attending lectureswhen I was here at UWA. Understanding that you can’t truly takecredit for your successes nor truly blame others for their failures will humble youand make you more compassionate. Empathy is intuitive. It is also something you can work on intellectually. Four: Exercise. I’m sorry you pasty, pale, smoking philosophygrads arching your eyebrows into a Cartesian curve as you watch the human movement mobwinding their way through the miniature traffic cones of their existence.
Searching for meaning is like searching fora rhymes scheme in a cookbook. You won’t find it and it will bugger upyour soufflé. If you didn’t like that metaphor you won’tlike the rest of it. Point being I’m not an inspirational speaker. I’ve never ever lost a limb on a mountainsidemetaphorically or otherwise and I’m certainly not going to give career advice because, wellI’ve never really had what most would consider a job. However I have had large groups of peoplelistening to what I say for quite a few years now and it’s given me an inflated senseof self importance.
So I will now, at the ripe old age of 37-point-nine,bestow upon you nine life lessons to echo of course the nine lessons of carols of thetraditional Christmas service, which is also pretty obscure. You might find some of this stuff inspiring. You will definitely find some of it boringand you will definitely forget all of it within a week. And be warned there will be lots of hokeysimiles and obscure aphorisms which start well but end up making no sense.
So listen up or you’ll get lost like a blindman clapping in a pharmacy trying to echo-locate the contact lens fluid. Looking for my old poetry teacher. Here we go, ready? One:You don’t have to have a dream. Americans on talent shows always talk abouttheir dreams. Fine if you have something you’ve alwayswanted to do, dreamed of, like in your heart, go for it. After all it’s something to do with yourtime, chasing a dream. And if it’s a big enough one it’ll takeyou most of your life to achieve so by the time you get to it and are staring into theabyss of the meaningless of your achievement you’ll be almost dead so it won’t matter. I never really had one of these dreams andso I advocate passionate, dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious.
Put your head down and work with pride onwhatever is in front of you. You never know where you might end up. Just be aware the next worthy pursuit willprobably appear in your periphery, which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you you won’tsee the shiny thing out the corner of your eye. Right? Good! Advice metaphor… look at me go. Two: Don’t seek happiness. Happiness is like an orgasm. If you think about it too much it goes away. (crowd laughs) Keep busy and aim to make someoneelse happy and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn’t evolve to be constantly content.
Contented Homo erectus got eaten before passingon their genes. Three: Remember it’s all luck. You are lucky to be here. You are incalculably lucky to be born andincredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family who encouraged you to go to uni. Or if you were born into a horrible familythat’s unlucky and you have my sympathy but you are still lucky.
Lucky that you happen to be made of the sortof DNA that went on to make the sort of brain which when placed in a horrible child environmentwould make decisions that meant you ended up eventually graduated uni. Well done you for dragging yourself up byyour shoelaces. But you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that draggedyou up. They’re not even your shoelaces.
I suppose I worked hard to achieve whateverdubious achievements I’ve achieved but I didn’t make the bit of me that works hardany more than I made the bit of me that ate too many burgers instead of attending lectureswhen I was here at UWA. Understanding that you can’t truly takecredit for your successes nor truly blame others for their failures will humble youand make you more compassionate. Empathy is intuitive. It is also something you can work on intellectually. Four: Exercise. I’m sorry you pasty, pale, smoking philosophygrads arching your eyebrows into a Cartesian curve as you watch the human movement mobwinding their way through the miniature traffic cones of their existence.
