“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” [The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993] Steve Jobs.
What an absolute legend! Steve Jobs was successful, not because he chased money, or a big business, he did not chase either fame nor money. Steve Jobs was hotly in pursuit of fulfilling his life potential. What happened as a result of that has impacted every household on the face on the planet.
More qualified people will write historical, accurate, detailed and inspiring blogs about Steve Jobs and I don’t feel a need to replicate them neither do I want to not do Steve Jobs justice. All I want to say is that Steve Jobs died at the age of 56 with the knowledge that his presence on earth contributed something powerful.
This is something that should inspire us all – we life life, once.
R.I.P Steve Jobs.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Steve Jobs 1995
As many of you know I am all giveaway crazy at the moment because of the launch of my new start up Big American Giveaway. Whilst researching today I came across a couple who are giving away an ipad in order to help raise money to adopt a child. The ipad bit is irrelevant, but the story, the journey and the passion is quite exciting.
The Tucker family, a white, middle-class, Christian all American family have launched a website Subtracting by Adding in order to raise money to help adopt a child from Taiwan. The introduction that I have just given could sound quite negative, the Tucker family already have two biological children and it could easily sound like ‘White middle class Christian super-hero couple save the day’. But, you know what, that is exactly what it is and I would love to see more couples think about adoption.
One of the comments that the family have put on their website is a comment that I wholeheartedly believe in – they have two biological children and, there are heaps of children around the world without a family so why not provide a loving family for one of them. What a great sentiment!
I have seen, first hand, the sadness of children living without families in orphanages. Many orphanages do an incredible job and fair play to them. Nevertheless, children were built to be loved, to have the loving support of a family and they were created to bloom in such an environment. I will never forget time that I have spent in Kenya. I was in a boys orphanage talking to the children about how they are unique, they are individual, they exist for a very special purpose and, even without natural families they are very much loved. As I ended my talk the children came forward, they wanted to be hugged! As a small 5 year old boy wrapped his arms around my legs, he would not let go. This little boy could not speak a word of English and I have never been fluent in Swahili, but, nevertheless, we had shared an incredible moment. Not only was this orphaned boy loved, but, so was I. Needless to say, I was in tears!
The Tuckers’ goal of adopting a child, ‘Cambell’ from Taiwan is a powerful example of how many other couples could reach out and change lives of young children around the world. I remember reading a book on the work of Tearfund, a Christian organisation and one of the titles of the chapters seriously stood out, “They can’t eat prayer”.
Whether we are of a religious background or not, the sentiment is the same. We can look on in despair at those who are less fortunate, who need help, who struggle to survive or who need a little bit of love and we wish them all the best, “they can’t eat wishes”.
Well done and congratulations to the Tucker family, we are right behind you. May your example be a shining one, to many.
I had a conversation with a friends Mum this weekend, and, don’t get me wrong, I am not going all ‘religious’ on you, but I think that it is a great shame that the UK has moved away from it’s Christian foundations. Please allow me to explain why.
We live in a greed obsessed society. We want what we cannot afford to have and, as we have seen, those who cannot afford their ‘wants’ resort to other means to ensure that they get them. We loot, whether it is young people on the streets or MP’s who go against the rules that they created in order to make more money. Our marketing is highly consumerised (my spell check tells me that no such word exists but please go with it). If we are not happy with our partner we trade them in for another model, or many have their cake and eat it. Family values have been exchanged for gang alliance. The religion that we worship is the football team that we support. Our nation is fame hungry. We update our Twitter and Facebook status’ in the belief that ‘my story’ is the only story that needs to be heard.
Let’s face it, in many ways, collectively, we have become immoral. Not only are we becoming immoral but our collective moral conscience is slowly being worn down.
Of course, I am not perfect, I am by no means a saint. It would be easy to read this post and agree that ‘they’ are like that. However, I am a firm believer that, wrongly, our morals are flexible when it comes to our own self interests.
So, back to religion. I am not saying that in an age before ours, when the accepted behavior was that families attended Church, was a perfect world. It wasn’t. But there is something about being reminded of good Christian values that reminds us as individuals that we are part of a whole, that the world does not revolve around ‘me’ and our outlook on life changes.
Basic Christian values can be exchanged for a ‘good’ moral code. Gluttony, greed, selfish ambition, pride, jealousy, envy are all common traits in today’s society. However, at least hearing about Christian values, being reminded of them by family, at Church, at school provides our minds with a moral ‘check’, a simple reminder of the way that we should live our lives.
We do not have to subscribe to the whole package. The whole Christian story is not one that we have to believe in, however, at a very basic level, whether purely as a man who existed or as a character in a book, the person of Jesus maintained a life-style that we would all benefit to follow both personally and as a collective.
I have spent some time in some poor countries, Kenya and Fiji, whose residents still remind each other of basic Christian values and, in all honesty, they are seriously humble places to live. I have met people who have nothing, but what they have they would not hesitate to share. I have been involved in business deals (with Tribewanted) where an individuals word is the basis of an agreed contract. I have seen, first hand, communities where they consider each of their children as their own. There is no selfish attitude, only an attitude of greatfulness and otherness.
I know reading this post, people will comment – why does it have to be Christian and not other religious beliefs. I know that there are many perceived flaws in what I am saying because, as individuals, we now have an in-built intolerance to anything relating to ‘God’.
I don’t have all the answers and, in no way, am I suggesting that we should all be going to church on a Sunday morning. I just merely believe that or moral framework has suffered in direct correlation towards a decline in our attitude towards the church and our engagement with anything ‘christian’.
Something has to change, for the sake of individuals, communities and generations to come. If our moral code only reduces, where do we end up?
Please do feel free to comment, add your thoughts, agree, disagree in the comment section below. It would be great to hear, listen, learn!
I read an article in the L.A Times this morning that, in all honesty, excited the heck out of me! Here is THAT article: MySpace owner preparing for a re-model
Yes, the article was about MySpace, the company that was sold for bagillions to Murdoch and was sold to Tim & Chris Vanderhook for a fraction of the price. Myspace, the social networking site that millions of people, like sheep, left and flocked to MySpace leaving it in the great big social networking bin in the sky. You know, Myspace, who now have Justin Timberlake as an investor.
Say what?! Exactly.
I recently wrote about Google and how they have had many a failed social networking sites before they got it right with Google+. You can read that life-changing (jokes) blog here: Blog about Google and how crap they were at social networking until they launched Google+ which now has over 10million users.
People love shiny brand new stuff, especially when it is talked about all over the web. New stuff + being talked about all over the web = lots of people getting on board with that new stuff.
MySpace is old, yeah. But, music fans still have their MySpace profile. Justin Timberlake brings an edge of coolness and these guys are well versed in the power of social media. All that is needed is one freakin’ good idea, some crazy, awesome, kick-ass content that will bring music fans back to MySpace and will re-invigorate a new passion for this social networking site. I just know it.
Of course, I have an idea that I would love to talk to Tim & Chris Vanderhook about. I would love to talk to them about the music based concept that I put together called Rock Control, which fell on it’s feet because of lack of investment. I don’t bagillions of their cash I just want to see if they believe in the potential of Rock Control, in the same way that I do, in the same way that Kevin Roberts Global CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi did right here.
So, if you can hook me up with Tim & Chris Vanderhook then I will love you forever, not only that, a world of goodness will also come your way!
I want to let you into a little secret. When I was younger I had a dream that every time I went to Alton Towers, the UK’s biggest theme park, I imagined that one day I would have enough money that I could shut down the theme park for the day, for myself and my for friends.
I would literally walk around Alton Towers imagining what it would feel like to have the place shut down just for me. I would imagine how my friends would think I was so awesome that I could afford to close the park and invite a select few. I envisaged that my friends would look up to me, respect me and would be impressed. I wanted to have Alton Towers shut down for me and my friends for the day, in the same way that Michael Jackson did.
I often had a number of day dreams of this nature including driving into my secondary school playground in an expensive convertible sticking a metaphorical two fingers up at the kids at school who used to bully me. It sounds pretty dumb, huh? It sounds like a typical childhood dream, doesn’t it?
But it is not so dumb, it’s a sense of belonging and respect is a natural human desire. These dreams continued as I got older. I wanted fame, status and profile. I wanted to be known for being somebody. I wanted people to look up to me and respect me. This desire for profile was deeply rooted in the fact that, as a kid, I had bad acne, I was crap at football and I was bullied. I set about working damn hard to become a ‘somebody’ just so that I could prove these people wrong.
However, this deep down desire to prove myself started to become the foundation upon which I made every decision. I created Tribewanted in order to improve my status, in my own mind. I launched thenerve.tv and Rock Control in order to achieve fame and bring in the money. The very foundation on which I based my decisions was wrong. My foundation was to gain a profile so that I could have money and status in order to prove myself to the shadows of the bullies in my mind, who had moved on in their own lives. This was very wrong.
When you make business decisions, or even life decisions, based upon a wrong foundation you make the wrong choices which ultimately becomes destructive. My desire to still prove myself, even today, resulted in me making bad decisions with thenerve.tv and Rock Control – I did not focus on clear revenue streams, I made decisions to increase my profile rather than focus on the success of the specific business at hand.
It is only recently that I have spent time thinking about these dreams as a child, this desire to beat the bullies and the subsequent wrong foundation. Once you are aware that something is wrong in your life, as soon as it comes to light then this is the first step to start dealing with it, of breaking down the foundation and starting again.
Once my desire to increase my profile, for all the wrong reasons is stripped away it is exchanged for something else that provides a deeper, stronger foundation. The desire to achieve my dreams is now based upon a passion to reach my potential. I truly believe that we live life, once and as a consequence we should discover our reason for being and pursue it with a relentless passion.
I am damn excited. I know that I have the potential to do some awesome stuff and I am on this one exciting journey to improve, to learn, to grow and as a result I will achieve something exciting, whatever it is. As I work towards my goals I make decisions, not one whether I can increase my profile, but based on working towards my potential.
It’s exciting stuff.
What are you chasing? If you have any comments on this blog please leave them before or contact me.