"One of the greatest lessons for living a highly fulfilling life is to rise from a life spent chasing success to one dedicated to finding significance."- Who Will Cry When You Die?, page 221
There are a lot of miserable people with a lot of money. There are also people with practically nothing who live every day contentedly. These are facts. Yet they don’t have to be your facts. Who Will Cry When You Die? (and really, all of Robin Sharma’s books) are about living a life of abundance; an abundance of financial accomplishment, but also an abundance of life experiences, and legacy achievements. Life is meant to be lived BIG – everything you do should be done with excellence and a sense of purpose. Life’s too short to be spent focused on the ultimately unimportant and mundane.
"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."- Peter Drucker, as quoted in Who Will Cry When You Die?, page 65
How are you spending your time? Where do your days go? In the last twenty-four hours, how many would you confidently say were spent on something of lasting importance – something that you did to the best of your abilities and that will have an impact that lives beyond your time on earth?
You can’t do everything, and those why try to end up doing everything at a mediocre level, if that. Commit yourself to a higher purpose, and be deliberate in the activities that draw on your most precious commodity of all – your time.
“The person that tries to do everything ultimately achieves nothing.”
"While many of the corporate executives I work with have personal mission statements, few have considered scripting individual legacy statements. While the former defines your vision of what you want to create while you live, the latter expresses what you aim to leave when you die."- Who Will Cry When You Die?, page 138
Do you know what you want your life to stand for? One of the biggest challenges people have when thinking of their life purpose is immediate frustration and distraction if they don’t feel their contribution can make a global difference. If you’re in this category, you need to make a mental shift, pronto. The people who have made the biggest difference in this world are the ones who focused on serving other human beings – either one at a time, or en masse if you have the resources, but serving nonetheless. Who are you serving? How are you making another person’s life better today? I would encourage you to spend 20 minutes today thinking of the legacy you want to leave. Write it down. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to get you thinking (and then acting) in the right direction. Commit today to start crafting your legacy.
“Too many of us die at twenty and are buried at eighty.”
Robin Sharma is the globally celebrated author of 11 international bestselling books on leadership including The Greatness Guide and The Leader Who Had No Title. His work has been published in over 60 countries and in nearly 70 languages, making him one of the most widely read authors in the world. He shot to fame with The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, which has topped international bestseller lists and sold millions of copies. Robin is the founder of Sharma Leadership International Inc., a global consultancy that helps people in organizations Lead Without a Title. Clients comprise of many of the FORTUNE 500 including Microsoft, GE, NIKE, FedEx and IBM. Organizations such as NASA, Yale University and The Harvard Business School are also SLI clients. Robin is a former litigation lawyer who holds two law degrees including a Masters of Law (Dalhousie Law School).
