World Class Living

My week has been one of the most interesting yet.

I learned this week that one of my husband’s friends lost all three of her children in a house fire. At work, they announced that one of our co-workers had passed.

In all this turmoil, I had the opportunity to participate in one of Mr. Chris Gardner’s speeches titled, Permission to Dream.

Mr. Gardner shared how we are to try to be “World class” in everything we touch, along with many more wisdom words. The world-class wisdom brought me to tears as I recall my mother often saying that one is not only supposed to do great when his boss is around but to give one’s best when the boss is not looking and to seek to be the best in everything one touches. These values guided my life. Hence, I struggle when people advise us to remember that work is work and family is the only thing that matters.

I’m sure many of you can relate as we are constantly reminded to spend more time with family and that family is the most essential thing that one can have, and yet we spend most of our life at work regardless. How are we to reconcile the two? How are we to care less or to value one less?

I realize that we shouldn’t separate the two. Family is where our happiness starts, and work is where our happiness and fulfillment are completed. We can do both, and we must do both. The way to accomplish both, in my view, is simply to be present and to be at peace.

I heard that if you ever met President Bill Clinton, he made you feel like you were the only person in the room. He dedicated his full attention to you for the short few minutes of interaction before moving to the next person, leaving you joyful and empowered. President Clinton’s behavior toward others is the key. All we need to do to be successful at being the best at work and with friends and family is to be present, nothing else. Just be present in the moment, in that instance, giving all our attention in that moment. That is all we need. When we dedicate our full attention to each interaction and each moment, we are more efficient and can effectively contribute and live in peace with ourselves.

How we live at peace with ourselves is to leave every interaction with the conviction that we’ve tried our best to leave the other party a little better than we found them. We’ve tried our best to impact the other party positively regardless of how small our action, interaction, or communication was.

To live in peace is to embrace a line of work where it is easy to be ourselves and do our best without compromising our core values. At work or with entrepreneurship endeavors, we can then handle our customers with care and with the deepest belief that we will strive to give our best to them daily.

With our family, children, or friends, this means that we will value and handle each interaction with care. We will be fully present and commit our time to them when we are with them. If we can’t impact positively at any given time, we will keep quiet, say thanks, or say sorry. These two words can save a lot of lives. Thanks, or Sorry!

Mr. Gardner struck another critical point. He stated that not only time is our most valuable asset, but it is also the one thing that no one knows how much of it anyone has left before we depart Earth. We do not know how much of it the person in front of us has. As a result, each interaction deserves our total commitment and attention, so when we leave the exchange, we will be at peace regardless of tomorrow.

It is also worth noting that one of Mr. Gardner’s windows reminded us that we were never here for ourselves. Our lives were always about our neighbors, the person sitting next to us on a bus, our children, and others.

The military understood that either we arrived at the finish line together or no one made it.

Regardless of how much we seek to believe that we made it ourselves, we can only fool ourselves for a short time. Deep down, we know how many people pave the way for us.

My takeaway is that if we can stop and focus a little less on our small self, then we will see the world in front of us and truly value and embrace the true mission, which is to make the person next to us’ live a little better, a little brighter. Even Tomorrow is looking up us to be a slightly better version of ourselves today, so it can be a little brighter the next day. BE AWESOME!