approached Professor Bill Little, and Little said he would be glad to help. What Bill neglected to say was that he hadn't touched a pole or done any kind of jumping whatsoever in about 15 or 20 years.
Undaunted on the first day of competition, Bill grabbed a pole and ran down the runway. He planted the pole, went up, but went under the bar instead of over it, and flew off to the side, missed the landing area, and almost killed himself.
We all saw that and we thought if Professor Bill was willing to do that, we thought we all had to do the best we could do as well. Professor Bill's generous act spread through the whole group and we did better than we had any right to do.
Amazingly, we wound up winning the All University Championship. The school athletic director even announced our victory at halftime of the homecoming football game. That started our run of two straight years of championships where the physics department won the All University Championship, beating out all the fraternities, all the clubs, and all the other athletes on campus.
Good old Professor Bill did not win any events and was not going to compete against high school all Americans, and people who were currently running track for the university, but he gave us his all, even though he could have killed himself or gotten himself seriously injured.
That showed me that you don't have to be a calculating loser in order to succeed. Instead, you could show an act of kindness, you could show an act of caring and compassion, and it ends up coming back on you and making your organization that much better.
If you are the head of any group, your group will be better and probably the best it can be if your leadership just includes semblances of kindness.
CHAPTER 2 Understanding Happiness
I want you to be happy. That may sound like a lofty dream or a bad sales pitch, but it's true. The happier people are, the better the world will be for everyone. We already know what happens when the world is full of fear, anger, and hate so it's important to make as many people happy as possible starting with you.
So this book is my way of helping make the world a better place for me and my family, and in the process, for you, your family, and everyone you care about. We're in this together and we can do this together. If you want to be happy, here's a secret.
I can help you.
Most people think I'm happy because I'm an entrepreneur who has started four different companies and sold my third one, Bharosa, to Oracle in 2007 for millions of dollars. Other people think I'm happy because I'm a professor teaching business classes at the University of San Francisco. Yet other people think I'm happy because I wrote the book Strategic Entrepreneurship: Shattering the Start-Up Entrepreneurial Myth, which is required reading for the MBA program at several business schools including the University of California, Berkeley. Still others think I must be happy because I'm an inventor with more than one hundred patents to my name.
Yet none of this is important. I'm happy because I'm a husband to a wonderful wife, and a father to a lovable daughter. I'm also a son to my parents, and close friends with numerous people I've had the fortune to know over the years. Take away all my money, all my awards, all my patents, and all my accolades, and guess what? I'd still be happy as a husband devoted to my wife, a father to my daughter, a son to my mother and father, and a good friend to so many people I've met throughout my life.
That's because I've learned that the real riches in life can never be measured by the size of your bank account, the number of people who admire you, or the list of accomplishments you may have achieved. Instead, true wealth comes from a clear understanding of what happiness really means.
UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS
If everyone wants to be happy, why are so many people unhappy? The answer is simple. Most people never take the time to understand how to be happy. If you don't know how to be happy, how can you possibly be happy? That's like trying to fish without knowing what a fish looks like or where fish even live. If you don't know what a fish is or where to find it, you're never going to catch any. Likewise, if you never understand happiness, you're never going to be happy in more than a superficial way.
People spend more time planning a vacation than they spend deciding what would make them happy. When you don't know what will make you happy, you'll risk searching for happiness anywhere and everywhere. When you do this, chances are extremely good that you'll never find it.
Imagine if you live in New York and you want to move to another city. The smart thing to do would be to decide what type of place you would want to live, then research different parts of the country to see which areas most closely match the criteria you set for yourself. Not only does this take time, it also means defining what's most important to you. Sadly, because of the time and effort required, most people never do this.
Rather than define what they want and then look for a place that provides that, most people will just jump in a car and start driving in whatever direction looks most promising at the moment. Instead of defining criteria for the best place to live for them, they'll just wander from place to place, never quite being happy where they're at but quite never knowing which direction they should go either.
Sound familiar?
The first step to happiness is knowing what you want out of life, just like the first step to traveling anywhere is knowing where you want to go. While this may sound simple, it's actually the hardest step of all. Not only must you imagine a brighter future for yourself, but you must believe it's possible for you to reach it.
If you don't believe your life can be dramatically better, you won't bother pursuing it. If you believe in a brighter future but don't believe you can achieve it, you also won't bother pursuing it.
Taking the first step to happiness involves faith – faith in yourself and faith in the world. Faith means embracing an idea, often with no facts or proof to support it. Yet before you can take that first step, you must have faith, and accepting that unknown can be the hardest step of all.
Deciding what you want involves taking a chance. The moment you imagine a brighter future for yourself, it's far too easy to tell yourself you can't have it, you don't deserve it, you're too young (or too old), you don't have enough education, you don't know how to get it, or you're not good enough for whatever reason.
The biggest obstacle to happiness is none other than yourself. The biggest obstacle in your way isn't your parents, your neighbors, people around you, the economy, the government, or the world you live in. The biggest obstacle in your way is staring at you in the mirror every morning. You are your own worst enemy. Yet, you are also your own best chance – but only if you believe you can do it.
So give yourself permission to dream big, and don't limit your ideas. Remember, it doesn't cost anything to let your imagination run wild, but if you choose puny dreams, you'll risk costing yourself a wonderful life if you had only set your sights bigger.
Think back when you were a kid and you could dream anything you wanted, from becoming the first astronaut on Mars to scoring the winning touchdown in the final seconds of the Super Bowl. Forget about being “practical” or “realistic.” Dream big, and don't settle for a watered down, diluted version of your dream. If you knew you absolutely could not fail, what would you want to do? You may never achieve your wildest dreams, but by making an effort, you'll go much farther than if you had never done anything at all.
DREAM BIG
You can never
