social approval. We want our peers to respect us. We hope our neighbors will like us. We buy all sorts of things we really don’t need and obsess about making money we really don’t enjoy.”
“Totally right,” muttered the artist, nodding his head aggressively and shifting his posture noticeably as his dreadlocks dangled over his shoulders.
The event venue was now empty.
“If we have the courage to look within, we discover that we do this because we have a series of holes within us. We falsely believe that material from the outside will fill what’s empty within ourselves. Yet it never will. Never will. Anyhoo, when many of us reach the half-time point of our lives, we make a right-angle turn. We begin to realize that we’re not going to live forever and that our days are numbered. And so, we connect with our mortality. Big point here. We realize we are going to die. What’s truly important comes into much sharper focus. We become more contemplative. We start to wonder if we’ve been true to our talents, loyal to our values and successful on the terms that feel right to us. And we think about what those we most love will say about us when we’re gone. That’s when many of us make a giant shift: from seeking legitimacy in society to constructing a meaningful legacy. The last fifty years then become less about me and more about we. Less about selfishness and more about service. We stop adding more things into our lives and begin to subtract—and simplify. We learn to savor simple beauty, experience gratitude for small miracles, appreciate the priceless value of peace of mind, spend more time cultivating human connections and come to understand that the one who gives the most is victorious. And what’s left of your life then becomes a phenomenal dedication to loving life itself as well as a ministry of kindness to the many. And this becomes, potentially, your gateway into immortality.”
“He’s really special,” whispered the entrepreneur. “I haven’t felt this hopeful, energized and grounded in months. My father used to help me navigate difficult times,” she told the artist. “Ever since he passed away I don’t have anyone to lean on.”
“What happened to him?” quizzed the artist.
“I’m a little fragile right now, even though I feel stronger now than I did when I walked in here this morning, that’s for sure. But I’ll simply say that he took his own life. Dad was a remarkable man—a tremendously successful business pioneer. He flew airplanes, raced fast cars and loved superb wine. He was so alive. Then his business partner took everything away from him, not so different from the horrible scenario I’m living right now. Anyway, the stress and shock of his world collapsing pushed him to do what we could never have imagined. He just couldn’t see any way out, I guess,” the entrepreneur revealed as her voice broke.
“You can lean on me,” the artist said tenderly. He placed a hand with a hippie ring on a pinky finger onto his heart as he spoke these words, looking both chivalrous and bohemian.
The homeless man interrupted the intimate moment the two were sharing.
“Here, read this,” he instructed as he handed over his index card. “It’ll be useful as you both rise to your next performance levels and experience everything that comes with this adventure into human leadership, personal mastery and creating a career of uncommon productivity.”
In red lettering over the paper that had yellowed by the advances of time, it read: “All change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.”
“That’s very good,” noted the entrepreneur. “A valuable piece of information for me. Thank you.”
The artist then resumed playing his illegal copy of The Spellbinder’s presentation:
Each one of you carries a quiet genius and a triumphant hero within your hearts. Dismiss these as idealistic words of an elderly inspirationalist if you wish. But I’m proud to be an idealist. Our world needs more of us. And yet, I am also a realist. And here’s the truth: Most people on the planet today don’t think much of themselves, unfortunately. They secure their identity by who they are externally. They evaluate their achievement by what they’ve collected versus by the character they’ve cultivated. They compare themselves to the orchestrated—and fake—highlight reels presented by the people they follow. They measure their self-worth by their net worth. And they get kidnapped by the false thought that because something has never been done it can’t be done—depleting the grand and electrifying possibilities their lives are meant to become. This explains why the majority is sinking in the quicksand of uncertainty, boredom, distraction and complexity.
“Drama mamas,” the homeless man interrupted again. “That’s what I call men and women who’ve caught the virus of victimitis excusitis. All they do is complain about how bad things are for them instead of applying their primal power to make things better. They take instead of give, criticize instead of create and worry instead of work. Build antibodies to combat any form of average from getting anywhere near your professional days at the office and your private life at home. Never be a drama mama.”
The entrepreneur and the artist peeked at each other. Then they giggled, both at the terms the quirky stranger was using and at the way he’d raised an arm and made the fingers of one hand into a peace sign as he spoke the words he’d just shared. If you were standing there with them, you would think he was weird too.
The Spellbinder could then be heard speaking the following words on the recording with dramatic flair:
To be clear, every day—for the rest of your life—you’ll be faced with the chance of showing leadership, wherever you are and in all that you do. Leadership isn’t just for global icons and marketplace titans. It’s an arena everyone gets to play in. Because leadership is a lot less about having a formal title, a large office and money in the bank. And a lot more about committing to mastery over all you do—and in who you are. It’s about resisting the tyranny of the ordinary, refusing to allow negativity to hijack your sense of awe and preventing any form of slavery to mediocrity from infesting your life. Leadership is about making a difference, right where you’re planted. Real leadership is about sending out brave work that exemplifies genius, turns your whole field on its head by its scope, innovation and execution, and is so staggeringly sublime that it stands the test of time.
And never work only for the income. Labor for the impact. Make your dominant pursuit the heartfelt release of value that represents an uncommon magic that borders on the poetic. Demonstrate the full-on expression of what’s possible for a human being to create. Develop the patience to stick with your dedication to absolute world-class output, even if over a lifetime you only generate a single masterpiece. To achieve this feat alone will have made your life’s journey a worthy trek.
Be a virtuoso. A standout. An exceptionalist. The Top 5% are a lot less concerned with fame, cash and approval and a lot more invested in punching above their weight class within their craft, playing above their pay grade around their talents and creating the kind of productivity that inspires—and serves—millions. That’s often why they make millions. So never mail it in. Always bring it on.
The homeless man now had his eyes closed. And was down on the floor doing a series of one-armed push-ups. All the while he was chanting, “Own your morning. Elevate your life.”
The entrepreneur and the artist shook their heads.
“One of my favorite books is The Prophet,” mused the artist. “It’s one of the bestselling works of poetry ever written. I read that Khalil Gibran carried the manuscript around with him for four long years and refined it constantly before giving it to his publisher, just so it was pure art. I still remember the exact words he spoke when he was interviewed by a journalist about his creative process because they guide me a lot when I’m in the studio. His words
