My Last Lecture
The most important things in life are invisible.
The most important things to many people are the things that are visible to the eye such as the car they are driving, what clothes they are wearing, or what they have compared to their friends and neighbors. People might think that if you have more money than another that you are better or if you have something someone else doesn’t have you are better. This isn’t true at all in fact we have been drawn to think that way because of what we see on TV and what we read in magazines. Corporate America has done well in trying to make us think like them to buy their products and have us act a certain way.
But the most important things in life are invisible. If you think of someone right now that you admire, why do you think you admire that person? There is a guy that I met who could work harder than anyone that I ever me. It was like he was a machine that didn’t have an off button. He just blew my mind how hard he worked in anything that he did. He had the capacity of doing as much as two or three people’s work. It was amazing. I noticed that I admired him because of that and I wondered why that was and I realized the qualities that I wished I had, reflected in who I admired. And I remembered just sitting back and thinking “whoa that’s cool, that’s not money, or anything I could buy with cash either, but a quality, a substance of their character that defined who they were as a person. Then, at that moment I realized that the most important things in life are things you cannot buy with money but things that you have to work for and they aren’t even visible to the human eye. It is not by strength in your arm that gets you to go places in life but the internal strength within that pushes you to the limits. Patience, love, virtue, hope, faith, diligence, persistence, humility, and many other qualities make up your internal strength and they aren’t visible at all.
Pretty cool huh?
With this in mind there are three things that every person needs and that is something to do, something to hope for, and something to love. It is vital to work in life and to do something in pursuit of a good cause. I have a friend that has fallen in a state of depression. He is naturally a good person and wants to do good of course. Who doesn’t? But he has fallen in a state of depression and whenever I try to help him out and ask him if wants to do this or that. He’ll tell me that he is too tired, or that he doesn’t wan to do anything right now. He seems like he doesn’t want to move at all! I asked him what he was passionate about and he couldn’t tell me! No wonder why you’re depressed and you feel stuck! You have nothing to do in your life worthwhile and you feel like just laying around! It is important to find out your strengths and things that you like to do and are passionate about. Your passion will kindle a fire that will keep growing and help you get through hard times in your life otherwise maybe you wouldn’t be able to get through.
Then, you need something to hope for. I believe that faith and hope are very much alike except for a few things. Having hope in something more such as having a better life, a better situation. Hope helps us carry on when otherwise we wouldn’t want to. We have faith that this can happen and act in accordance to what we hope for. I am blown away when people tell me that they feel like there is no hope for them to get out of debt or have a better relationship with their spouse or find a job that will suit them. Well how can there be hope today, if you are living the same as you did yesterday?? If you’re not learning something new each day and acting on those things you learned or doing something to better your position in life. What are you doing? Are you going anywhere? Are you stepping forward or are you stepping backward or are you just stagnating in place being controlled more by your environment, waiting for things to happen that you hope would? I tell you what, most things that you are just sitting back for hoping will happen, won’t! You have to go get those good things in life. Your dreams aren’t going to be chasing you. You have to chase your dreams, so put on your running shoes!
If I didn’t do something to better my position today I’d be disappointed too! If I didn’t learn something unique or something I could apply, would my meaning in life be not as strong? Would my passion dwindle just a bit? You better believe it would. Because I’m not going anywhere!
The last thing and I believe it is the most important thing is something or someone to love. Many people love God, their families, their friends, people in general, and themselves. How can someone love you if you don’t love yourself right? Why would you want to help your family, serve God, be with your friends if you didn’t love them?? Love is key in anything that you do. If you love your work, you will do better at it. If you love your family you will want to serve them and care for them. If you love your friends you’ll want to be around them and spend time with them. And the list goes on. If there were a few things that you could remember from me let this be one: if you don’t love, you don’t have a message. Think about that! If you don’t love, you don’t have a message. We all have unique talents and abilities that we can exercise to bless people’s lives, but if you don’t care for them and love them, you really have nothing to say.
I hope that we will all strive for internal strength and excellence in our lives that we may know what the most important things are in life.
The most important things in life are invisible.
Flow To Success 