The idea of retirement for me is ridiculous. 

I tried it once at age 49. I had no mental stimulation, boredom set in, and I started drinking alcohol and eating fine food to excess - so much that I would be dead today if I had continued with that lifestyle.

Thankfully after almost a year, I had enough awareness to appreciate and understand where I was heading and the fact that I was not making any useful contribution to society.

I went to my beachfront property and for three days locked myself away and came out with three clear things:
1. I wanted to pass on my experiences to other people, as I believed that could help people have a better quality of life.
2. I wanted to have mental stimulation – I needed to continue to learn and grow.
3. I wanted it to be financially worthwhile and interesting, which would allow me to give back in another form to teenagers who, in my view, would be the future leaders of nations.

I have noticed over the years that when people are working in the same company, after three or four leadership programs, nothing seems to change.

Because so many people have had life-changing experiences, participants inside the same organization quite often sit around without doing anything, expecting a bolt of lightning to strike and that they will be transformed.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way - you are not going to make much work in your life without participation. 

All the best ideas come out of the process we’ve used.  They come out of the work itself.  That's when things will occur to you.

If you are sitting around trying to dream up a good idea, you may be sitting there for a long time. Maybe something will happen and maybe it won’t.

Just get to work and something will occur to you.

Good luck!

Probably the most challenging question for all of us is "Who am I?"

Many, many people struggle to find the answer to this.  I would suggest, "Nobody can teach me who I am." 

We can learn and listen from people’s experience and wisdom, however, at the end of the day, "if it's to be, it’s up to me."

I think it was Socrates who said "Know thyself." I would be interested for you to share in your ways of self-discovery on the subject of "Who am I?" and how to make that discovery for yourself.

One of the great things that I have found out about human beings is that they constantly want to know more than they know right now.

There is a thirst inside us for knowledge, for learning and growing. 

That’s why I love to share my experiences – you can buy an education, but you cannot buy experience.

So many people these days seem to be in a big hurry to get somewhere in their life fast.  It appears to me, that at the end of the day it is better and more efficient to take one step at a time. 

I always remember telling participants of our seminar, "How do you walk 100 miles?" They reply, "One step at a time. "

I was recently asked if I would talk to a very well-educated gentleman in his late forties about assisting him with some career counselling.  He was a very charming gentleman, originally from Pakistan, and had had some fairly senior positions there. 

He came to a new country and couldn’t find a position at the equivalent rank to his native country. Reluctantly, he took a much more junior job after many knock backs when applying for senior roles.  His career had then been a series of hurried efforts to get back to the top and any time a job opportunity came, he took it. 

As I listened to the story of his work history in the seven years he had been in his new country, he really hadn’t advanced at all.  I asked him the question, "If you had joined one company at a less senior level, perhaps somewhere in junior or middle management and stayed there, what position might you have had today?  Would it have been a higher position than you are now?"  He replied that he was in too much of a hurry to get back to the senior jobs that he had previously had in his mother country. 

I think there is great merit and wisdom for all of us in the idea of "one step at a time"; however I am sure there are many who would not agree with me!  What do you think?