Inspiration and the Desire to Use It A Lifetime of Yesterday's 11/26/24

Inspiration and the desire to use it are all it takes to ignite your skills and abilities. Some people are successful because of their enthusiasm alone. All of us can overcome our weaknesses and improve our skills and abilities with the right attitude. Ability needs inspiration to get it going. Force doesn't work at all. I tried it and failed many times until I learned this lesson. "Learned what?" The answer is to get excited, enthused, and motivated about your plan—work, play, leisure, and even medical appointments. I go to many doctors and view my doctors and medical caretakers as friends. I believe I treat them well, which makes a difference in how they treat me. I get my Octevus infusions every six months. Six hours in the infusion chair at the Jersey Shore MS Center is no walk in the park, but it's much better when the people attending to you are in sync with you.

Suppose you know what abilities you have. Most of us have no idea what our abilities are. For example, I have always read a lot. My sister, Karen, would remind me to read everything I could get my hands on in high school. So I did. My SAT scores skyrocketed after I made a concerted effort to read. Before tackling the Bible, I read Freud, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Cervantes, and Vonnegut. I read the Holy Bible my senior year. From the first page to the last, both testaments. OCD and its ritualistic behaviors drove me to it, but the obsessive and compulsive parts ensured I finished it. I am still determining if I learned or remember much. I am not a particularly religious man. I may have just read the words and not embraced them. My bad. But I know that reading makes you more competent and have proven that with my career success and the fact that I am writing this book.

When I was young, I lived in fear of actually living. Anything I did that was new, creative, or deviated from what other successful people did was met with anger and frustration in our house. My father thought that anything more than hard work would never work. He would consider being creative would be viewed as me being weak at best.

I knew early on that I was an ideas-driven person and that if I was going to be successful at anything, I needed to be in that type of environment. The places where I would be successful, Albridge and Princeton Financial Systems (owned by State Street), were freewheeling places that allowed me to create and thrive. I delivered record sales years for those companies because of the flat-out stars I hired and brought with me to new opportunities. It had nothing to do with my sales skills. My teams did all the selling. I just supported them with my ideas and left them alone to do their thing.

I retired at 54, but the sunset only lasted briefly. The career you put so much effort, time, money, and risk into swirls down the bowl of annonominity quickly. If it is money that you're after, and many people are, find the drive to get in, kill it, print it, and get out and have some fun. It shouldn't be just dollars and cents we run after. I got motivated by building things in my work. I staffed marketing, sales, relationship management, and support teams at the companies I helped lead. I got excited about being the guy building the business and starting from zero. It motivated me to start with nothing. I knew if the numbers didn't go up, it was my ass on the line. While I had many successes, I got fired twice in my career. I cannot say I liked it, but I was not surprised. It would be a price we pay to be successful. Give it Hell!

Peace, Chris