Inspiration

After writing about TED at the weekend I got hooked once again on their content and wanted to share some of my findings with you guys. Not only does the site feature talks from its own conferences, but it also lists talks from other meet-ups and discussions and speeches from Ivy League graduation ceremonies. There are loads of grad speeches on there, including a lol-tastic one by Seth Macfarlane, but there were two I found particularly inspirational and dished out what I considered to be some pretty damn good advice. First was from the Harvard graduation ceremony in 2008 and given by a woman you may or may not have heard of… J.K. Rowling. Drawing on her own experiences, she talks about failure and achievement in the big bad world, how to deal with it and how to not lose hope. I have so much more respect for people like her than the Paris Hiltons of the world. Check out the video and the quote I found had the most impact below. J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo. “Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV are not your life.” Next was a speech by Steve Jobs at the Stanford graduation ceremony in 2005. His talk covers the story of his life, from being adopted to becoming CEO of Apple and Pixar and fighting cancer. Here’s the full video and a couple of quotes that stood out for me, the second of which I believe is some of the best advice you can give a person. “You can't connect the dots looking forwards, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will connect some time in your future... believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”   “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe it great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet keep looking and don't settle.”  And that’s where we leave TED… but I couldn’t talk about inspiration without mentioning a book (yes, a book) that inspired me back at the beginning of 2010.  As you know I’m not a big reader (understatement) but occasionally I’ll start reading something and won’t be able to put it down - which was exactly the case with Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open.  Thrust upon me by one of my bezzies, I wasn’t particularly enthralled with the idea of reading a book, but at the time I was intermittently temping, at points snowed in, and thus had a lot of time on my hands. Plus I love tennis so I figured I’d give it a whirl. I read the first few pages and didn’t look back. Agassi’s story is fascinating. I loved reading it, to the point where I had to ration myself to a chapter a day because I was literally doing nothing else – very bizarre given my relationship with books! Open inspired me so so much. For some reason I can relate to SO much of what Agassi writes about. Not the experiences, obviously, but his thought processes, reasoning and constant struggle to understand himself. In fact, as I went through the book some of his words spoke to me in such a way that I felt it necessary to make note of them. Here's a few I picked out... "What you feel doesn't matter in the end, it's what you do that makes you brave." "Even if it's not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything." And finally this quote – which is one I now live by. When I’m running and I want to stop these few sentences run through my head… I may as well get one of those wrist bands and have ‘What Would Agassi Do' on it! Anyway… "This run, even if it brings on heatstroke, will give me peace of mind tonight in that all important ten minutes before I fall asleep. I now live for that ten minutes. I'm all about that ten minutes. I've been cheered by thousands, booed by thousands, but nothing feels as bad as the booing inside your own head during those ten minutes before you fall asleep." So there we have it: a collection of words that inspire me and have lead me to make the decisions I have made over the past year or so. What’s your inspiration?