A lot of intelligent people have said a lot of amazing things, but today we want to touch on a quote from Mark Twain:
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
Mark Twain
This quote is so inspiring because, at Willing 2 Win, we believe each of us is longing for meaning. We’re each longing to understand, “What is our purpose? What is our value? What is our contribution to this story that we call humanity?” This is a big, big story and we want to find our place in it, which leads us to this week’s activity.
This week, we’re going to ask you to help yourself. Help yourself find your second day. Simply sit down with a blank sheet of paper and write one paragraph that describes the future you want.
That may sound like a simple thing, but it’s one of the hardest things that people do. We’ve been asking students and professionals to do this for over 20 years, and there’s no more challenging activity. The hard part isn’t just getting a paragraph down. You may think you want a particular lifestyle, make a certain amount of money, or have a specific job.
Once you’ve done that first draft – tear it up. Now ask yourself, “Why do I want those things? What are the things I really want?”
When students do this activity, they often say they want to make a lot of money. They’ll also say they want to make a difference, so they want to work in a nonprofit. There aren’t too many people who dedicated their careers to nonprofits running around with multimillion-dollar bank accounts – they just don’t go together. But these students want to do good in the world while earning a big payday, and they haven’t really thought about how those two might or might not go together.
What is your contribution? What would you be so excited to be doing that even if they didn’t pay you for it, you’d want to go do it every single day? That’s the kind of thing that’ll make a huge difference, and that’s what makes the challenge more difficult.
Now write that paragraph again and think about your contribution. What would you be so excited to be doing that even if you weren’t paid for it, you’d want to do it every single day? That’s what will make a difference, which makes the activity so challenging.
