What is the point of being successful and not having any soul? And I’ve seen so many of the elite performers and famous industry titans that I’ve been coaching for all these decades, some of them fall into the pitfall of making a lot of money and
becoming really famous and working a lot and being really great in their professional lives, but they never got to know themselves, they never built great family times, they never took trips, they never enjoyed the fruits of their labor. That’s a really key point. You want to work hard, but you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor as well. I’ve worked with a lot of clients and they became titans of the industry and supreme in their domains, but they never got to know their children. And I believe with children, for example, you have a very short window of opportunity, and once that window closes, it’s really hard to open it up.
If you were to ask me, “Robin, what is a beautiful day? Or what does it look like?” I would say, it does have a great morning routine where you take that hour with the front end of your day to reconnect with who you truly are, your higher power, your natural wisdom, your values, your gifts and your talents, your dreams. A great morning routine allows you to connect with wisdom and read from heroic books. A
great morning routine is part of handcrafting a beautiful day because you can pray and meditate and watch the sun come up and do some art or writing a journal or listen to some music. What does beauty in a day look like? It would also mean spending time with your loved ones. Those human connections scientifically, they release oxytocin in your brain, which makes you feel good. And the people who’ve lived the happiest lives all had people they loved and showed loved on a daily basis.
A beautiful day would also involve great work. I do believe that when you don’t do fake work and you don’t do mediocre work, but you see yourself as someone who is pursuing total craft mastery, and the work you do shows your love and it shows how much you care, and it shows excellence and mastery, that brings more beauty to the world and our world sure does need more beauty. Spending time in nature every day, so incredibly important. The Japanese philosophy of forest bathing is so wise and there’s so many scientific benefits, but there’s a lot of spiritual benefits. When I go out and walk in nature, I do it almost every day, I love to walk close to the ocean, I love to walk in forest as well, and I love to mountain bike in a forest and often I’ll listen to an audiobook and sometimes I won’t.
But when I am out in the woods, I connect with something larger than myself, and if I have any worries, they vanish. And if I need inspiration, it shows up. And I just look at the glory of nature. And you look at the forest, you look at the flowers, or you go for a walk in the evening or in the nighttime, and you see a full moon and the stars. Someone once said, “If the stars only came out once every 100 years, we would bask in their glory. But because they’re out every night, we really don’t notice them.” No one knows what tomorrow is going to bring even if you or I get to live how many more years as a blessing, even the longest human life is a relatively short ride. And no matter who someone is, whether they are CEO, a billionaire, a leader of a nation, whether they are a coder, a baker, a yoga teacher, a taxi driver, whether
they are street sweeper or a minor, we are all equal.
And even the longest life really is a very short ride. Someone once said to me, “Life is a blink and we all end up as dust.” We all end up as dust on the mantle over fireplace next to our family’s trophies. And I’m saying that jokingly, but we all do end up as dust or six feet under. And so, I want to encourage you to start thinking about living every day as if it was your last. I don’t want you to hold back. One of the things that causes people not to live amazing years is a fear of rejection. And we hold back and we miss
so much because we are afraid of being rejected, we’re afraid of being laughed at, we’re afraid of getting bruised or experiencing pain. But as I’ve shared with you, we grow our most difficult experiences and every painful and difficult experience, every so-called failure comes to teach us and introduce us to our highest talents and
our greatest and most glorious gifts.
George Bernard Shaw was asked on his deathbed, “What would you do if you could live your life over again?” And he replied, “I’d like to be the person I could have been but never was.” It’s a pretty sad place to get to. And so, I want to challenge you with great love and respect, each and every day as you navigate and advance through this year live full on, live in the moment, inhabit the day, forget about the past, it was a great teacher, forget about the future, it’s a mirage. Live in today. Do amazing work, run great routines, be kind, be enthusiastic, be grateful. The Persian Proverb says, “I cursed the fact that I had no shoes, until I saw the man who had no feet.” So, think about your mortality on a daily basis.
Don’t hold back, don’t worry about rejection, it’s the price of ambition. And as you live full on, you’ll not only make this year the greatest year you’ve ever lived, you’ll be an inspiration to everyone who watches your star rise.