These blog entries are popping up more often than I wanted but who am I to stop a thought in motion?
I read an article in the Globe and Mail about Steve Jobs and how maybe his advice wasn't the best for everyone. My immediate thought was to rush to Steve's defense.., here was a man who's vision was to dare to be different, dream big and achieve great things. I saw this piece as just another journalist reaching deep into his pockets (or into his a$$) to pull out a different angle to a story that had already been done to death (pun not intended :( )
That is, until I gave a workshop to the Young Adults at my center on life skills training.
"Take this piece of paper, and this colored pencil (distributed in my honest and well intentioned manner to evoke creativity) and draw your vision, your dream for the world." 5 minutes later and I was clutching green, red and blue scribbles of a rocket skip to the moon, red Adidas sneakers and mansions with swimming pools and bikini clad ladies.
I wasn't at all looking forward to taking my pin and deflating the air from their tires. And yet, there I was, in the middle of my presentation, moving my cursor over the famous Steve Jobs Stanford speech I was about to show and clicking delete, launching instead into a 10 minute lesson on SMART and how we need to evaluate our goals in a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound framework. In other words, what are the chances of you actually achieving this?
The journey to the moon was changed to Canada, the Adidas sneakers to one's from the center market .. and so on and so forth.
I guess what I'm trying to say here, is all the things we value in our society, are one's within reach, and not everyone is blessed with the same privilege. Our race to the top, and our desire to achieve and attain more and more, is the result of a series of successes that are actually possible.
To quote Will Wilkinson from the G&M article:
"'Find out what you love and never settle for less' is an excellent recipe for frustration and poverty. 'Reconcile yourself to the limits of your talent and temperament and find the most satisfactory compromise between what you love to do and what you need to do to feed your children' is rather less stirring, but it's much better advice."
Interesting thoughts, from an alternative perspective.
Here is the full article http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/career-tips/bad-career-advice-from-steve-jobs/article2199842/
