"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce.
During the Q&A periods after my speeches, it is the men who say to me, "Help me understand how I am going to balance my work and my family." Now, let me tell you why I believe they see it that way. Because when they look around the room, they see the women who are going to be in their lives, the choices they will have for a spouse. And they realize that these women are educated, ambitious, and have every intention of having careers of their own.
Being smart young men, they say to themselves, "I want to get married, have a family, and I understand my wife wants to work too. Do you, Vicki, know how to help us do that?" Because they're no longer looking at that prospective wife, saying, "Well this is wonderful, you're getting educated, but of course as soon as we get married, you're going to stay home and make babies."
Those days are long gone. But our corporations haven't caught up with it. Our law firms, our higher education system, and our medical institutions haven't figured out how this family policy is going to work. Men are tired of the 80- to 100-hour work week as well.
People who put aside a career for convenience get very little
of a career or convenience.
Our attitude has always been that if you hire good people and provide good wages and good jobs and more than that -- if you provide careers -- that good things will happen to your company. I think we can say that that has been proved by the quality of people that we have and how they have built our organization.
If something is important enough to you that you feel the urge to donate your money or time to it, I think it’s best to try to express that form of giving through your career, not just as something you do on the side. If you enjoy your volunteering and charitable activities more than your career, it means your career is in serious need of an upgrade. In my opinion your career should be your best outlet for giving.
So as I thought about it, the most important "tool" you can have today in business is insatiable curiosity. The minute you lose it, you're dead.
I adopted a begging posture that suggested genteel poverty combined with a certain affable nonchalance. People found this irresistible. They lavished money on me. Within days I exceeded ten dollars an hour. I began to save money and even, following Blue’s lead, tithed to the less fortunate. I became less pessimistic, thought less about how cruel the streets can be. I actually considered begging a legitimate career possibility.
Before you wonder "Am I doing things right," ask "Am I doing the right things?"
What tender and devoted mother wouldn't be dismayed and ill with terror at her son's or daughter's stepping even one hair's breath off the beaten track. No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality, is what every mother thinks when she rocks the cradle. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general's rank is the original man - in other words, the man who won't be quiet.
Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.
"I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career."
Self-acceptance does not come about in practice overnight. Neither does learning how to be patient with ourselves. But if we have any hope of finding a dream vocation or career, we must be on good terms with our hearts, so that we can discover what it is that our inner-man of the heart (to use St. Peter's term) wants to do. For this, patience and self-acceptance are required.
"People will pay me to feel the passion and energy I breathe into my career and creations."
It's never too late to be what you might have been.
My addiction to reading (and my career as a librarian) grew out of a childhood that was rescued from despair by books, libraries, and librarians.
