Don’t Look for a Job: Look for An Opportunity to Be Remarkable(My talk at Pepperdine)

Lambert,

I appreciate your candor and your readership. Obviously we don't see eye to eye on this. As I said in my speech this perspective is not for everybody. It's my opinion. Personally I don't see it an an excuse not to work hard. In fact I do work hard at all the things I do. But I also don't equate hard work with long hours. I also think all of the people that I profiled work really hard. In my opinion what it comes down to is a difference in values. You and I both value different things and we both get our fulfillment in happiness in different ways. I believe in working in doing work that matters to me and is meaningful. Also, I think it's a generation of people with different priorities who are interested in living on their own terms. Again I appreciate your candor and a different perspective.

Hard work for the sake of suffering is a bad lesson to teach people. When someone is pursuing something which is of value to them, the work is not as difficult as doing what someone else believes is right. In fact the energy which comes from fulfilling work multiples the energy and the effort which is poured into it. This is not to say that difficulty and hardship will cease to exist. They won't. No matter how successful and wealthy a person might become, life will always have challenges and obstacles.

Emilie,

It was interesting. There were many international students in the room who I'm guessing didn't speak really great English so my message was probably somewhat lost on them. So I got kind of a mix.

As expected there were skeptics and their reaction was "isn't this whole social media thing just a fad, and what are you going to do in 5 years?" I thought it was a fair question, but I also realized that it was in part to the fact they just don't know about the numbers of how fast all this stuff is growing. One thing with some of the international students that's tough is they are just looking for a way to get a sponsorship which is an uphill battle.

There was one person who did come up to me afterward and ask quite a few questions and we've been exchanging emails to talk about her project so I"m sure at some point you'll see a guest post from her so I can help her get her project off the ground.

Interesting. I think the importance of these talks are really about that one person you might inspire. I'm really passionate about education too. I'd love to start a project one day where I work with younger kids. I think I actually got the idea from one of your guests on BlogcastFM. I'll have to go back and listen to that episode again... and then maybe get in touch.

Javi,

I think I will write about the reactions to the talk :)/ That sounds like a good idea and will definitely make for some nice content.

Stan,

It was good. I think I had a fairly captive audience. A few students stuck around for quite a bit of Q&A.

Allison,

I hope so too. I think there will be at least one from the way things are looking and I'm looking forward to seeing the results of that.