More than 4 decades ago, I sat where you are today, graduating from one of the finest law schools in the country, eager and excited to start a new era of my life… And quite frankly, I cannot remember a single word of the commencement speech… so, I will keep my remarks brief, confine myself to three points, hoping to be more memorable.

The first is that to live a life of minimal regret, the best you can be, you must be. To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice your gift.

The second point is to live an intentional life.  An ordinary person with a plan can outperform a genius without one. People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. It’s as simple as that.

You have multiple roles in life for various areas:

Family and Friends
Community and Social
Physical Fitness and Health
Ongoing Continuing Self Education and Mental Growth
Your Inner Spiritual Life
Career and Finances

To live your best life, I urge you to have written goals in all areas of your life, for all your roles, with action plans and accountability check points for each. Even the most highly motivated of us will find setting goal posts and deadlines highly effective in energizing and directing their efforts. Having an eye on the mountain top keeps you on mission.

There is one thing about plans. They are a tool, not a commandment. Planning is invaluable, but plans are useless. That is because no plan survives contact with reality… however, every good plan has fallback options, and the process of planning prepares us to pivot and improvise. And if Plan B doesn’t work, well, there are a lot more letters in the alphabet.

Even with the best plans there are valleys and in-between times, when the fog is heavy and it is hard to see your way. There is a concept called Stepping Forward into the Fog. Even when the fog is densest, you can usually see a step or two forward and when you have the courage to take those steps, one or two steps more reveal themselves and so you find your way forward when so many others wait on the shore for clear weather.

The third point goes to the importance of developing your emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence is both inner and outer. It is your self-awareness, your ability to understand, manage and direct your emotions as well as your ability to read and understand others and their motivations. Your IQ is pretty much fixed at birth, however your emotional intelligence is yours to develop to its fullest or to allow to lie fallow and shallow. No matter how much you may think you have, I assure you that you have only scratched the surface.

Someone once introduced a man of great accomplishment as a self-made man. Taking the podium, he refused the accolade, saying “I’m not a self-made man, I’ve had the help of hundreds if not thousands along the way.” While most of you would share that sentiment, I strongly suggest you embrace becoming a self-sculptured person.

To become the person you want to be, need to be, in order to achieve your highest goals, you must relentlessly hone and shape and re-shape your mind, skills, and personality to become the person capable of accomplishing the farthest reaches of your greatest dreams.

The tools available to pursue emotional intelligence are many; foremost is a relentless pursuit of knowledge, embarking on a lifelong balanced outer and inner journey. My home office is literally 4 walls of bookshelves, floor to ceiling with books that now spill over into other rooms.  I have journaled for close to 40 years and I recommend it to you as well; it is an incredibly effective way to organize your thoughts and practice the introspection and reflection that is so vital for the accumulation of wisdom.

I further highly recommend and have greatly utilized Affirmations and Quotes as well as Visualization. Quotes serve as tabs on whole bodies of knowledge, reminding you to do as well as you know, calling forth remembered wisdom at critical moments. Visualization evokes vivid, strong emotional images that help reinforce vital learnings. Affirmations are important because “thoughts held in mind attract in kind, what you focus on expands and energy flows where attention goes.”

Some of my favorite Affirmations that I hope may serve and guide you as well:

  • Stress is not an event; it is a learned reaction to an event. Learn Better.
  • I am a radiant optimist, I carry the sun in my pocket, the stars in my heart.
  • What others do is their karma, how I respond is mine.
  • My sense of self is anchored deep within, from that flows wonderful peace. 
  • Bit by bit, better every day, helping others along the way.

It may sound strange for a hardheaded businessperson to recommend so highly the mastery of such soft skills. However, I assure you that at the higher levels of human endeavor, the mastery of hard skills is a given, merely table stakes, and it is the ability to leverage hard skills with soft skills that becomes the final differentiator.

If you are not a different, better, wiser person every decade of your life, you are living less than your fullest life. To be your fullest self, to live your best life, you must pick a mountain to climb, to throw yourselves up against. It is the challenges you accept that greatly determine who you become and how much you grow. When you get to stand on the tallest podium at the Olympics and they play your national anthem, do you do it for the few hundred dollars’ worth of gold hanging around your neck? Of course not! You did it because for one bright shining moment you were the BEST in your chosen field. And if you don’t make the podium, I assure you that you are the better for the effort; far, far better than those who tried not.

To reiterate the 3 points: First, always give your best and to never sacrifice your gift. Second, live intentionally, always with a plan and purpose. Third, as you work to stay current in your chosen field, also consciously and continuously invest in developing your emotional intelligence.

In summation, I urge you to pick a mountain, indeed mountain after mountain, each worthy of your talents and efforts, and as you master the mountain, you will master yourself as well. Thank you!