Letters To My Son

What I’ve been learning is that happiness and contentment and greatness isn’t out there. It’s not where everyone else is, even if it seems like it. You can spend your whole life chasing this happiness, contentment, dreams, greatness, coolness, and never reach it. That’s because it’s right where you are now.

You don’t have a job, no fixed things to do, things are wide open … and that’s scary, but also an advantage. Your schedule is open, and you have immense possibilities. The way to take advantage of that is to find something to get good at, and then get good at it. As good as you can.

But just like fear and opportunity are one and the same. So are safety and regret - a concession, a wolf in sheep's clothing and they are a lot of things, but they are not YOU.

You won’t be able to understand this letter today, but someday, when you’re ready, I hope you will find some wisdom and value in what I share with you. You are young, and life has yet to take its toll on you, to throw disappointments and heartaches and loneliness and struggles and pain into your path. You have not been worn down yet by long hours of thankless work, by the slings and arrows of ever...

I can’t tell you where the jobs are but i can fire you up at the same time challenge you to see work in a different light. To think of work differently because we cannot afford to see work the same way ever again. Its time to reimagine what we can do and what we’re all about.

I think we all come to a point where we look up and we see no top to the wall we seek to climb. We look down and see the water rising at our feet with every breath - we look to our left and see those who are where we want to be tomorrow and we look to our right, and see the trail of decisions we'd love to take back from yesterday. This is where most create their limiting narrative, where most succ...

"Duty, Honor, Country" — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

This is the story of Unworthiness. And it is fairly universal. It’s one of my longest-running inner narratives. That I’m not good enough — that I’m somehow unworthy to teach, unworthy to invest time and money on. I’ve found this is one of the most common inner narratives there is.

Every day there's a specific decision you have to make. It's the first and it's the most important decision. Because from it, you effectively roadmap your destiny.

So what's keeping you from leaping what's keeping you on the ground, it's not money, it's not tech, it's not where you started. It's your mindset. So change how you see the world around you.

Maybe there are people who struggle and question themselves and doubt the road ahead. No, it must be the past diverged, they took happiness and I took those things we don't say out loud and then there's everyday life when things don't go as planned.

That's the sea we have to cross, the terrain we have to navigate. It’s not the physicality of taking the steps. Anyone can do that - it's believing that you are worthy of the journey, and you have to ask yourself - is it that you can’t become something new, or is it that you can’t, won’t refuse to detach from who you used to be.

Many of us have something that we’d like to change in our lives, but it can be pretty difficult to overcome addictions or strong urges. Jennifer Fox shares her story of addiction, change, forgiveness and making a conscious decision to “just keep moving my feet” towards the finish line of redemption.

As long as your wheels don't stop turning you are never stuck. As long as you're willing to adjust there will never be an end in sight. Until you put a stake in the ground and declare victory.

People struggle because they carry specific instances of failure with them. Right, it's a human response. Emotions play into our decision making. The problem is there are emotions that don't need to be there, they've had their time, they've served their purpose, but now they really don't bring any more value.

Life gives us infinite options. We have an unlimited number of opportunities to do anything we want. Anything. Only that's not always how we see it.

There’s a sense of incompleteness in our lives. We have felt it since adolescence, at least, if not since early childhood — it’s a feeling that something is wrong with us, that something is missing, or that we’re missing out on something in the world.

It happens to all of us: you are going strong with a project, with learning something new, with a new habit or two … and things go sideways. You get derailed. This is a critical junction. If you let yourself quit, all your time and effort up until now has been for naught. If you can get back on track, things can be great again.

Many of us just want to get out of the turbulence and pain, want to be free of it, want to find a place of peace. That’s natural, but that’s a rejection of your experience right now, and it’s a huge missed opportunity.

In the 1993 film, A Bronx Tale, a movie about a father that becomes worried when a local gangster befriends his son in the Bronx in the 1960s. Robert De Niro is talking to his young son as they’re stepping off the bus and the son asks, “Do I have talent dad? Of course you have talent son. You can be anything you wanna be. Remember the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. You can have all the ta...

Rise above the emotion, the chaos, the present moment and see the big picture. Not only will you survive you will be better because of this, because you kept moving forward when it wasn't easy. No matter how hard life got, you never lost sight of the opportunity. And that made all the difference.

There's a lot of research around this topic and one of the most important books written on it, by Bronnie Ware talks about the regrets of the dying. And one of them is “wishing I had the courage to live a life true to myself’.

Every time you thought you've given your all, you were lying to yourself and not in the sense that you weren't trying hard. Or what you did wasn't important, but in the sense that you artificially created your own finish line - you determined your stopping point. Not the laws of nature, not some unearthly being - you dictated your limit.

A speech turning 80, yet more current than ever.   A speech that reminds us that on the horizon there’s a new world ready to welcome a rediscovered humanity.   We are the architects of our own destiny: let’s open up to progress, to sustainability, and to tolerance. Let’s look at the future with positivity and hope.

John Lewis’ final essay, which he requested be published in the New York Times on the day of his funeral: “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation.” I read Mr. Lewis’ final essay several times over the past weekend. His words touched me and inspired me to want to share it with you. These are his words.