Demystifying Excellence Draft Page

Demystifying Excellence
Keynote Address by Doctor Noize
Introduction
This Keynote Address is adapted from an assembly speech I was invited to give at Pinewood School in California, where I was the Arts, Communications & Technology Department Head, Music Teacher, and Varsity Boys Soccer Coach. The speech turned out to be one of the most impactful things I ever did -- many kindly contacted me about its influence on them over the years -- so I began making it the final lecture of my required freshman course on Music History.

Yer buddy for life,
Doctor Noize
Demystifying Excellence
The Cast Who Shaped My Story
The Catalyst
Fear Is For People Whose Family Didn't Just Die
Results (Expanded Version Only)
The Courage To Fail (Expanded Version Only)
My Compass
Insight #1 -- Identify Your Cornerstones
Insight #2 -- Apply Your Time & Focus
Insight #3 -- Be Confident
Ask Good Questions -- And Give Good Answers
A Sixth Cornerstone
Why Do You Do What You Do?
A Good Night's Sleep

Begin reading Demystifying Excellence.

Fear Is For People Whose Family Didn't Just Die
I vowed to turn people's pity into admiration. I vowed to be like my older brother. I vowed to be an adventure hero. I showed up at school and turned in papers my teachers told me I didn't have to write because they pitied me and said "I had a lot going on." My papers weren't just good; they were fearless and creative and awesome. I fronted two rock bands. I began recording albums full of deeply personal music I'd written, and played the songs loud and live in front of people who might hate them. They loved them. I joined the jazz band because there was a girl in it I wanted to date. I asked other captivating girls out on dates who I had no business dating. They all said yes, although some of those campaigns lasted longer than others... I played competitive soccer, and I was good. It was the moment in my life when I had zero fear and nothing to lose.
And an amazing, transformative event occurred. I found an entire school community rallying around me, becoming my extended family in the process. Family can be a creative word. People got it that I didn't want to let tragic events destroy my spirit -- and they wanted to help and be a part of that success story. I was elected ASB President on the craziest, wildest campaign speech ever heard at the high school. I was voted Homecoming King, and the guy who would have won it any other year was the first to run over and embrace me. I was shorter than last year's Homecoming Queen, a gorgeous girl who since graduating had become an underwear model in local JC Penney's ads (a fact that, as you can imagine, every boy in our high school had become familiar with). She placed the crown on my head in a rather awkward, hilarious, and thankfully brief ceremony. I think I was honored with these roles partly because my peers felt I represented the school well, and partly because they felt it would represent their own character well to give me a shot at moving not only on, but up.
They were right on both counts. It may sound ridiculous -- we're supposed to deride such titles in our adult life -- but I took those leadership roles very seriously, and the honors they bestowed on me were transformative events in my life. They made me want to be a leader, and a good one. We had the funniest, most energetic school spirit events ever that year. We invited jocks and geeks alike to participate in crazy lunchtime activities -- and they all came and participated, together.
I made deep friendships. I felt empowered. I felt I could use sheer willpower to make positive things happen. Taking up where my brother had left off, I was a straight-A high school student accepted to Stanford, where I went on to graduate with Distinction and Honors in Music and Political Science. I found the rigors and demands of school -- even higher education at a top university -- easy compared to the mental obstacles my brother and I had both overcome in high school. In fact, I viewed those demands as an unbelievable opportunity to immerse myself in positively challenging things, not as a burden.
I wrote about my transformative high school experience in my college application essay to Stanford. I laid my soul bare. Ten years after graduating, I saw Stanford's Dean of Admissions in the San Francisco airport. I'd never met her before, but I walked up and introduced myself. She stunned me by relating -- in amazing detail -- everything I'd written in my college application essay. She told me she wished she'd met my brother. I told her she had.
Results (Expanded Version Only)
I have never forgotten this empowering lesson -- the way I reached out to my community, and they reached back -- and it's the basis of my entire career. My life as a teacher and Doctor Noize is basically spent saying to kids: You are great, you are strong and sophisticated, you are smart, and I expect you to have the courage to be a kind and brazen adventurer on this planet. I try to replicate the feeling of family, community, and purpose my high school community gave me in everything I do.
As a teacher, I made it my business to inspire my students to stretch. I was told in my first year teaching by my school administration that nobody would sign up for a high school elective on classical music history, because kids only like rock music. "Just put it on the elective sheet," I answered. Then I went out and recruited my first music history class, playing music and sports with kids after school, connecting with students. In class, I painted the great composers as the crazy visionaries they were. I gave the wild background stories behind key pieces of music, and then played them for enrapt teenage audiences who could relate to the angst and melodrama that drove most great composers to create. Parents started emailing me asking what I'd done to get their teenage sons to ask them to take them to the San Francisco Symphony. Within a few years, the classical music history course was so popular it was made a required class for all incoming freshmen.
As a soccer coach, I used my experience to dare kids to risk the effort and focus it takes to succeed -- or fail -- at a high level. The Pinewood Boys Soccer Team had not won a league game in seven years. They were losers -- not because of the scores of the games, but because of the way they conducted themselves. They expected to lose and did not have the courage to put out the effort to win. They pretended they thought this was funny, but I could tell deep down that they didn't. My first year coaching, we lost 11 games, tied one, and won none. Most of our games were lost by about five goals. I laid out a plan to get better to the team and told them I would work with them long hours, even over the summer, to get better. I told them they'd see results. Our second year, we also went 0-11-1 -- but almost every game we played was a close and heartbreaking 1- or 2-goal defeat, not a blowout. We were the hardest working, most relentless team in the league; everyone beat us, but everyone hated playing us. A victory against us was no fun.
Yet the record showed we were still losers. Many kids would give up at this point. But these young men -- who had still never won a league game in their life -- recognized their improvement and were undeterred by the identical losing record. They worked even harder in the offseason. Word got out -- about a two-time 0-11-1 team -- that something big was going on within the Pinewood boys soccer team. We had so many kids sign up the next year that we had to have a JV Team for the first time. We went 8-4-2 that season. We narrowly missed the playoffs, but everyone felt like we had won the World Cup. Those kids were winners. I love that team. Love them love them love them. Every time I think about them, I get tears in my eyes. They inspired me to go on and coach my own daughters' teams with the same principles of positive belief and hard work. My U8 girls team won the top division in their age group three seasons in a row.
As a choir director, I had no idea what I was doing when we started. We started the choir because the school had none, and I had kids the first year who couldn't stay on pitch at all or read music. The Pinewood Singers were not very good in our first year. We simply stuck with it and worked on all our deficiencies -- conductor and students alike. I took a few conducting seminars to learn which hand I should wave the baton with, and the kids worked a lot, section by section, learning to sing together on pitch with expression. We had a team vibe to the choir -- divas were not encouraged. Kids helped me with administration and section leading. In my fifth and final year teaching, our school helped us raise the money to rent a bus to Anaheim and back for the only competition we ever entered. The Pinewood Singers won First Prize over high schools ten times our size and earned the only perfect score from the judges at Disneyland's prestigious Music In The Parks competition. It was a huge moment of accomplishment for me and many of the kids in my choir, some of whom went on to pursue music and teaching after they graduated. I know because I keep in touch.
The Courage To Fail (Expanded Version Only)
I will never forget the question asked by one of our school administrators when the Pinewood Singers returned home from Disneyland with an absolutely giant winners' trophy. She asked -- incredulously, skeptically: "Well... were there any good choirs there?"
"They were excellent," I said. But what I thought was this: Your question -- which subconsciously assumes that our small student body is not capable of true competitive excellence -- is why no previous Pinewood choir has ever won anything, and the music program had dissipated from lack of interest. It astounds me just how much most people don't truly believe, deep in their gut, that the cliché is true: You can achieve excellence with focused passion, persistence, and hard work. If you do those things, it resonates with people. It's infectious and it's more than most people will do. The opposite is also infectious. I left the school after that year, dedicated to forming a company -- Doctor Noize Inc. -- that would never, ever ask such questions.
So now I've reached my life's primary work, Doctor Noize. I love being Doctor Noize. I love making our products. I love playing the shows. Everyone knows this. I will not go into crazy detail here about all things Doctor Noize, although I could do so for hours. There is an extensive Doctor Noize website with free educational content, a line of passionately produced products, and a menu of totally unique shows for kids and families for you to check out if you want. And I hope you do. The only thing I want to communicate here regarding Doctor Noize is this:
I will treat your kids as the smartest, most adventurous, most curious, and most important people in the world. Because that's what they are. And if you believe your kids are capable of excellence -- as I do -- then I hope you'll support what I do, and what people like me do. There are a lot of people, and an entire children's multimedia industry, out there who will feed your kids products that assume they're incurious simpletons with two-minute attention spans. They do this because either they themselves are incurious simpletons -- as many adults become -- or because they are afraid they can't sell something more.
The truth is, this fear is justified: It is far easier to sell something unchallenging to overextended parents. We live in a comfort food culture, and that extends to the arts. As our technology has become more sophisticated, mainstream art has become less so. Many of the people selling simplicity to kids will be more commercially successful than Doctor Noize. Treat your kids like simpletons and they will grow up to be simpletons. They will create a world where truth is casually treated as opinion and the title of excellence is bestowed upon those creations which make us feel comfortable the fastest. The world will be worse off for it.
As long as the culture allows me to make a living as Doctor Noize, I don't care about quantity of sales. I care about quality of influence. As Doctor Noize, I communicate to kids on every album that they're smart enough to tackle complex things. At every show I perform, I try to combine that magical "we're all family" feeling with a direct dare to kids to get onstage and do something unique and outside their comfort zone. My brother would love Doctor Noize Inc., and it would not exist without his sophisticated influence on my life. I've tried to do him proud.
My Compass
So that's the background story. Here are the core lessons I learned from it.
Nowadays, the philosophical "call to action" moments of my teens are far behind me. My life has become blissfully comfortable for long stretches. This presents new challenges. There are times when I have to remind myself that it's my responsibility to continue to seek excellence and meaning beyond personal comfort. This is one of the reasons why I -- and many other teachers and children's entertainers -- have chosen my career path. Kids are more important than I am; I realize that. Adults are, as Dr. Seuss famously quipped, merely "obsolete children." Whatever personal obstacles I need to overcome that day, it's still relatively easy to get up and get motivated when it's my job to go do something for people who really matter -- kids. Still, I ponder the following questions a lot observing my life and the lives of those around me:
What is it that makes a person strive for excellence in any situation? And how do we sustain excellence in times when life hasn't just knocked us down, put our souls on red alert, and dared or required us to get up, give our all, and do our best?
For me, it's a combination of combining an inspirational catalyst, an inner drive, and a peer community that supports you and inspires you to go for it. If I can provide that inspirational moment for anyone, I will feel like a contributing member of society and be a success that day. That's why I became a teacher, that's why I became a parent, and that's why I became Doctor Noize. And it all goes back to that horrible, undesirable catalyst that was served up to me in my teens.
An unexpected thing happened after my family's series of tragedies: I felt a sense of inner peace. I felt that, as a consolation prize to all the pain, the gift of perspective had been bestowed upon me. My direction in life became simple and clear. I wanted to dedicate my time and passion to the things that interested me most, every day. And I wanted to do them excellently.
So I asked myself: Why am I not working toward all these things every day already? I named this address Demystifying Excellence because -- in a cruel trick by God, or Nature, or The Tooth Fairy, or the Twilight movies, or whatever happens to govern your belief system -- we all seem to be hardwired to fear or avoid the quest for excellence.
We worry: What if we fail? What if we put ourselves on the line and fall flat on our face? Isn't it easier to strive for less and minimize the risk? The answer: No, in the long run, it's harder on you to take the easy route. Why? Because when you're older, and you look back on your life, you won't be too disappointed about the girl who turned you down. But you'll always wonder, with regret, about the girl you never asked. And the same holds true for anything you truly care about.
So why this fear of striving for excellence, and how do we overcome it? It dawned on me at the age of sixteen that three things prevented people from achieving excellence in their lives, and that conquering these three things was the key to sustaining a life of fulfillment. I call these my three little insights.
Insight #1: Identify a small and manageable number of core areas which you care most passionately about.
Insight #2: Devote your time to these areas every day.
Insight #3: Be confident all the time.
Insight #1 -- Identify Your Cornerstones
I started with Insight #1. I sat down and realized that my goals in life could really be honed down to five passions. I began to call these areas my cornerstones, and they're still the same:
(1) I wanted to find the girl of my dreams, marry her, and make sure she knew that she was a goddess every day. I found her at the age of 19. More on that later.
(2) I wanted to write music. I turned to writing music with a passion, saying things in songs I couldn't appropriately convey in real life. It cleanses my soul.
(3) I wanted to educate myself and others. Knowledge gave me a sense of power and the feeling that I might make a difference in the world.
(4) I wanted to play and coach soccer, because I was good at it, it was fun, and it reflected many of the core philosophies I value.
(5) I wanted to get to know all sorts of people. I began to reach out and befriend anybody who interested me, from the geeks to the jocks and the hippies to the conservatives and everyone in between. I wanted a colorful array of personalities in my life.

Identifying your cornerstones is the first step on the road to excellence. Keep in mind that nobody ever succeeds in fulfilling themselves long-term if their goal is "success." You are not seeking success. You are seeking fulfillment and purpose by pursuing excellence in some combination of personal passions -- soccer, music, mathematics, vampire slaying, whatever. The greatest thrill and fulfillment in life comes when you reach for your best, your most excellent, at your passions. It does not come in the award ceremony or the crying session after. That's not where the daring and courage and superhuman adrenaline are present.
Insight #2 -- Apply Your Time & Focus
Insight #2: The most important step every day on the road to excellence is getting on the road to excellence every day. This sounds obvious, but in times of trouble, it's not, because of our natural fear of failure. The distance between myself and excellence seemed insurmountable until I realized that excellence was not a destination, but a direction. Excellence is not a destination. It is a direction. It is an endless journey, and you never reach the point of perfection, and that is precisely what makes it so inspiring, because those on the road to excellence are always getting better. Enjoy the ride.
This insight largely materialized from a question I kept asking myself: Why was my brother an inspiration to me?
It wasn't because of his specific accomplishments. They impressed me. No, what inspired me was this: When my teenage brother learned he was going to die, he changed... almost nothing in his life. He did the same things he always did. He fed his deep intellectual curiosity at school with the same dedication to adventure, he wrote software programs teenagers aren't supposed to be smart enough to write, he socialized and created witty diversions with his geeky brainiac friends, and he spent time learning and playing with me, his little brother and best buddy. There was no big rush to do all the things he'd always wanted to do in life. He was already doing what he wanted to do.
I realized that, as long as I could remember, Tracey always had the confidence and wisdom to take steps in the directions of his passions, every day. Never, in all my days, will I forget that lesson. If you build your life around the the things that you are passionate about, and strive toward excellence in those areas, then when things get really tough, you'll still have some semblance of peace about your life. You'll still have your compass when the ship is sinking.
I'm not as good a singer as Ella Fitzgerald was. I'm not as good a coach as Jürgen Klinsmann. I'm not as good looking as those guys from The Wiggles. (Okay, that's a lie, but I'm trying to make a point here.) But when you put the combination of everything I do together, it's something unique that I'm proud of, and something few others could accomplish. And I can tell you, with all sincerity, that I am getting better at what I do all the time. I have many rewarding moments of excellence, I have many humbling moments of failure, and I go to bed knowing I never hold back for fear of inadequacy.
I never spend a week in which I don't pursue all five of my cornerstones.
Insight #3 -- Be Confident
Insight #3: You can, and should, be confident. All the time. Why? Because confidence is not based on the belief that you are the greatest. Confidence is not based on the belief that you are the greatest. Confidence is based on the understanding that if you're headed in the right direction, there are going to be successes and failures along the way, and that's okay.
Many people don't get this at all, and it's just amazing to me. During my brother's illness, it started to occur to me that while Tracey had staples in his head from brain surgery, and he had no hair and was throwing up one day each week from a chemotherapy treatment that merely served to prolong his life for a few months, he was proactively embracing his every last day and opportunity. Meanwhile, I was worrying that some 15-year-old girl might say no if I asked her out, and that maybe I shouldn't play my first rock band gig at my high school because I might mess up a song or two and get embarrassed.
And the contrast seemed ludicrous. It dawned on me that my lack of confidence was ridiculous. To have the confidence to do something you want to do, you don't need to ensure success. You just need to understand that it's okay to fail sometimes. And once I got the confidence, and stopped being a wuss, I instantly had tons more success. As I say to my young soccer players: If you don't shoot, you won't score.
When I was a freshman at Stanford, I got to know a girl named Janette Sampson. She was smart, she was beautiful inside and out, she had a gorgeous singing voice, she volunteered a fair amount for underprivileged kids and people with disabilities, and she had an adorable laugh that I worked hard to earn. I worked hard because Janette Sampson was -- and is -- a No-BS Zone -- appreciative when I do something worthwhile, and unimpressed whenever I am unimpressive.
I found Janette particularly inspiring because -- despite the fact that she was the most articulate and thoughtful woman I knew -- she had been legally blind since junior high school, and therefore unable to read a book with her own eyes or read the teacher's notes off the board at school. But through her gentle confidence and internal vision, she earned an acceptance to Stanford and worked all through college to help pay her way through an advanced Stanford degree.
So I did what any guy who's smart enough to recognize excellence and secure enough not to fear or resent it would do: I wooed her. I wooed her a lot. Five years later, I asked her to marry me. And now, many years after that... I still have her, and I still build my life around her. So now I'm proud to say that I have found the one thing I sought most in my life, which is an amazing woman who loves me, and I strive every day to be an excellent husband. There are days when I succeed at being just that. And, of course... there are days when I don't.
My wife has given birth to two exquisite daughters who are my greatest creative accomplishments ever. They look like her, they remind me of her, and I call them Mommy's Masterpieces. In my wife, my kids have a role model with the same character as my brother to look up to every day. She's an inspiration to both me and my daughters for effortlessly accomplishing things that most of us have trouble accomplishing with full vision. She's a good person to have around when you're feeling like you have unfair obstacles in your life. She's a No-BS Zone. If you can find your own No-BS Zone to have around you every day of your life, you'll be glad you did.
Ask Good Questions -- And Give Good Answers
Back when I was a high school teacher, one of my students once raised his hand in class and asked what many students wonder about a teacher who graduated from a prestigious university: "Mr. C, if you went to Stanford, how come you're just a music teacher?" The class went silent, anxious, awaiting my response. First... Let's pause for a moment and collectively contemplate what that question says about the values of our current American society.
But second... This was a fair question requiring a serious answer -- after taking advantage of my long-awaited thespian opportunity to melodramatically break down in front of a class of high school kids. So I looked at my students, my shoulders slumping, my eyes getting a litte misty, and said: "You're right. What am I doing here? You spoiled punks suck. I quit." Then I walked out of the classroom door. Well played -- there was silence in the room behind me.
I waited a few beats and returned with a grand theatrical bow, to an amused and relieved ovation from my students for my Oscar-winning turn. And then I looked this young man in the eye and said very seriously: "Do you wanna know the real answer?"
The class became silent again. The boy looked up at me, suddenly very serious and sincere: "Yes." He actually did want to know the answer; his parents were very rich and successful, and he couldn't imagine what I was doing here.
I said: "Because teaching offers me a great opportunity to spend my time doing the things I love to do every day, with people who matter and can make a difference in the world, so it makes me happy to be here with you punks. How many other adults do you know who seem really inspired by their jobs?"
And he nodded and said: "Got it, Mr. C."
That's the same reason I am delighted to work with the younger set now -- kids the age of my own kids. I do realize I could have taken my Stanford degree and made more money doing something else, and there are times -- to be honest -- I wish I had. But my internal compass tells me I would have felt like a traitor to my soul. In any event, my success may not be your success. What matters is whether you have the courage to figure out what your success is, and then go for it. That's what my teenage brother did, and he lead a successful life -- even though it only lasted seventeen years. I'll take quality over quantity any day.
A Sixth Cornerstone
About that quality and quantity of life... Future generations are facing a crisis of both. Like me, my children are children of privilege -- but unlike me, they grow up in a world equal parts potential opportunity and disaster. Like many living a comfortable life, I have been insulated, self-absorbed, and reluctant to add a necessary community cornerstone to my life -- that of environmentalism. As I've become more educated on the subject, I've realized that if parents aren't terrified for their children about climate change, it's because they've made the choice not to understand climate change. So I would feel socially immoral, and like an uncommitted parent to my children -- and yours -- if I did not at least briefly address our global climate change crisis in any talk that purports to be about wisdom and living a life of excellence.
The gist of it is this: We are changing the planet's climate at an alarming pace, we know it, most experts project it will lead to unfathomable hardship or worse for future generations, we're not doing what we need to do to stop it, and there's probably far less time than you think to turn back what's already perilously in motion. I want to make sure you understand the probability that adults of the next thirty years will either be the wisest and most heroic generation, or the worst and most selfish parents in the history of the world. Due to very real consequences of our collective actions as human beings, it's no longer enough to simply live an inspired but insulated life seeking excellence in your own personal cornerstones. Previous generations could, but you can't. We've dealt ourselves a hand that requires us to be cooperative toward a larger cause. As usual, this obstacle is an opportunity for us to improve. But in this case, if we don't dramatically improve and achieve excellence reducing our collective carbon footprint, our kids' lives will be much different, and much worse, than ours were. Everyone this address reaches is in a position to enact or dismiss this required excellence. Every day you make a choice.
What I have realized is this: Like most of you, I am failing in this regard. The fact that I am busy with work and parenting is not a good enough excuse to stand by as we hedonistically destroy the world for our children. If I'm gonna inspire you to do it, I need to inspire me to do it. And thus I am setting in motion a three-year plan that will install my Sixth Cornerstone. Expanded thoughts on that will be posted later.
Why Do You Do What You Do?
In our nation -- from the cradle of the world's technology center on the west coast, to the center of the world's most impactful democracy on the east coast, to every businessperson, teacher, student, or family musician in the middle -- most of us are children of privilege in comparison to others around the world. Just about everyone this address reaches has a greater wealth of opportunity than most people in this world, simply because we were born here. And there is nothing wrong with being privileged, as long as you understand that this privilege is not just a lucky opportunity, but the gift of responsibility -- the gift to pursue your dreams of excellence and make your world a better place. And there is no greater wasted opportunity than a child of privilege who fails to see this opportunity, and uses it as a chance to be lazy.
It's our good fortune to be in a position to fulfill this responsibility to our internal compasses and our world at large. This applies to both your individual dreams -- for me, it's my dream of bringing sophisticated music and multimedia to kids and families -- and our collective responsibility to leave the world as good or better a place as the one given to us. It is your responsibility to identify what is important to you -- your life goals, your cornerstones -- and to place your feet on the road to excellence. It's not your parents' responsibility, not your teachers', not your boss's, not the blowhard commentators' on TV, not your dog's or your God's. They're here to provide you with options, not choose your direction for you. And don't wuss out on yourself here -- you should be elated that your life and your world is truly in your hands. It is a luxury that many people in the world do not have to the extent that we do, and it's a luxury that future generations may not have.
So I'd like to close by asking all of you the same question my student asked me: Why are you who you are? Why do you do what you do?
Think about that for a few moments.
If you immediately answered those questions in your mind, you're probably headed in the right direction. If you didn't, it's probably time to check your compass and reset your course. This is necessary sometimes; it's no big tragedy unless you become a slave to your own fear and inaction. Those on the road to excellence are who they are because that is who they chose to be. Those on the road to mediocrity or confusion or extinction are who they are because that is what they ended up as. Your direction dictates your destination.
We live in a culture where it's often cooler to succeed on the short-term surface -- but deny your passions or the truth -- than it is to strive for excellence but fail. We live in a culture that questions whether there's any value or point in having a collective purpose that supercedes our individual rights, even in the face of strong evidence that selfish and short-sighted behavior makes people unhappy and could destroy the way of life we claim to want. We have become so enamored of the glory of self-interest that we feel necessary team endeavors like saving our only planet are a burden on our individual freedom more than an opportunity to save that very freedom. It's madness. Don't fall for it.
A Good Night's Sleep
Ultimately, your fulfillment -- and your children's fulfillment -- is not gonna come because the cool and successful crowd thinks you're all that. It's not gonna come because you have won the sweepstakes of a winner-take-all game and joined the richest 1%. There is no winner-take-all game for life's most important things. Winners who take all get lonely, isolated and stupid quickly. In all the best things, if you win, there are many other people who win too -- especially if you're truly wise enough not to keep 99% of the spoils to yourself. I've aligned Doctor Noize Inc. and my life goals so that if I win, a whole lot of parents and kids win. I'm not gonna get rich selling you junk food media for kids. But I'll earn an honest living -- or fail trying -- producing sophisticated things that I believe treat kids with respect and have the potential to make the world a better place. I sleep well at night. You can too.
A nice rule of thumb to assess your personal and societal goals is to ask this: If you are successful at your goals, who and what will it inspire? Ask this question of a teacher, and you will love their straightforward answer. Ask this question of an oil company executive or an investment bank CEO who makes a thousand times what his janitor makes, and if you're honest you'll still be trying to reconcile his convoluted answer with his true potential tomorrow. Here's hoping that in the 21st century, our moral evolution catches up to our technological evolution in time. I dream of a society that admires Bill Gates even more for his amazing humanitarian generosity than his amazing computer company and mansion. It's there to inspire you if you look.
In summary, then: Your fulfillment will come because you know that what you're doing is best for you and your world. Everyone -- consciously or unconsciously -- has their own internal BS Meter, and it's always on. It's the number one factor determining whether you truly feel joy or just sometimes experience pleasure. And if you're not making an honest effort to live up to your wonderful and unique gifts -- for both yourself and your community -- all the hip clothes, toys and titles in the world aren't going to cover up the fact that you're coming up short for yourself and your world when you look at yourself in the mirror. Don't worry about how I feel about you. Worry about how you feel about you.
And then, once you've set your course, and it's in sync with your internal compass... Stop worrying. Be what you want to be. Be a hero to your individual goals, to your family and friends, to your society's needs. Do it today. Nothing on your cluttered schedule is more important. I can't wait to see what you do. Thank you.