It"s true. And how do you know when you"re doing something rightHow do you know thatIt feels so. What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you"re supposed to do something or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know. The trick is to learn to check your ego at the door and start checking your gut instead. Every right decision I"ve made-every right decision I"ve ever made-has come from my gut. And every wrong decision I"ve ever made was a result of me not listening to the greater voice of myself.
If it doesn"t feel right, don"t do it. That"s the lesson. And that lesson alone will save you, my friends, a lot of grief. Even doubt means don"t. This is what I"ve learned. There are many times when you don"t know what to do. When you don"t know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.
And when you do get still and let your internal motivation be the driver, not only will your personal life improve, but you will gain a competitive edge in the working world as well. Because, as Daniel Pink writes in his best-seller, A Whole New Mind, we"re entering a whole new age. And he calls it the Conceptual Age, where traits that set people apart today are going to come from our hearts-right brain-as well as our heads. It"s no longer just the logical, linear, rules-based thinking that matters, he says. It"s also empathy and joyfulness and purpose, inner traits that have transcendent worth.
These qualities bloom when we"re doing what we love, when we"re involving the wholeness of ourselves in our work, both our expertise and our emotion.
So, I say to you, forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fl y, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.
So, how do I defi ne successLet me tell you, money"s pretty nice. I"m not going to stand up here and tell you that it"s not about money, because money is very nice. I like money. It"s good for buying things.
But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning. You want your work to be meaningful. Because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life. What you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you. That"s when you"re really rich. So, lesson one, follow your feelings. If it feels right, move forward. If it doesn"t feel right, don"t do it.
Now I want to talk a little bit about failings, because nobody"s journey is seamless or smooth. We all stumble. We all have setbacks. If things go wrong, you hit a dead end-as you will-it"s just life"s way of saying time to change course. So, ask every failure-this is what I do with every failure, every crisis, every diffi cult time-I say, what is this here to teach meAnd as soon as you get the lesson, you get to move on. If you really get the lesson, you pass and you don"t have to repeat the class. If you don"t get the lesson, it shows up wearing another pair of pants-or skirt-to give you some remedial work.
And what I"ve found is that diffi culties come when you don"t pay attention to life"s whisper, because life always whispers to you fi rst. And if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you"ll get a scream. Whatever you resist persists. But, if you ask the right question-not why is this happening, but what is this here to teach me-it puts you in the place and space to get the lesson you need.
My friend Eckhart Tolle, who"s written this wonderful book called A New Earth that"s all about letting the awareness of who you are stimulate everything that you do, he puts it like this：He says, don"t react against a bad situation；merge with that situation instead. And the solution will arise from the challenge. Because surrendering yourself doesn"t mean giving up；it means acting with responsibility.
Many of you know that, as President Hennessy said, I started this school in Africa. And I founded the school, where I"m trying to give South African girls a shot at a future like yours-Stanford. And I spent fi ve years making sure that school would be as beautiful as the students. I wanted every girl to feel her worth refl ected in her surroundings. So, I checked every blueprint, I picked every pillow. I was looking at the grout in between the bricks. I knew every thread count of the sheets. I chose every girl from the villages, from nine provinces. And yet, last fall, I was faced with a crisis I had never anticipated. I was told that one of the dorm matrons was suspected of sexual abuse.
That was, as you can imagine, devastating news. First, I cried-actually, I sobbed-for about half an hour. And then I said, let"s get to it；that"s all you get, a half an hour. You need to focus on now, what you need to do now. So, I contacted a child trauma specialist. I put together a team of investigators. I made sure the girls had counseling and support. And Gayle and I got on a plane and fl ew to South Africa.
And the whole time I kept asking that question：What is this here to teach meAnd, as diffi cult as that experience has been, I got a lot of lessons. I understand now the mistakes I made, because I had been paying attention to all of the wrong things. I"d built that school from the outside in, when what really mattered was the inside out. So, it"s a lesson that applies to all of our lives as a whole. What matters most is what"s inside. What matters most is the sense of integrity, of quality and beauty. I got that lesson. And what I know is that the girls came away with something, too. They have emerged from this more resilient and knowing that their voices have power.
And their resilience and spirit have given me more than I could ever give to them, which leads me to my fi nal lesson-the one about fi nding happiness-which we could talk about all day, but I know you have other wacky things to do.
