Friends of Dave #325: cost of a cup of coffee
REMINDER: Focus on the people that matter.
I had a number of inbound signals from the universe this week that got me thinking, Friends.
Last weekend my wife and I watched “Everything Everywhere All At Once” — if you haven’t heard about the movie before, that will likely change after the Oscars this coming weekend.
Let’s just say if “Cocaine Bear” was a fun, mindless fever dream, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” would be it’s trippy, somewhat pretentious, weird intellectual distant cousin.
It is a fever dream with about as many “WTF am I watching?” moments, but with a deeper message about making sense of life and navigating the relationships we form with those closest to us.
It’s a movie that I would have probably dismissed in my 20’s as contrived sci-fi wackiness. Now, with multiple decades of adult experience under my belt, I sat stunned at the end trying to make sense of the valuable lesson the story shared.
Then, midweek, I was forwarded an email out of the blue from an old pal (and FoD) Bill O’Herron.
Entitled “The Success Lift” and with “My best friend died 15 years ago, today” as it’s subject line, the email was an intro to a newsletter written by Brian Pannuzzo (unfortunately I can’t find it published anywhere online, otherwise I would link to it).
In it, Brian brings to the light the loss of his best friend and the qualities he misses about him most. He goes on to say:
People are going to stop thinking about you shortly after you leave this place.
Why are you worried about them?
What could you do while you're still here to be as memorable to as many people as you care to be?
How long will people talk about you and the impact you had once you're gone?
Take a few moments today and ponder that...
Wow. How often do you think about that?
Then, within an hour of receiving this email, I got a text that the mother of one of my college buddies passed away — it was not entirely unexpected as she was not the in the best health and had recently had a fall that made breathing difficult. My friend, while undoubtedly sad, was at peace with it.
I had not thought about my friend’s mom in a while (I probably had not seen her since my buddy’s wedding 20 years ago), but always remembered how friendly and hospitable she was to all of us. She was one of those people who made you feel good about yourself and what you were doing no matter what the circumstances were.
I’ll simply remember my friend’s mom as just a genuine, caring, nice lady who loved my friend.
We have so much sh*t that goes on in our lives on a daily basis. People come and they go. Some stick around for a while, some are just on the scene for an instant.
All of this, the movie, the email, the text reminded me that very little actually matters. Most of what we spend our time thinking about, worrying about, arguing about, fighting about, coveting is insignificant. It’s noise.
When it is your time to leave the Earth, when your own fever dream ends, what are the people that matter most going to remember?
How will they feel when they think about you? What are you doing to make sure that you filter out the noise and make sure that you are present for those that matter most? So they have the opportunity to know you for who you REALLY are?
That is what I thought about as this week came to an end.
And just like that, Friends, it’s Daylight Saving here in the US…..shorts weather is just around the corner (or if you have a teenager, it is already here!).
XOXO
Dave
Think on This…
Every product we buy, every job we take, every relationship we have, and all the decisions we make are based on narratives—stories that explain how the world works and what’s going on in it. The narratives we believe determine our actions.
For Your Day Job…
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Great quick read with a set of 12 Sales Process Management Best Practices based on the wealth of engagement, process, revenue data aggregated, and the work done by InsightSquared with hundreds of companies.
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